Has anyone had any success with improving backup performance by implementing 
"server" network interfaces in their backup environments?

We are looking at acquiring two Intel Pro/100 S to offload the CPU's of our 
backup server.

NIC's like these are usually pitched as encryption accelerators, but do they 
add anything in a backup environment in terms of performance (where encryption 
is not a requirement)?

Our backup server (NetWorker 6.1.2 on Red Hat 7.1) runs at the following load 
average during the backup window.

08:01:00 PM       CPU     %user     %nice   %system     %idle
08:11:00 PM       all     13.26      0.14     46.65     39.94

As long as the clients keep streaming (we have a few big slow NetWare clients), 
the drive can maintain 14-15MB/s.

Server parallelism is at 8 (I have tried higher parallelism, e.g. 10, but the 
load average just increases, with no noticeable improvement in througput)

Our H/W config is as follows
Compaq Proiant 3000, 2x550MHz P3, 512MB RAM, 3x36GB Ultra160 on 3200 Raid 
Adapter
2x100MB/s NICs (Intel 3210), switched
Library: Overland Data LXN2000, SDLT220 on Adaptec AHA2940U2W

More info:
- the server never swaps
- GigE currently is not an option on this server (2x100MB are more than enough 
for this config), as is upgrading the server (CPU's) itself.
- at one stage, we had 2 extra Intel NICs, but these did not improve 
throughput, the bottleneck being the tape/server

Your thoughts would be appreciated, also with regards to dual-port NIC's on 
multiple bus servers.

TIA

Riaan

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