Networker

Re: [Networker] Tuning of Networker 7.1.2

2005-05-10 12:23:25
Subject: Re: [Networker] Tuning of Networker 7.1.2
From: John Stoffel <john.stoffel AT TAEC.TOSHIBA DOT COM>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 12:10:48 -0400
Osay> We're running Networker 7.1.2 at our site with an ADIC Scalar
Osay> i2000 with 4 LTO II drives.  We have DDS for the four drives and
Osay> 7 storage nodes.  We also have a particular requirement to send
Osay> Full backups of our production servers offsite daily.  

Ouch, this is going to be hard to do, and it's hard to estimate how
much disk you're using here as well.  

I'd suggest that you need to setup some disk mirrors, so that each day
you:
        - stop the application
        - break the mirror
        - start the application

        - mount the mirror to the backup server(s)
          - or even to the app server, but as a different mount
            point/drive letter.
        - check the filesystem
        - do your backup.

This is good because you're backup window is now 24 hours, and your
production servers aren't held back by the backup process, or slowed
down. 

Osay> I have therefore configured a Save Group for Windows, one for
Osay> HPUX and one for Linux.  The total amount of data backed up is
Osay> 1.5TB.  We have a backup windows of just 8 hours.  

You need to dump 1.5Tb each night in five hours?  That comes to:

    5mb/s = 17gb/hr 
    50mb/s = 170gb/hr

    1.5tb * 1024 mb / 8h = 192 mb / hr

So you need to be pushing at least 65mb/s of data for all eight hours
through your drives.  Not impossible, the LTO-II drives can run around
36mb/s uncompressed, so with just two drives, you could do it.  

The problem is getting the data off the clients and onto the tape.
Can your network handle 65mb/s sustained?  That's getting pretty close
to filling the bandwidth of a 1gb/bit LAN port.  And it takes some
hefty disks on the client(s) to push the data that fast to the
server.  

Osay> Normally the backups should successfully complete in this
Osay> window.  However I often have backups running well into the next
Osay> day.  I have grouped the Windows production servers into the
Osay> W2KFull save group which can be backed up by two dedicated
Osay> storage nodes.  The HPUX servers are also grouped together and
Osay> can be backed up by three dedicated storage nodes.  Some of the
Osay> W2K server however need to be backed up through the LAN on the
Osay> Networker server which is also a dedicated storage node.  Is
Osay> there a way to improve the performance to have all the data
Osay> backed up in the 8 hour window?

Get a couple of cheap Fibre Channel arrays, 2.4Tb for around $14k,
probably cheaper.  Attach them to each server so that you use Legato
to write to those storage arrays as disk volumes.  Then clone those
volumes to tape during the off-hours.

Increase the parallelism on each of your clients.  Get as many streams
of data running from the clients to the disk(s) as possible.  Get the
network out of the loop as much as possible.  

John
    John Stoffel - Senior Staff Systems Administrator - System LSI Group
  Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. - http://www.toshiba.com/taec
             john.stoffel AT taec.toshiba DOT com - 508-486-1087

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