Networker

[Networker] How to speed up this backup (4GB -> 8 hours) ?

2009-03-19 08:20:31
Subject: [Networker] How to speed up this backup (4GB -> 8 hours) ?
From: Manel Rodero <manel AT FIB.UPC DOT EDU>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:13:10 +0100
Hello,

We have a client that always seems to stall until its backups finishes (at morning we see backup process at 99% and only one saveset for this client running) and we would like to know where the problem is: client, OS, filesystem, etc. so any idea would be very appreciated.

The client is 7.4.2 running in Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4 (Nahant Update 7). Our server is 7.4.2 but yesterday we upgraded to 7.4.4 with the same "problem".

The problematic saveset is the following:

/home2:
Used 277078076 1K-blocks
Available 723167204 1K-blocks
%occupied 28%

This saveset is mounted through a Fiber Switch Qlogic SAnSurfer attached to a Sun Storedge 3510. The filesystem is GFS from RedHat.

Some fragments from the bootstrap log of last week:

a) For a full backup:

  client1: /home2          level=full,    127 GB 12:19:56 9158073 files

b) For incremental (level) ones:

  client1: /home2          level=1,      1580 KB 07:25:11    121 files
  client1: /home2          level=2,      3391 MB 07:17:54  92124 files
  client1: /home2          level=3,      4409 MB 07:56:02 136712 files
  client1: /home2          level=4,      2748 MB 07:16:39  67574 files

We can notice in level logs that it seems the number of files doesn't matter as the backup has, more or less, the same duration. So the problem could be the total number of files and their comparison for backing up only the changed ones.

Any idea about what can we look for? Any clues about which problem could it be?

Thank you very much for any suggestions.

--

o o o  Manel Rodero Blánquez             | LCFIB - FIB - UPC
o o o  IT System Manager                 | Campus Nord - Modul B6
o o o  Barcelona School of Informatics   | Jordi Girona, 1-3
U P C  Technical University of Catalonia | 08034 Barcelona (Spain)
                                         |
       manel AT fib.upc DOT edu                 | Tel: +00 34 93 401 0847
       http://www.fib.upc.edu/           | Fax: +00 34 93 401 7040

To sign off this list, send email to listserv AT listserv.temple DOT edu and type 
"signoff networker" in the body of the email. Please write to networker-request 
AT listserv.temple DOT edu if you have any problems with this list. You can access the 
archives at http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/networker.html or
via RSS at http://listserv.temple.edu/cgi-bin/wa?RSS&L=NETWORKER