Veritas-bu

[Veritas-bu] Performance: Single server, multiple jukeboxes?

2004-02-11 17:12:48
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Performance: Single server, multiple jukeboxes?
From: porter AT marine.rutgers DOT edu (Adam Porter)
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 17:12:48 -0500
We've outgrown our Sun StorEdge L40 with 2 DLT7000 drives and 40 slots. 
   Our Netbackup Datacenter server is also old and failing.  We will be 
upgrading NBU 3.4.1 to 5.0, adding a 2-drive SDLT jukebox (keeping the 
old jukebox too) and replacing the server.

Originally, I thought we might buy 2 servers (possibly Linux-based dual 
Xeons), one to drive each jukebox.  But Veritas licensing structure & 
costs may make this expensive.

Our existing jukebox can write at 10MB/sec with both drives spinning. 
The new jukebox will hopefully write at 64-72MB/sec with both drives 
spinning.

If I sufficiently beef up a single server with dual-channel SCSI (i.e. 
Adaptec 39160) and extra RAM, could I use a single server to drive both 
jukeboxes?  This should be cheaper (I could use my existing single 
server license) and simpler to manage, but I don't want performance to 
suffer and I'm assuming the 160MB/sec SCSI connection won't be a 
bottleneck.  (This also assumes we'll be able to implement a gigabit 
backup LAN that performs fast enough to push both jukeboxes.)

Thanks in advance,

-Adam