Cheryl,

  <sarcasm>NetBackup is the most complete network trouble-shooting tool we have 
found!
  </sarcasm>

  Unfortunately this is true. Network backups seem to tax network 
infrastructure more than almost any other application - NFS, CIFS, Oracle 
replication,... As such, any small network problem that is normally overcome by 
re-transmission of packets, becomes much more visible with NetBackup.

  We have set up standards with our network, Unix and Windows organizations. We 
have explicitly told them that all backup network ports are to be fixed to the 
maximum setting. That is, the server has to be fixed to 10 or 100, half or full 
duplex. And the switch port has to be fixed to the same setting.

  Auto-negotiation seems to work about 20% of the time. So about 80% of the 
time you will have backup problems. The only sure method of preventing problems 
is to have organizational standards to explicitly set the NICs and ports.

   Bryan

Bryan Bahnmiller
IT Specialist - Storage
Agilent Technologies
 

-----Original Message-----
From: King, Cheryl [mailto:cheryl.king AT intrado DOT com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 12:03 PM
To: Veritas-Bu (E-mail)
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Is there an official document of client and server
NIC and switch settings


Over and over again we have problems with poor performance with new client 
backups and restores.  Is there a document that says what the NIC settings 
should be for each client type?  For example we have highest speed possible for 
all of them, half duplex for HP, and full duplex for everything else, I think 
(I haven't checked every system and wasn't here when some were implemented).  
Setting Auto detect on the switch seems to not work correctly (causes slow 
performance).   I think the switches are set to match the server, but have no 
way to verify that.  I'd like to be able to present an official document to the 
System Administrators and the Network Engineers that states the correct 
configuration requirements.  Does Veritas have such a document or statement?

Is this a problem in other environments?  Is this just an issue in Veritas 
Backup environments?  Are my SAs and Network Engineers not following some 
industry, standard, best-practices?    I've been in IT for many years but 
working with Veritas NBU for 1 year.  I don't recall ever having network issues 
like this before.

NBU 4.5 FP5 Solaris 8 Master/Media
Clients OSF1_V5, HP-UX 11.00, HP-UX10.20, Windows2000, WindowsNT, RedHat2.4, 
RedHat 2.2, Solaris8, Solaris7.

Thanks in advance.

Cheryl King


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