Veritas-bu

[Veritas-bu] Performance Problems

2007-01-25 02:32:37
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Performance Problems
From: simon.weaver at astrium.eads.net (WEAVER, Simon)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 07:32:37 -0000
Hello Jonathan
I am very much behind with all my emails, but just wanted to add to this....
Sorry if its late....

Point 1 - Spec sounds ok - Drives do not. If performance is terrible on the
drives, change them. Better still, can you change the H/W of your Server?
The response from Dell tells me they do not understand the situation here,
and I would take caution on any advice given. There could well be difference
in "memory" speeds that could cause issues - is it causing this particular
problem? Most likely not.

Point 2 - We have a huge EVA Dual Striped HP RAID system that has volumes at
500GB and compressed. This storage system is very, very fast, plus we do
backups over fibre, so we do not see that much of a loss due to the
compression. I know people will comment on "don't compress you lose
performance", but a lot of this does indeed depend on the hardware its
sitting on. Again, because all the I/O is on the Storage system, the server
doesn't really care. But compressing on volume where the CPU is affected
will cause slowdown. I would also suggest that if you have any AV, kill it
during the backup process.

Point 3 - If hardware is not moving the Data fast enough, then why blame
NBU. NBU relies on communication between devices, drivers and the systems.
It will only push and pull what it can depending on the hardware its given.
Again, where possible, use faster drives, stop any other I/O - Disk Defrag
tools, VSS, VSP, Tracker.exe and Anti Virus (assuming we are all talking
Windows here).

Point 4 - I would say, point 3 probably answers this !

Point 5 - I do not run this, mainly because most of our apps do not need
this amount of memory... Yet! I run NBU as is, and in its current
configuration, its fine. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/283037
 

Regards

Simon Weaver
3rd Line Technical Support
Windows Domain Administrator 

EADS Astrium Limited, B23AA IM (DCS)
Anchorage Road, Portsmouth, PO3 5PU

Email: Simon.Weaver at Astrium-eads.net



-----Original Message-----
From: Martin, Jonathan (Contractor) [mailto:JMARTI05 at intersil.com] 
Sent: 12 January 2007 21:55
To: veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Performance Problems


I'm finally getting around to performance tuning the new hardware and my
hair is now officially on fire.  To say the storage is slow, is like saying
the south pole is chilly.  Performance is TERRIBLE.  Not just in Netbackup,
but generally speaking I can't copy files to these volumes at
>30MB/sec.  So I've got some questions and I try and tweak better
performance.

NBU 6.0 MP4 on Windows 2003 MP1
Dell PowerEdge 2950s w/ Dual Core Xeon 3.2 Ghz Processors 4GB Ram Storage -
Dell MD1000 w/ 15 7,200RMD SATAII Drives

1 - Dell is floating the idea that because my memory runs at 667Mhz and my
FSB runs at 1066Mhz that it could be causing a traffic jam.  Anyone put any
stock in this idea?  They suggest 533Mhz RAM which fits much more nicely
with the 1066FSB.

2 - Anyone using NTFS compression on DSUs or DSSUs > 500GB?  I realise you
take the compression hit on 4KB NTFS Cluster sizes and compression speeds,
but I want to know if its possible to use NTFS on a volume and gert descent
read/write speeds from a DSU / DSSU.

3 - I'm assuming my best transfer speeds are going to be NBU with 64KB
SIZE_DATA_BUFFERS pumping 64KB NTFS Clusters on a 14 Disk Raid5 array w/
64KB Stripe.  I guess its possible multiples of 64KB would be ok as well.

4 - From some perspectives it looks just like the hardware isn't moving data
fast enough.  But I guess its also fair to say that NBU isn't driving the
hardware to move the data any faster.  With the exception of Buffer settings
is there anyway to shift the NBU I/O realted processes into "high gear?"
Increasing the buffer sizes and adding more buffers only help until a
certain point.

5 - Does anyone run NBU w/ the /PAE or /3GB switches in windows?  Any
improvement in performance.

Any input is appreciated.  I'm going home for some R&R before I come back in
next week to beat my head against the wall some more.

-Jonathan

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