Veritas-bu

[Veritas-bu] NetBackup Disk Staging Performance Questions

2007-02-28 23:34:31
Subject: [Veritas-bu] NetBackup Disk Staging Performance Questions
From: anthony_segran at symantec.com (Anthony Segran)
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 21:34:31 -0700
Hello All

 

I am working with one of my favorite customers and they have raised a
few questions on issues faced in their NetBackup v6.0 MP4 environment.
You would certainly see various customer configurations out there and I
am sure we have many large customers with NBU implemented on Windows.
Could you please share your thoughts and experiences on dealing with the
issues faced and highlighted below.

 

Your input and feedback would be much appreciated.

 

Couple of things here, which revolve around DSSU's. We have problems
with fragmentation on our DSSU's (Windows Servers attached over FCP to
SATA arrays HDS 9585 and NetApp 3020). The DSSU's are over a TB in size
which is causing a real headache with defrags; we have the DSSU's in a
storage unit group and have tried a method support recommended for
defrag's - namely - drop out an inactive DSSU, defrag it, then add it
back to the group. I've tried this twice without much success due to the
time it's taking - I left it for >8 hours, and the fragmentation only
improved by 1%. I suspect that the IOPS generated by a defrag is not a
good match for SATA..?

So this leads to a series of questions? 
Is there any other way to resolve the fragmentation issue? 
Could the DSSU get removed from the SUG, all images duplicated, tape
images set as primary and the images on disk discarded and the dssu
volume reformatted...

Support (again) said that large sites with large DSSU's tend to use
Unix/Linux since the filesystems on these platforms don't suffer from
fragmentation to the same extent as NTFS. There must be large Windows
only sites out there (he said hopefully!) - can you find out what they
do?

Is SATA a common choice out there for DSSU's? 
We experienced slow performance during duplication, on both HDS 9585
arrays and NetApp 3020 over FCP. We're currently talking to NetApp about
3020 performance issues, so do you know of other NBU customers using
NetApp 3020's for DSSU's?

Another DSSU related issue we're seeing is orphan images left on the
DSSU from failed/incomplete jobs. We've turned the appropriate logs on
and will be clearing these out manually and escalate again if/when we
see further occurrences. Support assure us that this is not a
normal/reported issue with NBU. Are there any "working practices" that
may also trigger this outcome - I'm conscious that the guidance we
received at the start of the project was a bit on the thin side to say
the least!

On the subject of orphan files, we've also seen entries being retaining
in the tmp folders in the catalog itself some of them stretching back
months. Again support have said this is not normal - so they've been
manually removed and we're keeping a watch for further occurrences.
Incidentally I asked one of our guys to do a distribution breakdown of
the files by date and the results indicate that the issue started around
the time MP4 was applied.

 

 

 

Kind regards

 

________________________________

Anthony Segran

Solution Architect - Global Strategic Partners

Symantec Australia (Pty) Limited

www.symantec.com <http://www.symantec.com/> 

-----------------------------------------------------

Office: (+612) 8220 7378

Mobile: (+61408) 400 213

Fax: (+612) 8220 7004

Email: anthony_segran at symantec.com

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