3 Servers all backup over a 10/100 network with Veritas BE 9.0 and it takes to long

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BenIT

Limp Gawd
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Sep 9, 2003
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I have 3 servers in one location, each plays its own role, one of them is a simple file server, the second is a database server, and the last is a backup domain controller which also functions as the backup server.

I have the backup start as soon as the office closes for business and end right before it reopens the next morning, and its not enough time.

Its 160gb worth of data to be backed up, and the regular 10/100 isnt cutting it.

So i was thinking to add into each server a GbE card and crate a sub-network only between the servers and have the [Veritas] BackUp Agent run onver the GbE cards.

No i have looked through the setting of the Agent and i couldt find any option to define which particular card it should use, if there is any, so what do you reccomend i do? and is this a good solution at all??
 
Are you sure the network is your limiting factor? At 100megabits/second, you should be able to transfer 160gigabytes in about 4 hours. If it is taking 16 hours, your network is either running *very* slow, or your data isn't being read (from disk) or written (to tape) fast enough.
 
Fint said:
Are you sure the network is your limiting factor? At 100megabits/second, you should be able to transfer 160gigabytes in about 4 hours. If it is taking 16 hours, your network is either running *very* slow, or your data isn't being read (from disk) or written (to tape) fast enough.
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Yeah, my first guess was the tape write isn't fast enough, since the network is plenty fast enough. Most tape backup systems do not write anywhere near 100mbps unless you spend some serious cash on them.
 
Good points. We have SCSI LTO drives and they even take a long time with not as much stuff to back up. Just wait until Symantec ruins veritas into the dirt, then we can all call India for tech support when we switch back to Arcserve. ;) Make sure Veritas is patched too...lots of goofey tweaks here and there...check their TIDs
 
look at the logs, is one server taking longer than others? Is one drive taking an extraordinarily long time to backup? Are you backup up open files with/without a lock? Do you have AOFO? If you're backing up open files without OFO, backups can take forever. Try running a backup job and never backup open files and see if your speed increases.
 
Well i use the open file option, because this damn database is an image database and we have clients that we transfer hugh amounts of data to and somtimes we run it overnight (its a document retrival service).

And my network is running fine its just the writeing to tape i think but i also feel that its the connectivity btw. the servers that slowing it down as well (i was looking at the logs in real time and saw that it was running to slow (18mbps i think).

but i know i can fill up one of those tapes (a full 160) from this one server just as a test and can do it under 8 hrs, so its the network speed thats doing this to me.

thats why i would go the GbE internal server way.
 
How many machines total, are in the complex? How many switches do you have?

QJ
 
The network may be misconfigured (i.e. mismatched port speed/duplex settings on host and/or switch), but it's not simply that 100b-T is too slow. I'd check into the basic network configuration stuff first, and then start trying to hunt down other obscure things like policies that might be encrypting your traffic, IPsec, requiring certificates, etc. which can really slow down 2003 servers. Also, I'd try and isolate whether the throughput is a problem on the fileserver, the database server, or both.

GigE is fine but with a single streamed BackupExec you'll never come close to utilizing the extra bandwidth.
 
You're still not going to gain anything from going gigabit anyway.

I have a backup that stores 300GB on two tapes which takes 14 hours to run. This backs up data locally on one server.
I have another backup that also stores 300GB but on one tape and runs for 19 hours. This backs up data on 8 servers which are connected to the network at 10/100.

If I can backup twice the data in almost the same amount of time either your servers are slow or the backup drive is slow... maybe both, but it's not your network.
 
Some good suggestions.

1. Check your tape speed. Our "high-speed" SDLT drives are only 11MB/sec.

2. Check the open files agent. That really hurts performance. Only use it if needed. If you need to back up an open database use a database agent instead, if one is available. That is MUCH faster and safer on the restore.

3. I don't think BE lets you stream from all servers to one drive. That's a big reason we went to NetBackup when we did. 1:1 was just too slow.
 
Humor me and back up one of your flat file servers without backing up open files. Compare to the time it takes to back up the same server overnight (go into the logs and look at the start & stop time for each resource on the server). This will eliminate any quiet time / access conflicts from the mix. Reduce variables.
 
Well I am using a DLT 80/160 SCSI backup drive (I got it from Dell with a server)

There are about 30 computers and we are useing 2 Linksys Switchs and the 3 servers are connected into the same switch.

I dont konw what else, there has not been any changes made to the speed setting o either of the servers, all that was done to them what the IP address set and config'd. thats all.

2 of the servers are running 2003 STD and one of the (the file server) is running 2000 SRV.

There is 60-70Gb worth of data on the Database server (just to note its a File Magic [for images] database and it dosent run SQL or anything like that) and then the file server just hosts all the network drives and any data that needs to be stored [by policy there is no data saved on the local computers]) so thats another 20-40Gb of data and the backup server itself another 5-10Gb of data.

So its appernt that i am using the compression which id assume that slows things down quite a bit, but nothing I can do there.
 
Why not get 2 switches with gigabit links on them? If you think this is the problem, then go for it... it won't cost that much.

QJ
 
While your network setup doesn't sound ideal, at night there shouldn't be much traffic from the other computers. I still think it's bogging down on accessing open files. Try a backup job of the file server without open files. Then do the same thing, but do a backup to disk to the a backup to disk folder on the backup server.
 
I don't know veritas, but if you define the address as the subnetwork one, shouldn't it only be able to get to it from the gbe card?
 
lunacite said:
I don't know veritas, but if you define the address as the subnetwork one, shouldn't it only be able to get to it from the gbe card?
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I was just going to jump in here and mention that you can either do it this way ( this is how I'd do it ), or you can specify static routes for individual IPs so they always flow over the same link.

Personally, I'd just setup a different subnet and let the default routing rules figure it out.
 
And before you dump money in network gear, go to the backup server and look at the network utilization during your jobs. If you're not at 80% or higher you'd be wasting money.
 
I'm (as of recently) running veritas 10sp1 here. I know when you add a server into the selection list there is an option for some sort of network optimization. maybe an upgrade is in order. Also.. keep in mind that if your tape drive doesnt do hardware compression the software compression can be a pig. For me here, doing about 20GB software compress to an IOMEGA REV drive takes about 2 hours. Those REV drives (even on usb 2.0) are quite fast too.
 
We're running 9.1 and recently upgraded to 10. A 220GB backup using an External SCSI HP SDLT160/320 drive takes about 8 hours.

How often do you do a full backup?

How is the DB performance during the backups?
 
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