Dual Network Cards

[Hellooooooooo]

Hello Everyone,

I'm trying to speed up the time taken to complete our backups each night. Currently it’s taking about 10 hours to backup data from 2 servers.

Here’s the server setup:

Server 1:[/] Win 2k, 1 NIC to network with Static IP. Running backup software with a SCSI Tape Drive.

Server 2: Win 2K, 1 NIC to network, Static IP. Running Exch 5.5

Server 3: Win 2K, 1 NIC to network, Static IP. Used as the data server.

Each server is a Dell 2650 with Dual 1 GB NIC's. The current network connection is 100mb

We are not allowed to setup an extra subnet or gateway. We also don't control our DNS.

Each night we have about 40-45 GB of differential data to backup. We also do database level, and brick level backups on a 22 GB exchange server.

I was wanting to use the 2nd NIC's to balance the load on the network, but reading some of the threads this will not be so simple, and I'm sure that our network switch will not support balancing protocols.

I'm going to try and get a gigabyte switch so that I can create a mini network using the 2nd NIC's, using the 10.x.x.x addressing.

Has anyone else used a setup like this, any pointers or don’t go there’s??

Any help or advice is always welcome.

 

[jimbopalmer]

Be sure before you start that your backup software can refer to machines by IP Address.

Do not enter a default gateway on the 'backup' LAN configurations.



I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[dearingkr]

First off, you should definitely get a gig switch.
However, I think your bottleneck may be the tape drive.
72-77 gig of data per day is alot of data.
You may want to consider adding a second tape drive unit.

MCSE CCNA CCDA

 

[Hellooooooooo]

Hello Guys.

Thanks for your help. I forgot to say that I was using Arcserve 11.5 as the backup software. I was thinking about this over the weekend and went into work today to find that the Tape Libary has passed away. so tonights backs are to disk, untill dell pitch up and fix the drive. I will have a good look at the backup logs in the morning to see the time it has taken for both backups. What does drag the time out is the brick level exchange backup. I have 90 gb of space on the backup server free set as Raid 5. I will see how the backups went and my try backing up to disk then off to tape.

Cheers

Marty

 

[jdeisenm]

Are your servers running at 100mb full duplex? Can you look at the server(s) nics and the switch to verify this? I've seen slow backups because the server was actually running at 100/half.

 

[Hellooooooooo]

Hello Jdeisenm.

The servers are set to 100 full duplex. Ports on the switch are set at 100 full. However looking at the switch logs the port the exchange connects to has been in full and half duplex. were not to sure why this is. looking at the times it has happend it would appear that it should not affect the backups, but Ive had the switch swapped out just in-case.

On a good note or site is closed next week from wednesday onwards, so I can play with the backups at bit more and try and get it all backing up to disk then tape with upsetting the whole world.

Just need some money now so I can buy a gig switch for the mini network.

Cheers