SDLT 160/320 performance opinions 1

[RobG2001]

We are considering replacing our TL891 backup system with a single DLT 40/80 drive to an HP tape library system which contains two SDLT 160/320 drives. Currently the backup is on a generic box with NT 4.0 SP6, BE 8.0. and a 100Mbit NIC. If we were to go to the new one we'd probably put it on a proliant (768 MB RAM, 1.2 Ghz proc and Win 2K) with a 5304 array card and a gigabit NIC.

I believe there is something wrong with the current backup. It takes 10 hours for to backup 53+ Gigs on the same LAN although there is no traffic at this time.

How much better performace can I expect? How tough is it to move the Backup Exec to another machine?

Thanks
robert

 

[Kaiserr2]

For the record I don't think there is much wrong with the current back-up that you have. With 3 tapes(DLTtape IV 40G) rotated daily on an old Surestore DLT40 it takes 12-16 hours to back up 70+ Gig a day.

 

[123Jimmy]

You might want to try backup up to an appliance such as an Idealstor unit.

http://www.idealstor.com.

This backup appliance give you the capability with 10/100 nics to backup 700mb to 1.2gb per minute. That would shrink your backup window. The disks in the appliance are also removalbe while the system is up, just like tapes. The cost of tapes and disks are the same. It might be something that you would like to look into.

 

[RobG2001]

Any idea of the pricing? Ballpark? There's no pricing on the web.

Thanks

Robert

 

[gwichman]

I'd take what he's saying with a big grain of salt. He's probably just trying to sell his product. Take a look at all the posts he's ever posted. 6 of them and all pushing that product. Secondly, he's caliming 700mb to 1.2gb per minute. Do the math and you'll realize a 100Mbps NIC isn't capable of that range. 100Mbps = 750MB/s if you achieve 100% utilization and had no overhead whatsover. He's claiming up to 1.2GB/sec? howso? Let me tell you you'd be lucky to get 80% of that 750MB/min let alone the range he's mentioning. Every packet sent has overhead in the various headers encapsulating the data as well as ack packets and so forth. Also consider extra overhead involved with whatever protocol you're using to transfer the data in the first place. Bottom line is that means if you ever see 600MB/s you are doing DAMN GOOD. Anyways i'm not saying these appliances don't have their place and are neccessarily a bad idea, but if i were you i'd get an eval unit first and make sure it does what you expect it to.

As for your question regarding 53GB taking 10 hours, that is excessive. Your environment by what you posted should be capable of substantially more then that. You need to do some performance monitoring and tuning. Find out where the bottleneck is and address it. Replacing the equipment isn't the answer if you're primarily concerned with speed. I would expect your backup to take more along the lines of no more then 2-4 hours depending on the type of data you're backing up (file systems? databases?).

 

[123Jimmy]

GWichman, I work for a software company which sells defragmentation software. And I am using the Idealstor appliance. Sorry for the confusion I just think it is great and not well marketed. As for the speeds. 600-700MB per minute are the speeds that I have seen and higher in a lab with gigabit ethernet not /sec. Take it for what it is worth. I am happy with it.

RobG2001, I am unsure, you would have to call them to find out about pricing since I don't sell it. It all depends on the model that you purchase.

 

[qzq]

I got the Idealstor a couple of weeks back, I agree with the speeds. Sure is a change from our ADIC autoloader which was going into the next day with our backups. I am happy with it so far.

 

[gwichman]

looks interesting but is it just a PC with hot swappable IDE drives? I mean thats what it looks like.. or does it actually come with some kind of software? How do BE and other programs back up to it? Via a CIFS share just like any other box? Do you first map a drive from the idealstor to your BE server or install BE server on the idealstore or what? Why wouldn't i just buy a polywell with hot swappable drives and do the same thing?

I can get anything from a 1U 3 drive server up to a 3U 15 drive server.

 

[123Jimmy]

Been there and done that. It is not as easy as you think to buy a system with hot swap drives and use it for Backup. You will run into a lot of problems. BE is installed on the appliance itself and it comes with software to manage the drives ejection.

 

[gwichman]

What kind of problems? Still seems like the same thing to me. Software to manage the drive ejection? Isn't that what the software that comes with a 3ware adapter does for you? I'm still skeptical it's all the different.

 

[123Jimmy]

You can use 3ware for Raid 5 and Raid 1 Ejection for backups, but you can use it for regular JBODS. This system allows you to use your existing backup software as long as it backs up to disk and use older disks that you have on the shelf. It has its niche. With the Idealstor appliance you don't have to reboot to swap your disks or jeprodize your operating system. I have been definately happy with it thus far.

 

[gwichman]

I've never had to reboot any of my servers to swap disks and i've never had an OS problem from replacing disks with our polywell servers (3ware/IDE based. Hot swappable). You can also use older disks and use your existing backup software (provided it backs up to disk) using a server like this. Again i don't see the advantage..

 

[qzq]

Gwichman, I am just curious. I tried the 3ware card before I got the Idealstor box and sure I could swap a drive in a RAID 5 config, but could never get it to work with JBOD. I even spoke with 3ware and according to them that is not supported ( does not work ) with JBOD. Swapping a raid 5 config does not help because, you can keep you raid going if a drive fails. But I cant restore the data from that one disk taht I have pulled out. Also another issue with swapping disk is flushing the cache ( if you pull a disk out you could have corrupt data ) which idealstor does. There are a number of solutions that you can use disk to backup, from nexsan, network appliance and Quantum( besides they are really expensive) but I still havent found one that lets you use a disk as tape that you can eject and plug it in to restore your data. If you are able to unplug the disk using 3ware which has valid data and use it to plug it back in and recover data then I would love to hear about how you are doing it? I have had my issues with tape and dont want to use it anymore. I have been doing a 2 stage backup for a long time but cant deal with the constant problems I have had with autoloaders. How are you doing it with the polywell servers and 3ware?