Slow backups

[ashkg2000]

I am supporting an environment which has NB5.1, a master server and 2 media servers (Sun OS 5.8) and everyday i find number of backups ended with 196 errors.

On investigations i found that there is no load balancing between two media servers and most of the backups run through with first media server,second one is not being used most of the time.

Can anyone guide me what steps should i take to get the equal load on both the media servers and this will definitely improve the backup performance.

Thanks in advance
Ash

 

[comtec17]

You should assign the policy to a Storage Unit belonging to that media server. By default, NetBackup chooses the Storage Unit in Alphabetical and Numberical order thus causing most backups to go to the same media server when you choose the "Any Available". To load balance, you want to manually choose which Storage Unit/Media server the backups go to.

 

[anthonyon]

196 errors usually indicate that your backup did not complete because it did not start within its backup window time. You should check your backup schedule for the policies and extend your backup window time. Example: If the backup schedule is from 9:00:00-10:00:00 then try extending that window to something like 9:00:00-13:00:00. Maybe changing the backup windows around will help also, depending on how many backups you have running at a particular time...stretch it out so a handful will backup at one particular time and the others will backup at another particular time.

If your backups are transmitting slowly then check your switch and make sure it is set to full duplex.

Good luck

 

[lenski]

You may also find it a benifit to multuiplex the data from several backups to a single tape.

 

[Vela]

Move some of your backups policies to use the other media server within the >policies>attributes tab>storage unit

You should be able to easily load balance if you start using the other media server more.

One thing you can do is gradually move some backup policies to use the other media server/storage unit

It may take a week for you to see the difference so don't switch too much stuff over to the other media server.

Ryan