ignite network archive restore benchmarks/timing

[Peter Heinemann]

Just soliciting some experiences with length of time it took to restore an ignite archive via network.

The archive build took less than 30 min. The restore, however, is now over an hour and has been at the 25% mark for some time.

glance shows a 1.5-1.6 nfs svr read rate to the temporary ip address I assigned on the ignite server for network client restores, so there is some activity.

Thanks in advance.

[Mel Burslan]

the answer to your question is : "it depends".

depends on your network traffic and interface settings.

Since you are making a net recovery, you are using the built in lan on the server, and if you are misfortunate enough to do it on a K-class box or worse, you are bound by a 10baseT interface. To add insult to the injury, it most probably negotiated half duplex with the network gear if your switches accept autonegotiation. So, go figure. It needs to download most probably about a gigabyte or more data over the slowest possible network conection, process it and install a system. You are looking into a good 4-5 hour job, if you are lucky that is. More traffic on the network branch, slower it will go. Been there, done that, don't want the t-shirt. If I were you, I would go home :)

[Dani Seely]

Sorry Peter,
I have no benchmarks to provide you, but
there are LOTS of different variables that come in to play here.

1st off, Mel brought up a good point regarding network traffic

2nd, if you are performing a restore from a separate subnet, this will also slow the process down as the data will have to traverse through routers, hubs, and switches, not to mention the amount of traffic across both networks.

The amount of space stored on the backup also affects the restore time.

[curt larson_1]

i'll throw out some data

ignite server: c200
target system: c3000/c3600

network: 100hd
network traffic: 3 restores/builds at one time

total time from power on to shutdown after final reboot: about 45 minutes

time to transfer data: about 20 minutes

[Peter Heinemann]

Thanks for the replies; if anyone else can offer real-life timings I'd appreciate it.

Mine was ugly. 14 hours:
* Tue May 18 14:23:31 EDT 2004: Starting archive load of the source
(Recovery Archive).
* Processed 10% of archive

* Processed 20% of archive
* Processed 30% of archive
* Processed 40% of archive
* Processed 50% of archive
* Processed 60% of archive
* Processed 70% of archive
* Processed 80% of archive
* Processed 90% of archive
* Completed 100% of archive
* Wed May 19 00:13:47 EDT 2004: Completed archive load of the source

rp8400
11.11 w/patches current to Nov. 2003
100FD (two nic APA)

restoring from a san-based vpar to a host-based vpar (which, from Ignite's standpoint should be irrelevant) but I mention it because on the network topology the source and target are adjacent. Same subnet.

Any suggestions for nfs tuning specific to Ignite network archive restores? I'll troll through itrc for nfs tips but if anyone has good ones plz. post. Thanks.