HP MSA2012i terrible throughput

[sean anderson]

I have a backup exec server that mounts a snapshop of various file servers that have volumes on the MSA2012i and the throughput is literally 10-20MB/Min.

The backup exec server is running windows 2008 x64 and I see that people are saying this OS is not supported so the question is if I put a Qlogic HBA in the server will this be supported configuration and if the slowness continues what could the issue be?

[Uwe Zessin]

It is normal to see low backup throughput on a server with lots of small files. The disk drives need to push their heads to position between data and meta-data during which no data transfer is possible.

[sean anderson]

I understand backup times are will be slower when dealing with many small files but I dont think literally 1MB/Sec is reasonble. We also run a windows storage server with the falconstore iscsi product as well as an instransa ISCSi solution and they have speeds during backups approaching 80X this speed I see with the MSA2012i.

Any other suggestions with regards to what I may not being doing? I cannot believe this is such a difficult problem to solve.

some information, our backup server is an ML350G5 with 12GB RAM, 1 quad core 2.5Ghz CPU and multiple nics inlcuding NC380T and NC382T. Everything has the latest firmwware and drivers. The SAN network is Procurve 2848 switches and cabling is all cat 6.

[Uwe Zessin]

I'm sorry, I have missed the "per Minute". That is really slow.

Before buying any hardware, have you tried to backup without snapshots to see if this is limiting the speed? The MSA2012i also allow some I/O monitoring - maybe the snapshots do produce too many addition I/Os. The speed on the file servers is OK during the backup?

I don't have any experience with random I/O on the MSA2012i, but I know it can do sequential quite well. What you could try is load the system with massive large, sequential read or write I/Os and look at the throughputs - maybe there is a problem in the network infrastructure which is visible with seq. I/O as well.

[sean anderson]

Thank you for the response. I suppose I should use a tool like IO meter to measure the IO's just to be sure I understand what is going on. As best as I can tell the fileserver behaves normally during the backup.

Thanks

[Kevin Hand]

There seems to be a major issue with performance on the MSA 2012i. I posted a detailed entry onto this forum as I have an outstanding support issue with HP on this very subject.

I have just checked and my posting has disappeares.

There are a number of other posting on this forum regading poor performance and BXOIS errors in the system event log

[Bart_Rajchel]

I have a similar issue. We are using a HP DP6.0 for backups and have exactly the same problem. I can also say that copying files from the MSA2012i over a gigabit LAN is also 10-18MB/s it's not only backup. I can copy from other storage technologies with much higher speed then from MSA2012i. I was told by a HP storage rep that HP does not deal with performance issues. Funny we only have HP equipment (servers. switches, LTO4 drives HP software). Time to switch vendors.

[sean anderson]

Bart,

I have noticed the same thing. Transfer speeds are generally quite poor but in our case the backups are dismal. I thought it was related to Windows 2008 iSCSI initiator software so I installed qlogic 4062C HBA's but the problem is still quite unsatisfactory.

[Kevin Hand]

I have had a support call placed with HP since 11th Feb and have sent email after email requesting assistance and have received very little response from HP at all

[Bart_Rajchel]

This is extremely upsetting. How can HP do this? O I know. They know about the problems but can't figure it so I guess it's easier to ignore it.