MSL6030 Slow Backup Speed

[Arman Obosyan]

Hello,
MSL6030 Slow Backup Speed
We Have MSL6030 connected to SAN and we use Vertias NetBackup 6 backup Software
We try backup over SAN and speed is average 20-30Mb/s
and backup over a 1Gbt LAN and speed is average 25-32Mb/s
As I know Ultrium 960 max speed is 80Mb/s
Where du I check the bottleneck? Its normal backup speeds?
I try deferent backup types, files, exchange, sql db, and always speed it’s not more than 30 Mb/s
Library and Drives has latest firmware and NSR E1200-160 full updated

[Patrick Terlisten · Accepted solution]

Hello,

maybe the server, that you backup, can`t deliver the data fast enough. Did you backup more than one server over LAN at the same time, will say do you use streaming? If you backup over SAN, you backup the servers successively, correct?

Kind regards,
Patrick

[Arman Obosyan]

yep, I try backup at same time, but drive writes maximum at 20-30MB/s
and server that has no
load

[rich pattison]

These types of problem are usually down to the speed of the disks, rather than the tape drives. There are utilities available to check the speed of the disks, and the speed of the tape unit. They are part of the L&TT software, if you have Windows servers, or they can be downloaded as standalone programs under UNIX. Here are a couple of URL's:

One for the L&TT tool

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?pnameOID=406731&locale=en_US&taskId=135&prodSeriesId=406729&prodTypeId=12169

And one for general performance troubleshooting, with links to the performance tools

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=lpg50460&locale=en_US

If your tape drives check out OK (which they probably will) - you need to find out why the data is 'slow' - starting with the disk/array performance.

Hope this helps

Rich

[Arman Obosyan]

L&TT system speed results

DAS Disk:
Scanning
D:\speedtest - Files Read: 4
2273 MB read (4 files) in 35 seconds with rate 64 MB/sec
TOTAL: 2273 MB read (4 files) in 35 seconds with rate 64 MB/sec

SAN Disk:
Scanning
F:\speedtest - Files Read: 4
2273 MB read (4 files) in 25 seconds with rate 90 MB/sec
TOTAL: 2273 MB read (4 files) in 25 seconds with rate 90 MB/sec

[rich pattison]

Did you run the HPtapeperf tool (also available under L&TT) ?? - this should test how fast the ULTRIUM can go.

Some other information - I had an ULTRIUM 2 which "flattened out" at 60MB/sec, and the problem was traced to the driver for the HBA.
Check you have up to date drivers for the HBA's, and the drives (I think they should be Veritas for Netbackup). Also - with a drive feed speed of 90MB/sec, the ULTRIUM 3 will probably underperform anyway - but it should be better than what you are getting.
Network backup may vary depending on contention/loading.

Are you connected to a 2Gb SAN ??
Do the Drives have "dedicated" HBA's - or are they shared with the disk storage ??
Is Netbackup optimised ?

Rich

[Arman Obosyan]

yep, I run HPtapeperf, ultrium writes at 90Mb/s, I check on optical sw and thare up/down speed ~90Mb/s so Drives writes at max speed.

Yes its connected to 2Gb SAN

Can you discribe it: "Do the Drives have "dedicated" HBA's - or are they shared with the disk storage ???

"Is Netbackup optimised" what or how and whare?

[rich pattison]

The E1200 allows you to "mask-out" HBA's, and HP recommend you assign one HBA to each of the tape drives in the library using masking/mapping on the E1200 router. If you don't have enough HBA's to do this - then you should at least "dedicate" an HBA to your tape drives using this mapping - otherwise disk and tape traffic will use the same HBA, causing possible congestion. I don't know what type of disk arrays you have, but they will probably allow you to do the same thing - that is, ensure only traffic to the disks use specific HBA's.

You can achieve a similar result using zoning on you switches (dedicated "tape zone").

Are you using either zoning or mapping to seperate disk and tape traffic ?

Rich

BTW - I don't know much about NetBackup 6 - but with previous versions you used to be able to set the block size and buffer count (i.e. memory allocation) for each tape unit. These could have a significant effect on drive performance (rule of thumb is "bigger is better")

[Arman Obosyan]

Now masking/mapping on the E1200 its done. But I not sure if its done correct, where I can read about mapping/dedicate HBA for backup?
Disk Array its EVA40002C2D
after enabling zoning on sw backup device works wery unstable, maybe I miss some hosts? but Im adding HSV, E1200, BackupServer and Backup Source Server, all in one Zone.

...in NetBackup I cant find advanced futures like block size and buffer count...
I post same message on Symantec support site but no answer :(

Maximum speed that i can see on my MSL6030 (Ultrium 960 Tapes) and NetBackup 6.0MP4 its 40Mb/s :(

[rich pattison]

There is some documentation, including white papers which deal with these types of issues, on the HP website. Here are some links you might find useful:

This is the HP backup design guide, which includes information on zoning -

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00775232/c00775232.pdf

This document provides advice on optimizing NetBackup in an HP environment (search for 'buffer allocation'):

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00107964/c00107964.pdf

And this is the "main" page for HP EBS (Enterprise Backup Solutions) -

http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/ebs/index.html

Correct load-balancing and mapping can be complex when configuring the E1200 - assuming you have just one E1200, you should be presenting the MSL library and drives to one HBA in each server. Like I said, this can be accomplished by creating a dedicated zone, and/or using the mapping function on the E1200. There are some docs on the E1200 here:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DocumentIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&taskId=&contentType=SupportManual&docIndexId=1255&prodSeriesId=316024&prodTypeId=329290

.......But unfortunately they aren't too clear in explaining how to setup mapping.

If I can find a better guide. I'll post it here.

Regards

Rich