Monitoring tools for throughput

[lawrenzo]

Hello,

Are there any tools that can be utilized to check that the throughput through scsi-mux and fibre channel are running at there optimum on a backup server?

Thanks

[lawrenzo]

I should have noted that we are running HP-UX11

[lawrenzo]

Also I am getting bottlenecks @ the network card which is dramatically slowing down backups, what tests can I run to diagnose the issue.

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

A couple options for you.

1) Glance. You can use it 60 days without paying for it, it lets you drill down into processes.

2) sar. Most of the real performance nuts use sar to measure system performance.

I'm not home now, but if you run a search if itrc forums for my name and performance you'll see a great attachment that includes a series of sar performance measurement scripts.

SEP

[Zeev Schultz]

The most primitive is to run tar for example on
100mb of data and see how much time it takes.Can use "timex tar cf /remote_file_name /local_file_name".
As to scsi-mux,well it's connected to a fibre channel which is 1gbit/s (or 2gbit/s) but the
scsi is Fast Wide Differential most probably (or LVD) and wont' give you more than 40Mb/s-80Mb/s.And to remember that fastest backup drive is Ultrium LTO that gives you...~15 Mb/s?
So when it's related to tape drive performances I wouldnt count on scsi bus potential.

Zeev

[lawrenzo]

Thanks,

will utilize the script this evening.

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Chris,

Very first thing to do is see what speed/duplex the NIC is running as well as the switch - run:

lanadmin -x X

where X=PPA# - if it's lan 0 then X=0
If you see 100 HD (half duplex) AND the switch is at FD (full deplex) that alone can kill you in high volume traffic - read backups. Lock the card in with the proper file in /etc/rc.config.d/xxxxxconf - the name of the file will be determined by the actual card type. Post the card type & we'll tell you the proper filename.

Rgds,
Jeff

[lawrenzo]

Hello Jeff,

card is set @ 1gb (fd) and so is the switch - the problem has rectified some how where the backups this evening are running 5 times faster than last night and may be due to too much network traffic on the NIC.

Thanks.