Best Filesystem for Backup Disk Staging

[Eric Singer]

We're getting ready to try disk staging on Netbackup Enterprise and I was wondering if there was any recommendations for the filesystem to use for the best performance. The backup server is running Redhat ES 4

[Ivan Ferreira]

You can use the default ext3 file system and disable access times. Change the mount options for the file system and set (noatimes), and maybe, change the journaling option to "writeback". For details see:

http://www.novell.com/documentation/suse91/suselinux-adminguide/html/apas02.html

This is because the installation won't let you chosse another file system type. You must add the support later, that may add complexity to your installation.

[Eric Singer]

Hi Ivan,

The OS has been installed on the Master/Media server for quite a while on , so I'm not really wanting to change the filesystem the OS is installed on. What I'm getting ready to do is present a huge LUN to that server and layout a filesystem on it so that Netbackup can perform the disk staging on. The theory is that once the backup images are staged, we can stream those images to our LTO3 drives. I guess a better question would have been which filesystem allows the fastest write throughput?

[Adrian Hicks]

Hi,
We are using a staging disk dor Oracle RMAN dumps to DataProtector, only about 850gig ext3 FS. File size avarages about 6gig each. Write speed is good (>31meg/sec) but read to tape is horrible (10Meg/sec). Smaller filesystems read around 20Meg/sec.
I have played with "elvtune" but not much performance improvment there.
Interesting