Peoples,
I recently set up our new NDMP backup system (new ADIC Scalar-1000 tape
library, with 2 F760s acting as NDMP hosts with 4 drives attached to
each from the unit).
Initially I was having trouble getting other filers to backup via the
network to the remote drives on the 2 hosts. I was running all my filers
on a private 100Mbs Full-Duplex network (utilising the filers' e0
interfaces or quad cards). Funny thing was, I keep seeing really slow and
spotty xfer rates and tape writes: small bursts of 65Kb/s then a few
seconds of nothing. When I tried backups via dump to local drives, it was
4-6Mb/s, as expected). So, what was causing the painfully slow
performance??
On a whim, knowing I had seen something like this before a long time ago
with Legato's client pak s/w, I reset the NDMP hosts' ether interfaces to
100Mbs HALF-duplex. As soon as that duplex setting kicked in, my network
xfer rates and tape write shot up to the expected 4-6Mb/s rates.
Now, I understand that duplex settings can affect network performance, and
that in backups I'm essentially streaming data in one direction (which
would make half-duplex a sensible option), but as for WHY I needed to set
to half-duplex is a mystery. I would think being Full-duplex would be just
as well.
This duplex issue is, as far as I could tell reading over Netapp and
Veritas docs, not address explicity when talking about 3-way backups.
While I'm glad I seem to have fixed the problem, the fact that it was a
problem puzzles me.
So for anyone out there doing 3-way backups or dumps to remote tape
drives, had you seen this before? Is anyone running NDMP and remote
drives but not using half-duplex network settings?
Just curious.
-Scott Mikusko