Ed,
Just remember a GigE card in a host requires at least 1 CPU (more like 2-3 CPUs) just to drive GigE speeds. This is definitely the case with older Sun hardware like E4500. GigE will buy you faster backups, but also higher load while the backups are taking place.
I understand AIT-3 connected via FC-AL can reach 24MB/sec on a F880. Now that's smoking.
/Brian/
On Thu, 2002-12-19 at 14:39, Ed Sanborn wrote:
Hi folks,
I too am using QuickRestore and backing up my F720 via a SpectraLogic Ait-2 Bullfrog tape library direct-attached via HVD SCSI to the filer. I am see'ing about 16GB's transfer rate over SCSI. However, all for all of my other clients (PC's, Sun's, etc.) I am see'ing only about 1.7 GB transfer rate. All of these other clients are being backed up over a 100Mb switched network. 2 of my clients take about 6+ hours to backup as they have about 13GB of data on each of them. I was contemplating purchasing local tape drives for these 2 clients however more tape libraries equals more tape changing headaches. Have folks found that migrating clients like these to GigE REALLY does take care of the I/O issue? It certainly makes sense to me but I want to be sure before purchasing GiGE NIC cards.
Thanks,
Ed-----Original Message----- From: Quentin Fennessy [mailto:quentin.fennessy@amd.com] Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 1:58 PM To: Ed Sanborn Cc: Geoff Hardin; Barry Lustig; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: Jukeboxes for filers
Ed Sanborn writes:
That's 16MB/sec over GigE?
Yes.
-----Original Message----- From: Quentin Fennessy [mailto:quentin.fennessy@amd.com] Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 1:02 PM To: Geoff Hardin Cc: Barry Lustig; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: Jukeboxes for filers
Geoff Hardin writes:
Barry, We use an ATL P3000 library with 16 DLT7000 drives. We use Workstation Solutions QuickRestore (now Reliaty Backup) to back everything up. We have 15 filers being backed up and the library is starting to get overwhelmed. We are considering the new SDLT drives, since they are backwards read compatible with DLT. It's been a great solution for over two years now; only change I would have made would have been to wait for the P3000 GbE library.
We've installed a P14000 with 24 SDLT220 Gigethernet NDMP tape drives, also using Quickrestore.
First: Quickrestore is an excellent product, with excellent vendor support. The Reliaty/Quickrestore staff are very impressive.
But: The Quantum P14000 with ethernet/ndmp sdlt tape drives has been a major hassle. We may have finally reached stability, but not after too much work with the vendor. Quantum support is not in the same class as Quickrestore or Netapp. And I question our decision to go with ethernet/ndmp tape drives. Our integration might have gone easier if we'd used FC drives.
We use this library to support an environment with >30TB of data, >15 filers, over a Cisco dedicated gigethernet backup network. Our best backup throughput for one filer is 16MB/sec--a good number! (F880)
Barry Lustig wrote:
What jukeboxes are people running on their filers, DLT, AIT-2, etc? Are you happy with what you've chosen? The last group of folks I worked with had a Spectralogic juke with AIT-2 and Netvault. It took way too long to get the problems with firmware on the juke and the drives working with the software.
-- Quentin Fennessy Quentin.Fennessy@amd.com Office: 512.602.3873 Cell: 512.694.7489