On 9/6/06, Scott T. Mikusko <guerilla@sw.xo.com> wrote:

I'm running into a recurring issue with backing up my NearStore and a long
F760 filer.

In the procoess of backing some large filesystems (qtrees),  it appears
that NDMP is basically timing out and fails.  I'm running Veritas
NetBackup 6.0  (finally upgrading from 4.5 recently).  I think the issue
has to do with NDMP starting the dump commands on the filer, which then
does a three-way backup to another filer with local tape drives.

The debug from ndmp logs shows for a manual full backup of a filer:

Sep 05 21:05:57 EDT [ndmpd:58]: Log message: DUMP: creating
"/vol/vol0/../snapshot_for_backup.370" snapshot.
Sep 05 21:06:05 EDT [ndmpd:58]: Log message: DUMP: Using Partial Volume
Dump with Exclude Lists
Sep 05 21:07:31 EDT [ndmpd:58]: Log message: DUMP: Date of this level 1
dump: Tue Sep  5 21:05:57 2006.
Sep 05 21:07:31 EDT [ndmpd:58]: Log message: DUMP: Date of last level 0
dump: Fri Aug 18 19:20:57 2006.
Sep 05 21:07:31 EDT [ndmpd:58]: Log message: DUMP: Dumping
/vol/vol0/files3.rt to NDMP connection
Sep 05 21:07:31 EDT [ndmpd:58]: Log message: DUMP: mapping (Pass
I)[regular files]

It never completes the mapping of the files in Pass I. It just sits there.
The filesystems I'm backing up are between 250-650GB with a LOT of small
files (millions) and many subdirs.  Tons of mail and html files.

My guess is that the amount of files and dirs are getting large that NDMP
can't map them fully and is timing out after 8 hours. It shouldn't take
that long to map files for the size of data it's doing; I've seem mapping
times be much less for larger sets of data.

I know that the filesystem topology can cause NDMP backups to be slow,
depending on file sizes, data layout, filer load, network etc, but this is
happening on moderately busy filers or bone idle NearStores.

Anyone run across lengthy DUMP times?

Chewing through NOW and Veritas support site hasn't turned up anything
obvious.

Just curious if others have run into NDMP/dump issues like this.

-Scott