Ultrium LTO-2 / Dell Powervault 110T Slow Data Rate Using Veritas 9.1

I have the same problem with my PV132T.  It starts out at 800 to 900 MB per minute, but ends up at a 200 MB per Minute.  I thought I had it licked when I earlier posted I was getting 450MB per minute.  Seems things should go faster.  My first thought was to turn off Anti-Virus software.  Interesting though that your having this problem with the Fiber Channel, as mine is connected via SCSI.  I'm wondering now if were looking at a Veritas issue.  It seems to be the only common deminator, everything else have is different.  Please post if you discover anything.

Pat Chartrand

If possible, can you try using one of the onboard LVD SCSI controllers of the PE4600?  Essentially, you will be trying the backup performance across a separate controller.  (use the Ultra160 controller if possible).  (if the hard drives are connected to the same controller, do not do this test).

The driver for the onboard controller should be loaded, but you may first want to check the OS device manager.

Also, remove the 39160 controller from the system when trying the onboard controller.

 

Thanks for your reply....Unfortunately, I cannot perform this troubleshooting task as our hard drives are connected via onboard scsi...I did however run Dell's diagnostics testing software (low level version) and the hardware came up clean....I did however notice that we receive a number of events logged as follows.....

 

Adamm Mover Error: Unload Rewind Retry!
Error = ERROR_NOT_READY
Drive = "DELL 1"
    {530EA69A-8B71-4FC7-85FE-DAA36A5A06BC}
Media = ""
    {00000006-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
Read Mode: SingleBlock(0), ScsiPass(0)
Write Mode: SingleBlock(1), ScsiPass(1)

 

Having spoken with Veritas...this is in regards to the LTO-2 drive...not software. Is there a possibility that the low level dianostics software is not identifying a small issue? Thanks for your help......

Having worked with Veritas in support of this issue, they felt that the tape drive itself was the issue.....Previous to that, Dell had verified that the tape drive was functioning within normal specifications. I have since rebuilt the server o/s without updates and service packs and have only installed veritas.....things seem to be stable. A note that should be mentioned....Symantec indicates that Symantec AV should be disabled or removed from the system that Veritas is installed on....granted....but I have also found that having other Symantec applications, like Symantec Ghost, also pose an issue......this was an application still resident on the backups server.....As mentioned, having rebuilt with no additional applications, the backup server and Veritas are stable......Moral of the story, a backup server should only be meant for backups only......you may have a power house of a server to handle much more functions (like in our scenario), but it doesn't matter when it boils down to the programming and utilization of resources from the applications.....Issue minimal and stabilized. Thanks again for your help......

I thought I would throw in my 2 cents. I have our PV-132T running on our Dell PE 1750 with Windows 2003 with all the latest patches as well as firmware and driver updates for the PV. We also are running IIS 6.0, WhatsUp Gold, Symantec AV Corp. Ed. Server and our SonicWall Firewall Viewpoint log server. Our PV is also running on the onboard SCSI card.

Everynight we backup about 175 gigs of data in about 4.5 - 5 hours, with an avarage job rate of 550 MB/min.  I find this to be rate to be sufficient due to the fact that about 40% of the backup (400,000 files) are small files which will hinder the job rate and usually get 200-400 MB/min But get about 1500-2300 MB/min when we backup our larger 500mb - 6gb files.

For me this is a far imporvement over our DDS-3 7 tape changer which would take 23 hours to complete on the same job. But from what most of you are posting, that the LTO-2 data rates you are getting is not up to what is advertised?

My question for those who are getting slow data rates, what are you backing up? Files/Sizes. 

Our backup server has been working with a stable data rate of 2650 MB/MIn (locally) and a data rate of 1500 MB/Min (remotely)....strictly data files ranging from 30 MB to 2.0 Gig...average times seem to be 1 hour (locally) and 2 hours (remotely)...approx 180 Gig each and neither job slows down when backing up small files...This is still roughly twice as fast as what the LTO 1 could deliver. This is what we were expecting and trying to achieve from the beginning.....In our scenario, the cause was 3rd party installed applications...the effect was slow data rate backups...Thanks for all those who posted.....!!

Third party  installed applications?  Can you list them, that may help me with the same problem, I have many small files and backup are slow putting them to the LTO2 drives.  But the backup is fast when putting larger files such as Exchanage Information store to the LTO2 drives.  Also are you using the default settings on the Drive Configuration (buffers 64, etc.)?

Pat Chartrand

The 3rd party applications installed were Symantec A/V, Symantec Ghost, Symantec Quaratine Console, Symantec Packager, Symantec Client Security. Default settings are being used on the drive...I basically had to change my course of direction with this server and primarly make its job role as a backup server only and nothing else.....I also have the 2003 o/s running bare (or flat)...there are no patches or updates installed....Larger files will always stream faster than smaller files, in most scenarios anyways, small files tend to take a bit more time. But so far, in our scenario small files don't seem to affect the data rates...which normally should.....If you have the opportunity and resources, try building a server with a 'flat' o/s and install veritas 9.1 and run a backup job....I have noticed that uninstalling what was installed didn't make a difference to backup exec.....I had to have a clean install....I am going to assume that registry changes affected backup exec somehow.....Let me know how you made out!!