Fastest Backup and Restore Speeds

Question

Good Day All,

I would just like to know what is the fastest backup/restore speeds you can achieve with NetWorker backing up SQL server DB's.

In my enviroment we currently doing +-80-90MB/s over the LAN and 150-200MB/s LAN free (using storage node)

However during a DB restore we get speeds like 25-30MB/s LAN or LAN free, can anyone explain why the reading speeds are so slow ?

How/What can I do to improve my restore speeds ?

FYI - We use LTO4 media and our production DB sizes are ranging from 70GB - 2.4TB

I would like to know what speeds other users are getting in their enviroment and what I can do to improve backup/restore speeds ?

any input will be appreciated

Thanks!

coganb · Answer

Hi,

I can't answer on what speeds people are getting, but to the point of how to improve recover speeds, the NetWorker Performance Optimization Guide has some pointers that you might find useful.

http://powerlink.emc.com/km/live1/en_US/Offering_Technical/Technical_Documentation/300-009-448.pdf?

-Bobby

brerrabbit1 · Answer

Hi Umraan

There are a lot of factors that go into how fast you can backup and restore. On the backup side, the biggest impacts I think are:

1) Disk fragmentation (lower fragmentation will lead to faster backups)

2) Disk subsystem (large RAID sets with read-cache will perform better than local, large ATA/SATA drives)

3) File quantity (Fewer, larger files will back up faster than lots of little files)

4) Backup target (Disk-based targets, either VTL or AFT will go much faster than physical tape)

There are lots of other things too (internal motherboard bus architecture), but in my experience, those 4 are a good place to start. Especially, #4, even if you have LTO3 or 4, if you cannot send a sustained rate of data to the physical tape unit, it will slow down performance while the tape "shoeshines".

If you are sending the backups to a remote storage node, then you will have to consider your network effects too. The transmit rate for a 1GB ethernet connection tops out at about 80MB/s (roughly 300GB/hour). I have a few systems that can manage that consistently, maybe 1/3 of my environment.

The factors that affect restore performance are much the same, especially the host's disk subsystem and whether the restore is coming off physical tape or disk. Also, any additional resources that are consumed by the host while it's being restored can slow down the restore rate too.

The 7.6 performance guide is a great place to start, and it doesn't really have anything in there that is version specific.

Hope that helps (some)

--brerrabbit

NetWorker

Fastest Backup and Restore Speeds

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