Dell NetWorker 19.9 Administration Guide

Multiple devices for a single volume configuration

In some environments, a configuration of multiple devices that share a single NetWorker storage volume can result in performance gains. For example, a read or write request can be sent to the storage node that is closest to the requestor. However, for some use cases and environments concurrent read/write operations to a single volume from many storage nodes could result in disk thrashing that impacts performance.

Multiple devices can be created on separate storage nodes or on the same storage node. Each device must be created separately, have a different name, and must correctly specify the path to the storage volume location.

For example, if you create three devices, one on the NetWorker server host named “dzone1” (that uses the server’s local storage node) and two remote devices (rd) on remote storage nodes, the Name attributes for the three devices, each created separately, might be specified by different aliases as follows:

aftd-1a

rd=dzone1-sn2:aftd-1b

rd=dzone1-sn3:aftd-1c

The Device Access Information for each of these aliases would specify a single directory that must be specified as a valid complete path. For example, if a directory is named “aftd-1” on the storage host named “storho1,” the path might be specified as follows:

• If the storage node uses an automounter:

  /net/storho1/dzone1/aftd-1

• If the storage node uses an explicit system mountpoint, you might specify one of the following paths:
  • /mnt/storho1/dzone1/aftd-1
  • /mnt/dzone1/aftd-1
  • storho1:/dzone/aftd-1