EXTREMELY slow speeds with gigabit NIC

[Christian_Bucht]

I read the forum and saw another user posted the same thing. I went through the work arounds and none apply to me. I am running Windows 2003 on a Dell 2650 with latest SP.

- I have no AV software running (or anything else)
- the drives are all defragged (slow no matter what I copy)
- native windows copy speeds are normal
- servers on same subnet, same gigabit switch

What's worse, is that my actual network speed is <1% all the time and my copy rate is only 3MB in Veritas.

What gives?

[Christian_Bucht]

Oh yea, it's a pure backup-to-disk setup, no tapes even.

[Ken_Putnam]

You say that you applied "all the work arounds" does that include hard setting each NIC/SeitchPort rather than using AutoNegotiate?

In my experience, that is the most likely candidate when speeds are that low.

[Ashutosh_Tamhan]

Hi Christian,

- on what kind of media is your backup to disk folder located?
- Are there more than 1 NICs attached to your media server?
- try running backups with the setting for network as use any available network card / select a specific network card.
- Also set your NIC and Switch to full duplex mode.
- How does the backup to tape function?
- Have you observed restore jobs using NTbackup?
- what about backups across the network?

========================
Additional Information :

For information on the recent VERITAS Backup Exec security vulnerabilities, including links to the downloads for the necessary hotfixes, please refer to the following document:

Patch summary for Security Advisories VX05-001, VX05-002, VX05-003, VX05-005, VX05-006, VX05-007

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/277429.htm

Regards,
Ashutosh

NOTE : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked assumed answered and would be moved to answered questions pool.

[Christian_Bucht]

You say that you applied "all the work arounds" does that include hard setting each NIC/SeitchPort rather than using AutoNegotiate?

In my experience, that is the most likely candidate when speeds are that low.

Well, no because the Broadcoms cannot be forced to 1000/full and I really don't want to force 100/full on an auto-negotiating gigabit switch (Dell PowerConnect 2624).

[Christian_Bucht]

Hi Christian,

- on what kind of media is your backup to disk folder located?
- Are there more than 1 NICs attached to your media server?
- try running backups with the setting for network as use any available network card / select a specific network card.
- Also set your NIC and Switch to full duplex mode.
- How does the backup to tape function?
- Have you observed restore jobs using NTbackup?
- what about backups across the network?

- The media is an external RAID connected via SCSI
- I do have (2) NICs (I tried both)
- have not attempted the "available network card setting" but I will
- I cannot set my card to full/1000 (Broadcom) even though it is a gigabit card
- I do not use tape at all
- I am still waiting for a backup to complete before I try restore
- Not sure what you mean by backups across network, as in a remote storage location as opposed to a local drive?

I'll check into a few of these

[Ken_Putnam]

Can you at least force the appropriate switch ports to 1000/Full? if only one end is autonegotiate, it usually works OK, it's just Autonegotiate on both ends that seems to choke.

[Christian_Bucht]

Well, it is an umanaged switch, but I am going to bypass and plug it into the 4506 directly with a forced 1000/FULL setting. I am rebooting now, I'll post the results in a few. At lleast one end will be a forced 1000/full connection, hopefully that helps.

[Christian_Bucht]

Here's the latest, I have the NIC plugged directly into a forced 1000/FULL port on our Cisco 4506 core switch and the speeds did increase to almost 100MB/sec, but have since dropped back down to around 50 and has leveled off there.

The network perf monitor shows a 1% or less usage on the gigabit port just like before though.

I also tested the external RAID but it copies extremelly fast (.5 gig file copied over in abouut 3-4 secs), so tjhe RAID is definitely not the bottleneck. I don't know why the port usage is 1% still...

[Christian_Bucht]

Well, the speeds continue to spiral downward. Jumped up to around 100MB/min, then dropped to 80, 70, 60, 50, 40 and now 30.

Why would this happen? The backup diectoryr are all PDF documents anyway

[Amruta_Purandar]

Hello,

Please try running backups with the setting for network as use any available network card / select a specific network card and verify the results.


Additional Information :
For information on the recent VERITAS Backup Exec security vulnerabilities, including links to the downloads for the necessary hotfixes, please refer to the following document:
Patch summary for Security Advisories VX05-001, VX05-002, VX05-003, VX05-005, VX05-006, VX05-007

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/277429.htm

NOTE : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked assumed answered and would be moved to answered questions pool.

[Christian_Bucht]

I tried both the "any available" and tried each card and still having the same problem.

I will say, I may have an inkling to the problem. The DAS (direct attached storage) is connected via Ultra-160 SCSI, but I have read in some cases that with an all gigabit infrastructure, it may not be fast enough to process @gigabit speeds. This would explain why I can copy locally (disk to DAS) is working fine, but when I try a normal copy from the network to the DAS, it is MUCH slower than doing the same thing on the same machine to a local (c:) drive.

I plan on getting a USB 2.0 drive (480 MB/s) and see if the problem still exists. That is my only lead as of right now.

[Amruta_Purandar]

Hello,

Please try your tests and revert with the results. We will continue troubleshooting if needed.


Additional Information :
For information on the recent VERITAS Backup Exec security vulnerabilities, including links to the downloads for the necessary hotfixes, please refer to the following document:
Patch summary for Security Advisories VX05-001, VX05-002, VX05-003, VX05-005, VX05-006, VX05-007

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/277429.htm

NOTE : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked assumed answered and would be moved to answered questions pool.