Exabyte VXA-320 and 11D

[Michael_McKenne]

How should the Exabyte VXA-320 be configured with 11D? On 9.x and 10.x they recommended it be set to Etrix-1. Since switching from 10D on XP Pro SP2 to 11D on XP Pro x64 AMD64 SP1 and SP2, my backup performance fell off from 720-730 to 680-708 MB/min. Compression reporting does not work. I am testing with no compression. I have done hardware and software compression with similar results. 674 and 700 MB/min respectfully.

My VXA-2 works fine. I get 364 MB/min consistantly. It is with software compression.

[R_H_2]

Changing the emulation string on the drive shouldn't affect the performance at all. All it does is make the drive say that it is a different drive so that the backup app recognizes the drive if it doesn't support it yet. I believe that BE 11.x uses one driver for most Exabyte drives (exabyte2vrts).

What may affect the throughput is the SCSI card driver, block size, buffer count and buffer size.

Make sure you have the latest driver for the SCSI card. That drive is a U160 SCSI device so make sure it is on a U160 or better non-RAID card. Go into the BIOS of the card and on the configuration page, hit F6 and reset it to default. Then go into the Advanced Settings and disable Domain Validation.

Block size, buffer count and buffer size, typically, bigger is better. You should try different block sizes and see what works best.

Oh, and always make sure you are at the latest firmware version for the SCSI controller and the drive.....

[Michael_McKenne]

Below are my specs for my workstation. It makes most servers look like desktops. I did upgrade to the 39320A-R 7006 drivers instead of the Microsoft ones. My other two tape drives are acting fine. HP DAT 40i compress works fine. The VXA-2 does 360-365MB/min. It is only the VXA-3 that is acting up.

HP DAT 40i: 32K, 32K, 32,0 , bottom two checked for SCSI write and read through.

Hardware compression works fine with DAT 40i.

Exabyte VXA-2 and VXA-3: 64K, 64K, 32,0, bottom two checked for SCSI write and read through.

These settings worked great in 10D. I wish I could use even more buffers with 8GB of RAM and four cores.

Software compression was working on 10D in XP Pro SP2.

Hard drives: 10K U320 SCSI on a SCSI RAID controller
Firewire 800 drives are on a 64/66 controller.

Benchmarks are quite impressive.

I upgraded all 18 SCSI drives to latest firmware. Took about 4 hours to do. All SQL and BE processes are excluded in Avast Pro. I am currently defragging with O&O Defrag Pro 8.6 in complete/name order. Clusters are 512 bytes on all data drives.

VXA-2 backs up one LaCie drive at 360+ MB/min. The VXA-3 was backing up the other LaCie drive at 730 MB/min till I upgraded to 11D. XP Pro x64 SP2 AMD64 is now installed.

Resource wise: I have four 2.4 GHz cores and 8GB of NUMA ram on a Tyan Thunder K8WE board. Still upgrading my web site for benchmarks.

http://69.47.81.240/Computers/280 has some of them. BE 11D barely touches the CPUs and RAM.

All tape drives are 40 MHz LVD, SCSI disconenct enabled. Latest BIOS on all controllers.

My new God Box:
Tyan Thunder K8WE motherboard 1.05 BIOS
Dual AMD Opteron 280 processors (dual core 2.4GHz)
8 GB Corsair PC3200 DDR333 Ecc Reg in 128 bit interleaved mode

LSI Logic MegaRAID 320-2X SCSI RAID Controller with 512 MB and battery
4 x Supermicro SCA SCSI U320 enclosures

18 x Seagate ST336607LC SCA U320 36GB 10.6K

RAID 1: 2 x ST336607LC SCA U320 36GB 10.6K
XP Pro x64 AMD64 SP1 OS
XP Pro SP2 and 2K Pro SP4

RAID 10: 8 x ST336607LC SCA U320 36GB 10.6K
apps and games

Hot Spare: 2 x ST336607LC (main chassis)

RAID 10: 6 x ST336607LC SCA U320 36GB 10.6K
Paging file
temp files
temporary internet files
I386 folders for both OS

Adaptec 39320A-R U160 SCSI Channel A
HP DAT 40i LVD Tape Backup Unit
Exabyte VXA-320 160GB/320GB LVD Tape Backup Unit

Adaptec 39320A-R U160 SCSI Channel B
HP DAT 40i LVD Tape Backup Unit
Exabyte VXA-2 80/160GB LVD Tape Backup Unit
Plextor UltraPlex SCSI-UW CD-ROM

ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB PCIe x16 video card

Firewire Direct 64-bit 66 MHz USB2 / Firewire 800 adapter
Sony DRX-830U USB2 DVD buner

Samsung Syncmaster 997MB Monitor
On-board sound
Harman / Kardon AVR 325 (connected to Audio and Video adapter, TV, Cable Box, VCR/DVD player)

Okidata B4100 Laser Printer
Epson RX620 All in One: Scanner and 6 color inkjet

Main Chassis
Cooler Master Stacker 810
PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750W power supply

Second Chassis
Cooler Master Stacker 810
Custom PC Power and Cooling 510W power supply

2 x 20A@120V double pole Independent circuit
Tripp Lite 2400W Line Conditioner for computer
Tripp Lite 1800W Line Conditioner for computer
2 x Tripp Lite 600W Line Conditioner for printers, AV hardware

Wireless Router
DLink DGL-4300

2 x LaCie Firewire 800 250GB hard drive
Seagate USB 2 160GB hard drive

Rounded cables on all devices from Sidewindercomputers.com

[R_H_2]

Wow. Not sure where the bottleneck would be there...

Maybe try it alone on the bus? Make sure Removable Storage is stopped and disabled... Just kind of grasping really...That system should shred...

[Michael_McKenne]

It is disabled. I reported problems with the VXA-3 during beta testing. It worked for a while at 730 MB/min. I am almost done defragging the LaCie drive with new software. Tonight, I will do another backup before finishing.

My benchmarks:
Dhrystone ALU : 47493 MIPS
Whetstone iSSE3 : 20768 MFLOPS
Integer x16 iSSE2 : 72015 it/s
Float x8 iSSE2 : 111153 it/s

RAM Bandwidth Int Buff'd iSSE2 : 9165 MB/s
RAM Bandwidth Float Buff'd iSSE2 : 9180 MB/s

8 Drive RAID 10 array:
Buffered Read : 396 MB/s
Sequential Read : 242 MB/s
Random Read : 130 MB/s
Buffered Write : 298 MB/s
Sequential Write : 132 MB/s
Random Write : 120 MB/s
Average Access Time : 4 ms (estimated)

6 Drive RAID 10 array:
Buffered Read : 401 MB/s
Sequential Read : 263 MB/s
Random Read : 138 MB/s
Buffered Write : 299 MB/s
Sequential Write : 131 MB/s
Random Write : 108 MB/s
Average Access Time : 3 ms (estimated)

I have not done benchmarks on my LaCie drives. I will after I finish defragging. I e-mailed Exabyte about new drivers. Waiting to hear from them. I wished I could be 64K, 64K, 256,0. I have enough RAM to do it.

[ArturoAyaSan]

Hey Michael, this is an old post but I've been looking and can't seem to find much about VXA drives speed.

Did you get your VXA-3 to go at 700+ MB/min again? I upgraded to a VXA-3 and I have not been able to get more than 380MB/min

Thank you.

[echiasson]

Ok I had the same problem with being slow,What I did is built a cheap array with 4 TB  and now do a  D2D2T, the array has no raid on it so I get a D2D at 1.3GB\Min then I run D2T  at 780 or better but that is still slow , going to change out the SCSI card it is a ultra160 raid card, Think a no raid card will give me a faster speed