Both the GX270 and the Asus motherboard mentioned thus far, share the same Intel chipset, but not the same OS. Frankly, Netware is much more efficient than Windows XP IMO. Interrupt handling, file server performance, networking performance, all better on Netware (but this isn't a debate on why Netware was so great ;) )
But there are some subtle hardware differences too (taken from respective manufacturer’s links)
The Asus MB only has a 10/100 NIC, Dell a 10/100/1000Mb NIC (weird though as the Intel reference board is 1Gb?)
Asus has 3 PCI slots and one AGP, Dell varies by form factor; one, up to three on the full desktop model
Now, that said, looking at the Intel 865G chipset specs, the biggest achilles heel that I can see is the southbridge, the ICH5. Man that thing is taxed! The southbridge must handle all of the following devices, process them and allocate enough bandwidth to them.
- USB ports
- PCI slots
- IDE
- Sound
- LAN
Bandwidth from southbridge to northbridge is a paltry 266MB/sec. Running a Gb nic at 80% capacity, two IDE hard drives (OS and data drive), and an UW SCSI card WILL saturate the south to northbridge link.
Now back on topic... 96GB/hr is 1.6GB/min is 27MB/sec (rounded off) All assuming MAX theoretical speed.
No IDE hard drive can do 27MB/s of sustained throughput throughout a backup job. RAID a few drives together, and it’s possible. A 100Mb NIC will only get some 12MB/s MAX in a fairy world, realistically 8MB/s (same goes for Gb links, 80MB/s is about the real world max).
BTW, did you know that LTO-2 needs a MINIMUM of 30MB/s to maintain sustained writing to tape? It can write faster with compression and files that are compress’able, up to 4x faster. But I normally only ever see some 1.0-1.2 ratios in my BE environments. Thus an average of 36MB/sec for me… Cant spool 36MB/s to the drive, fine, the tape will rewind, buffers will fill, the tape will fast forward, and continue writing where it left off. It’s called tape shoe-shining. That’s why so many people that go to LTO-3 and LTO-4 find their backup times actually increased, or don’t change at all, and they get mad and blame the software, because it cant be their new 10k tape drive…
Ultimately what I’m saying, hardware wise and OS wise, it a large leap to assume you’ll get the throughput needed out of your computer to meet even the minimum throughput levels for LTO-2. You have too many variables already against you. The chipset, apparently the NIC, and the OS.
Backup systems are a great way to find bottlenecks in your servers, your network, and your disk subsystems. It’s easy to buy the latest and greatest servers, 10K SAS drives, only then to cripple it with incorrect RAID array’s, and a cheap Gb switch with shared buffers for all 24 ports…
