drive config and an upgrade question

[aschwartz]

We have 11D 7170 running in production, and it runs fine, but speeds are pretty slow for most backups.  All via the network. to an IBM 3130 Tape Library with 2 IBM ULT3580-HH3 drives.  I have some servers that run at over 2000MB/Min, but most servers range from 100-300MB.  Its just too slow, and I think it might be a config problem with my drives.  The drivers are from symantec.

I am thinking of upgrading to 12.5 also, would this have any benefit for me with relation to the speed of the backups?

Currrent drive settings:
Block Size 64K
Buffer Size 64K
buffer count 10
High water count 0

I have write single block mode and write scsi pass thru mode both checked.  

This is the same for both of my tape drives.  Are these settings valid or should I up the block size?

[CraigV]

Hi,

I normally set my Buffer Size to 1MB. Upgrading to BE12.5 has brought much better stability, but no visible difference in speeds at all.
Your jobs that are running at 2000MB/Min are probably flat file backups, or large files at that. Speeds would drop when you get to a large number of files which are small in size.
You can check your NIC speeds on your servers and make sure they're hardcoded to the fastest possible speeds that the switch allows (so 100MB FULL, 10000MB FULL etc), and then do the same on your switches. This means no autonegotiating of speeds on either of these ports.
You don't say if your library is direct SCSI-attached, or if this is a SAN.
If it is a SAN, you can consider running Backup Exec's SAN SSO option which makes use of SAN speeds, and you would share your library across which ever SAN servers would be best suited to this sort of backup (eg. Exchange, SQL, File & Print servers etc.)

Laters!

[Ken_Putnam]

if you have some remote servers  that run slow and others that fly, you probably do NOT have any media server configuration problems

As Craig says, look at the number and size of files, and at your network topology to see if you have any possible network bottle necks

[aschwartz]

I have to check my switches and see how they are set, I know the NICs are set too 1GB Full.  the tape drive is fibre attached to the BE server.

Thanks for the info.