cancel
Turn on suggestions
Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type.
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Veritas.com
Support

Is it possible to load balance netbackup traffic through multiple HBA's

ole_gunner
Level 3

‎03-21-2006 02:11 PM

I am looking to backup a Multi partition Database which is spread across a number of media servers. The 20TB database is going to be spread across 4 AIX Media Server (IBM BCU's) which only have 2 x 2Gigabit HBA's for Tape Library connections.
Each Media server is going to be approx 5TB in size and we need to back this up in a 6 hr window.
Using 1 HBA will never acheive this but 2 could possibly do the trick.
Does anyone know if you can direct Netbackup traffic down 2 HBA's at the same time, please?
Thanks
0 Kudos
8 REPLIES 8

zippy
Level 6

‎03-22-2006 06:01 AM

OLE,

EMC PowerPath.

http://www.emc.com/products/software/powerpath.jsp

JD
0 Kudos

Stumpr2
Level 6

‎03-22-2006 06:46 AM

A NetBackup Windows client suffers from poor throughput, resulting in significantly longer backup times than equivalent clients. The poorly performing client is sending its data over an Intel Advanced Network Services Virtual Adapter created using the Intel Proset 8.4 driver.
http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/273845.htm

Details:
VERITAS support has determined that network interface card (NIC) teams, specifically load balanced NIC teams, can in some cases restrict throughput under load. Note that the depressed throughput condition may not be evident during normal file transfer operations.

If a NetBackup Windows client is experiencing poor backup performance and Intel Proset is being used for NIC teaming, it is suggested that the team be broken and the backup attempted again over a single network interface.

In cases that meet the criteria described in the Symptom section above, throughput will often be greatly increased and backup time significantly reduced.
0 Kudos

zippy
Level 6

‎03-22-2006 06:48 AM

Bob,

He asked about HBA's not NIC cards.

JD
0 Kudos

AKopel
Level 6

‎03-22-2006 07:08 AM

I was able to achieve a poor mans version of this by zoning my tape drives on the SAN so half of them appeared to 1 HBA and the other half to the other HBA.
It seemed to work although because Netbackup randomizes what drives it uses, I don't know of a way to force load balancing... in otherwords, if you have 6 drives as your maximum for your storage unit, theres nothing to tell Netbackup to use 3 drives on 1 HBA and 3 on the other, you may end up with all six on 1 HBA which defeats the purpose. The only way I imagine you could force this is to zone your drives so only 'x' number of drives appear to the HBA which kind of defeats the purpose of SSO....
0 Kudos

Stumpr2
Level 6

‎03-22-2006 08:13 AM

Oh...duh! ...nevermind :)
0 Kudos

Vince_Corona
Level 4

‎03-23-2006 06:41 AM

However, Bob brings up a good point - To NIC team or not to NIC team - that is the question. We team at my shop and I have not seen any impact on performance. (HP DL380Servers using onboard Gigabit nics). How many people out there are using teaming with no problem?
0 Kudos

MayurS
Level 6

‎03-23-2006 06:54 AM

When i teamup My NICs they cannot pick the NDMP clients at all

Request Time Out...Woofs...Seems to be firmwire issue in the NICs
0 Kudos

zippy
Level 6

‎03-23-2006 07:09 AM

ALL,

As for Mayur stament.........

When i teamup My NICs they cannot pick the NDMP clients at all

Request Time Out...Woofs...Seems to be firmwire issue in the NICs

I would think he needs to open another THREAD, cause I would think that he has configuration problems of his own.


JD
0 Kudos