Media server 100% cpu usage in one job.

[Magnifico]

Hi, I have media server in VMWare Workstation 9 VM, guest OS is windows 2008 R2. For VM set 2 cpu and 4 GB memory. I use deduplication, indexing, disaster recovery info collection, trueimage info collection, acceleration and made system-state and drive C (about 20 GB used) backup from Netbackup master-server, located in other VM. The backup succeed without errors, but it took 15 h to complete and writing speed was about 500 KB/s. VMWare Workstation host system is Windows 2012 and virtual disk is in storage-spaces in mirror. Its too slow to accept. Now I plan to put media server into dedicated physical machine. I can choose to put it into 2008 server running in plain hardware or running in ESXi. Dont know, maybe ESXi also slows down backup speed. Only storage for deduplic ation I cant put into new server. I can use iSCSI - iSCSI server in present 2012 server and iSCSI client in new media-server. Maybe iSCSI also slows dows backup?

[Nicolai · Accepted solution]

According to the Netbackup dedupe guide page 56 - MSDP require a performance of minimum 130MB/sec read/write.  Don't think ISCSI is up to the job.

I think you will find the document "Support for NetBackup 7.x in virtual environments" interesting. 

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH127089

[Magnifico]

This is ridiculous. 1 GB ethernet netword dont have more than 128 MB/s. Do this mean that NetBcakup is not compatible with iSCSI? I have local drives and dont get more than 500 KB/s and iSCSI that have 128 MB/s is not enough? This is not logical. There is really some wrong. Ok, actually I dont need this stupid NetBackup deduplication. Usually I use Windows 2012 server integrated deduplication, that is more faster and dont have such requirements. The only reason why I use NetBackup deduplication (Puredisk) is that 'acceleration' requires deduplication and this 'acceleration' in new 7.5 version is the only reason why I like NetBackup. I previouslu used Ahsay backup that uses also delta-copy. So, is these some chance....please...to disable NetBackup deduplication and still use 'acceleration' possibility?

[Magnifico]

Even no any hard drive dont get 130 MB/s speed when there is more users accesses. HDD in real life dont give those numbers that are promised from vendors. I have many SSD sata3 drives, but no one gives more than 100MB/s. iSCSI is meant to use in network. Usually there is very hard to put up 10GB network for technical reasons. Normal internal network is 1 GB, but of course iSCSI must work also with 100Mbit networks, that is 12,5 MB/s and even it must works also through internet. Also Im impressed why windows server 2012 deduplication works faster, but gives better deduplication rate than NetBackup deduplication that is many times slower.

[Nicolai]

Run a random I/O pattern performance test and see how good the ISCSI disk run.

The requirement is there because there is no 1:1 relation between the incomming data and the data written at the backend. MSDP uses a high number of random I/O when it run house keeping and restores.

[Magnifico]

Now I have master and media in separate ESXi, dedup store through iSCSI, and seems that it works. The secret was in Index-server. In one place there was requirements 4 GB memory, but in other place there was at all huge requirements. Now I uninstalled index-server and the same 20GB data backup performed without errors in 1 h. This is enough for me. It is not as fast as example Acronis, that uses also builtin deduplication, but its satisfies me. Thanx!