Slow dedupe read

[thesanman]

I have noticed recently that my optimised dedupes between MSDP volumes have slowed dramtically since upgrading to v7.1 (from v7.0.1).  My two media servers have 1Gb/s between them via multiple paths and I very rarely see 20% network bandwidth utilisation.  I'm seeing the same sort of problem when transferring the images to tape to produce offsite DR copies.

I've also noticed that when I stop and restart NBU on the Windows media servers (2008 R2), the restart takes 20+ minutes with lots of postgres and spoold processing.

I'll log a call with support but wondering wether anyone has seen something similar?

Thanks,

Malcolm

[bcblake]

The rollup EEB that was released for 7.0.1 that fixed a bunch of dedup stuff (http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH153190) was NOT available in the base 7.1 code (because 7.1 was frozen BEFORE the rollup EEB was out). So upgrading to 7.1 will break all of the things that were fixed in the rollup EEB. Did you have the rollup EEB on your 7.0.1 environment?

According to the Late Breaking News (and from what I've heard for some of my customers that were waiting for 7.1.0.1 before upgrading), the fixes in the rollup EEB are supposed to be in 7.1.0.1.

7.1.0.1 download is at http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH158802, release notes are at: http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC3941

And if anyone from Symantec is reading this, why are the release notes on a COMPLETELY SEPARATE page from the downloads, and why isn't there a LINK TO THEM?!

[thesanman]

Sigh :|  I went though a testing cycle and went to v7.1 to get the VMware enhancements that came with it. 

I'll see if there is an EEB for 7.1; if not I've already downloaded v7.1.0.1 and upgraded my QA Master Server.  I assume I need to upgrade my Master Server to then be able to upgrade my VMware/dedupe media servers?  Guess my support call will reveal all.  Unfortunately my Prod enviroment is significantly bigger than my QA environment so issues like this don't get picked up.

Malcolm

[thesanman]

I applied the v7.1.0.1 Windows upgrade to an existing v7.1 Media Server in my QA environment and now backups are failing with error 213.  bpdown leaves spoold running and bpup takes 60+ minutes to complete and then the MDSP disk unit is unusable.

I've logged a call with Symantec.

[thesanman]

Support are investigating ... there's nothing in any log files; it's simply that the NBU Dedupe Engine doesn't start; the spoold process appears to be running but doing nothing.  Luckily you can backout the patch but that doesn't fix the overall issue.