Re: How do I increase the network pipe between servers? Sun Trunking doesn't seem to fit.

Peter Tribble wrote:
In article <2r6dna8v3qzSnlDeRVn-og@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> 
Are you really saturating the network? With those numbers, then 4 hours
should be enough.

That was my mistake. Wrong server. The data warehouse right now holds around 4 TB and (as all data warehouses) will only grow in size.

I know that we're saturating the network because one tape library (StorEdge L8 using LTO2) can push about 660 Mb/sec on its own based on my testing. We have six of these that backup the DW simultaneously. As soon as I fire off another library stream, each stabilize at about 440 Mb/sec. If I start all six backup streams, each tops off at about 140 Mb/sec. As streams finish, the backup speed of the remaining streams increase until all of them equal about 840 Mb/sec. The block/wait factor on the tape drives is practically nothing, so the drives are sitting there waiting for more data to come in. I can't see how that's anything other than network saturation.

> Can you compress the datastream on the client before sending it over
the network to the backup server?

We haven't yet. There's been some concern about what CPU impact that would have. Then again, it's an 8-way Sun Fire 4800 that is idle when the backups occur. So, it's at least worth a try on that server. The tape drives already do a great job of compressing the data (we easily get 2:1) so putting that burden on the CPU might be effective.

Frankly, I forgot about the compression option. *blush* But we do have servers that are live during the backup and get hit pretty hard. Compression on those servers might not be feasible, but their backups (3 streams) also top off at about 840 Mb/sec combined. They could benefit from straight trunking as well. So, we still would like to figure out a way to aggregate a 2 Gb pipe between the servers.
.

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