Veritas NetBackup™ Appliance Capacity Planning and Performance Tuning Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): Appliances (3.0)
Platform: NetBackup Appliance OS
  1. About this Guide
    1.  
      About this guide
    2.  
      About the intended audience
    3.  
      About the NetBackup appliance documentation
  2. Section I. Capacity planning
    1. Analyzing your backup requirements
      1. Analyzing your backup requirements
        1.  
          What do you want to backup?
        2.  
          How much data do you want to back up?
        3.  
          When should the backup take place?
        4.  
          What is the retention period?
        5. Record your backup requirements
          1.  
            Template to record computer system information
          2.  
            Template to record database information
          3.  
            Template to record application server information
    2. Designing your backup system
      1.  
        Addressing use cases of backup systems for enterprises
      2.  
        Addressing use cases of backup systems for remote or branch offices
      3. About NetBackup appliances
        1.  
          About the Master Server role
        2.  
          About the Media Server role
      4. Selecting new appliances
        1.  
          Selecting a media server
        2.  
          Selecting a master server
  3. Section II. Best Practices
    1. About the best practices section
      1.  
        About best practices
      2.  
        References to maintenance sites
    2. About implementing deduplication solutions
      1.  
        About implementing deduplication solutions
      2.  
        General recommendations
      3.  
        Oracle
      4.  
        Microsoft SQL
      5.  
        DB2
      6.  
        Sybase
      7.  
        Lotus Notes
    3. Network consideration
      1.  
        About network considerations
      2.  
        About Fibre Channel connectivity
      3. About SAN zone configurations
        1.  
          About zoning the SAN for NetBackup appliances
      4.  
        Validating network bandwidth
    4. Storage configuration
      1.  
        About storage configuration
      2. About configuring a shared storage pool
        1.  
          Calculating the basic stream count for backups
      3. About moving a storage partition for better performance
        1. Moving a partition
          1.  
            Move <partition> dialog
        2.  
          Moving a partition using the NetBackup Appliance Shell Menu
        3.  
          Moving the MSDP partition from a base disk to an expansion disk for optimum performance
    5. Generic best practices
      1.  
        Generic best practices
      2.  
        About Notification settings
      3.  
        About IPMI configuration
      4.  
        Disaster recovery best practices
      5.  
        Job performance
      6.  
        Architecture
      7.  
        NetBackup Catalog Backup
      8.  
        Patching with the SLP (storage lifecycle policies)
      9.  
        VMware backups using appliances
      10.  
        Improving NetBackup Appliance restore performance
  4. Section III. Performance tuning
    1. Role-based Performance Monitoring
      1.  
        Role-based configuration as a factor affecting performance
      2.  
        What affects the performance of a Master Server?
      3.  
        What affects the performance of a media server (MSDP)?
    2. Optimize network settings and improve performance
      1.  
        Optimize network settings and improve performance
      2.  
        SAN Fiber Channel setup
      3.  
        Network bonding
      4.  
        VMware VADP
      5.  
        Jumbo frame implementation for increased MTU
    3. Storage configurations
      1.  
        Storage configurations
      2.  
        Deduplication disk I/O and RAID level settings
      3. RAID Controller operations
        1.  
          RAID Controller commands
      4.  
        Deduplication load balancing
      5.  
        Storage Lifecycle Policies
      6.  
        Auto Image Replication (AIR)
      7.  
        AdvancedDisk settings
      8.  
        Tape Out operations
    4. NetBackup Appliance tuning procedures and performance monitoring
      1. About diagnosing performance issues
        1.  
          About CPU monitoring and tuning
        2.  
          About memory monitoring and tuning
        3.  
          About network monitoring and tuning
        4.  
          About I/O monitoring and tuning
        5.  
          General guidelines to spot a resource bottleneck
      2. About performance tuning practices
        1.  
          About I/O performance tuning
        2.  
          About Oracle backup and restore performance tuning
        3.  
          Setting NET_BUFFER_SZ to 0 on the NetBackup client for better WAN Optimization performance
      3. About tuning procedures and performance monitoring
        1. NetBackup Client performance
          1.  
            Using nbperfchk to validate disk performance on NetBackup Appliances
        2.  
          Other Performance Monitoring commands
  5. Section IV. Quick reference to Capacity planning and Performance tuning
    1. Capacity Planning checklist
      1.  
        Checklist for Capacity planning
      2.  
        Capacity measuring worksheet
    2. Best practices checklist
      1.  
        Best practices checklist
    3. How to monitor the performance of your appliance
      1.  
        About monitoring the performance of your appliance
      2.  
        Performance Monitoring matrix

Oracle

To achieve higher deduplication rates while performing Oracle database backups, implement one of the following options:

Table: Best practices to perform Oracle database backups

Stream based backups (NetBackup for Oracle Agent with RMAN)

  • Implement FILESPERSET = 1 in RMAN backup script for ASM-based backups

  • FILESPERSET can be increased to higher number depending on type of database and change rate. Be cautious and gradually increase to validate the performance improvement and deduplication ratios.

    Note:

    FILESPERSET = 4 or FILESPERSET = 5 seems to work well in most scenarios with a little reduction in deduplication ratios.

  • Turn off Oracle compression while performing backups (this is OFF by default).

  • Increase number of channels for faster backups and restores.

Note:

Setting FILESPERSET > 1 increases performance but reduces dedupe ratios hence Veritas recommends that you begin by experimenting with the different levels of FILESPERSET and identify the most suitable option.

Proxy based backups (NetBackup for Oracle Agent without snapshots)

  • Leverage proxy method to enable data movement by NetBackup.

  • Turn off Oracle compression while performing backups (this is OFF by default).

  • Increase number of channels for faster backups and restore.

Proxy based backups with Snapshot Client (NetBackup for Oracle Agent)

  • Leverage proxy method to enable data movement by NetBackup.

  • Enables faster recovery with Instant Recovery using latest snapshots.

Oracle Dump backups (No NetBackup for Oracle Agent)

Leverage IMAGE MODE while dumping to local disk for higher deduplication rates while performing dump backups with NetBackup standard client

More Information

About implementing deduplication solutions