Veritas NetBackup™ Appliance Capacity Planning and Performance Tuning Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): Appliances (4.0)
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 Primary Server role
        2.  
          About the Media Server role
      4.  
        About NetBackup 53xx High Availability solution
      5. Selecting new appliances
        1.  
          Selecting a media server
        2.  
          Selecting a primary 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 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 Primary 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 Fibre 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
  6.  
    Index

About configuring a shared storage pool

NetBackup Appliances are pre-tuned for optimum performance by Veritas. This section provides the best practices for architecting an environment with NetBackup 52xx series to obtain the most optimal performance. These best practices can help you avoid over-commitment during concurrent active stream counts, this is important to protect against I/O performance degrade in any storage pool. Lets consider the following examples to understand theses best practices being implemented in a common environment:

About the environment.

  • There is a NetBackup domain consisting of two media servers and one shared storage pool. The storage pool uses independent storage units to direct backup operations from their associated clients, as well as to perform other operations such as duplications and image replication

  • By default, the configuration of a storage pool resource does not limit the number of I/O streams (jobs) from all sources. This is due to the fact that storage pools of different types, technologies, and architecture can vary in performance.

Issues faced in the environment

  • It is possible to over saturate a pool with I/O as a result of reading or writing too many streams from various operations including:

    • Backup jobs

    • Duplication jobs

    • Replication jobs

  • This issue can occur regardless of the stream limitation settings for the individual storage unit configurations.

  • Such over saturation issues tend to further worsen in case of SLP and AIR driven policies, due to the multiplicity of operations they can initiate to a single storage pool.

  • When this over-commitment occurs, the performance of the target storage pool can degrade quickly, causing delays in operations, and potentially missed Service Level Agreements (SLA).

Recommendation 1:

The value for the Maximum I/O streams and Maximum concurrent jobs should be taken into consideration when calculating the total number of potential concurrent streams written to or read from a given storage pool from all operations such as backups, duplications, replications, and so on. For more information on the method to calculate the basic stream count for backups, See Calculating the basic stream count for backups .

In case of over saturation two key changes are recommended as best practices:

  • Adjustment of the Maximum I/O Streams count configuration of the storage pool.

    To configure the Maximum I/O streams value, select and edit the appropriate disk pool on the primary server from the available list of disk pool devices in the NetBackup Administration Console.

    • On the NetBackup Administration Console follow the path Media and Device Management > Devices > Disk Pools.

    • At the bottom of the Change Disk Pool window, adjust the Maximum I/O Streams value by clicking on the check box, and specifying the value desired.

  • Adjustment of the storage unit Maximum concurrent jobs value for each of the storage units that each media server uses to push data to the shared target storage pool.

    To configure the storage unit's maximum concurrent jobs parameter, select and edit the appropriate storage unit on the primary server from the available list of storage units in the NetBackup Administration Console.

    • On the NetBackup Administration Console follow the path NetBackup Management > Storage > Storage Units.

    • Adjust the Maximum concurrent jobs to a desired value based on the number of write operations for both backup and duplication jobs. The default value is set to '1'.

      Note:

      The Maximum I/O streams value for the storage pool will take precedence if it is less than the combined storage units' 'maximum concurrent jobs' ability to send jobs to the shared storage pool.

Supposing that the two storage units sharing one disk pool have a combined max job count of 110 (with max concurrent jobs for each storage unit set to 55).

  • If the Maximum I/O streams for the pool = 90, then the combined maximum job count allowed to be active will be 90.

  • If 60 jobs are submitted to one storage unit and only 20 on the other, 5 jobs will still queue on the first storage unit even though the target storage pool could potentially handle them all

Recommendation 2:

An additional consideration can be made with respect to the design of the media servers and their associated storage units that point to the shared storage pool as follows:

  • Currently the media servers are configured each with an independent storage unit, both of which push data to the same storage pool. This architectural setup can introduce a complexity which may multiply the number of write operations directed toward a single shared storage pool, especially if the storage pool's maximum I/O stream limit value has been defined

  • A simplification of the storage unit use can help assist in avoiding the complexity of the environment and potential over-commitment of the storage pool resource, especially when the source clients have many data selections or backup directives.

  • If the two media servers are reconfigured to share the same storage unit that points to the shared storage pool. This ensures the maximum number of concurrent write streams during backup and write-side of duplication operations are limited based by the storage unit's Maximum concurrent jobs value.