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

Moving the MSDP partition from a base disk to an expansion disk for optimum performance

If all or a part of your Media Server Deduplication Pool (MSDP) partition resides on the appliance base unit (base disk), it is recommended that you move the MSDP partition to an expansion disk. This recommendation applies to 52xx appliances and is needed for optimum performance.

The following procedures explain how to move the MSDP partition from a base disk to an expansion disk. The base disk resides on the appliance base unit. The expansion disk resides on a storage shelf that is attached to the appliance. A 5230 or a 5240 appliance can have up to four expansion disks.

Consider the following scenarios:

  • Scenario 1 - The MSDP and AdvancedDisk partitions are configured on the base disk. The expansion units are physically attached to the appliance but have not been added yet.

  • Scenario 2 - The MSDP partition exists on the base disk. The expansion units are configured and partitions exist on them.

Select the scenario that applies to you and follow the appropriate procedure outlined below.

Scenario 1 - To move the MSDP partition from a base disk to an expansion disk

  1. Log on to the NetBackup Appliance Web Console.
  2. Click Manage > Storage and go to Disks section. Check the partitions that are on the Base disk. Suppose that you have MSDP, MSDP Catalog, AdvancedDisk, NetBackup Catalog, and Configuration partitions on the base disk.
  3. Ensure that the base disk is fully allocated by resizing the non-MSDP partitions (like AdvancedDisk). To ensure that the base disk is full, resize the AdvancedDisk partition to a value that is just below the maximum value.
    • In the Partition section, click AdvancedDisk partition to open the partition details page.

    • On the partition details page, click Resize in the Partition Distributions on Disk section. Enter a size in the New Size field that is slightly below the maximum value.

    Click Resize to resize. In this example, the AdvancedDisk partition is being resized to 22.9 GB. The maximum value that it can be resized to is 23 GB.

    Click OK after the resize operation is complete. The page is refreshed automatically and reflects the updated size.

  4. In the Disks section, click the Add link. Click Yes to confirm the addition and OK when it finishes. Repeat this process for the second expansion unit.

    Note that the Unallocated space increases.

  5. Check the space occupied by MSDP partition and how the MSDP partition is distributed across disks..

    In the Partition section, click the MSDP link to open the MSDP partition detail page.

    On MSDP partition detail page, check the Partition Distributions on Disk section.

    In this example, all of the MSDP partition resides on the base disk and occupies 5 GB.

    Note that the expansion disk must have at least 5 GB of unallocated space when you move the MSDP partition to the expansion disk at a later point.

  6. Click Move in the Partition Distributions on Disk section.
  7. The Move Partition window is displayed. Select the target disk from the drop-down list to which you want to move the partition.

    In this example, all of the MSDP partition that resides on the base disk is moved to one expansion disk.

  8. Click Move to move the partition.

    Note:

    The partition size and the workload on the system determine the time it takes to move a partition.

  9. Dialogs in the Move Partition displays the progress details and status of the move operation. Click OK once the operation is complete. The MSDP detail page is automatically refreshed.
  10. On the MSDP detail page, check the Partition Distributions on Disk section. The MSDP partition resides on the expansion disk.

The following procedure explains how to move the MSDP partition from a base disk to an expansion disk when the expansion disk has partitions configured on it.

Scenario 2 - To move the MSDP partition from a base disk to an expansion disk

  1. Log on to the NetBackup Appliance Web Console.
  2. Click Manage > Storage .

    In the Partition area, click MSDP to go to the MSDP detail page.

  3. On the MSDP partition detail page, check the Partition Distributions on Disk section.

    If the Type is Base for any of the disks, all or a part of the MSDP partition resides on the base disk. In this example, the MSDP partition is located on the base disk as well as the expansion disk.

    If the type is Expansion for all the disks, the MSDP partition doesn't exist on the base disk. In this case, you do not need to move the MSDP partition. You can ignore the rest of the procedure.

  4. Click Move in the Partition Distributions on Disk section.
  5. The Move Partition window is displayed. Select the target disk from the drop-down list to which you want to move the partition.

    The target disk must be an expansion disk.

  6. Click Move to move the partition.

    Note:

    The partition size and the workload on the system determine the time it takes to move a partition.

  7. After the operation completes, click OK to close the Move Partition window.