Veritas NetBackup™ Appliance Capacity Planning and Performance Tuning Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): Appliances (3.3.0.1)
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.  
        About NetBackup 53xx High Availability solution
      5. 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 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 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

Validating network bandwidth

It is recommended to test your network bandwidth before deployment just to ensure that it does not contain any bandwidth bottlenecks. Making sure that the network is performing well prevents any unexpected surprises when performance testing replications, backups and restores with appliances. A variety of tools can be used to test network bandwidth.

You can use the Nbperfchk command in all appliances that can measure network and disk read/write speeds as the I/O passes through NetBackup and NetBackup Appliances. It can be used at pre-deployment stages to measure network speeds before initiating AIR replication between master server domains, or measuring disk write speeds on Appliance storage to check for any storage I/O performance problems before performing a backup and restore demonstration to the customer. Be sure to configure the appliance's network configuration and storage configuration before running any network or storage performance tests. Nbperfchk can be run from the Appliance's Shell Menu: Support->Nbperfchk

To use nbperfchk for network bandwidth tests between two appliances, run nbperfchk as a reader on one appliance and a writer on another, example:

Reader
symmaster-a.Support> Nbperfchk run 
Please enter options:
nbperfchk -i tcp::5000 -o null

Writer
Symmaster-b.Support> Nbperfchk run
Please enter options:
nbperfchk -i zero: -o tcp:symmaster-a:5000

In the above example, the symmaster-b appliance is sending data to symmaster-a's 5000 TCP/IP port. The commands provide the following outputs:

Output for the reader

symmaster-a.Support > Nbperfchk run 
Please enter options:
nbperfchk -i tcp::5000 -o null:
Statistics log are recorded in nbperfchk_results.log
current rcv buff: 262144, set to 524288
current snd buff: 262144, set to 524288
final receive size 262144, send size 262144
     226 MB @  113.1 MB/sec, 226 MB @  113.1 MB/sec, at 1369103091
     566 MB @  113.1 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, at 1369103094
     905 MB @  113.1 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.1 MB/sec, at 1369103097
    1245 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, at 1369103100
    1585 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, at 1369103103
    1925 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, at 1369103106
    2265 MB @  113.1 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.1 MB/sec, at 1369103109
    2604 MB @  113.1 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, at 1369103112
    2944 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, at 1369103115
    3284 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, at 1369103118
    3624 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, at 1369103121
    3964 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.1 MB/sec, at 1369103124
    4303 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, at 1369103127
    4643 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, at 1369103130
    4983 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, at 1369103133
    5322 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.1 MB/sec, at 1369103136
 

Output for the writer

symmaster-b.Support > Nbperfchk run
Please enter options:
nbperfchk -i zero: -o tcp:symmaster-a:5000       
Statistics log are recorded in nbperfchk_results.log
current rcv buff: 262144, set to 524288
current snd buff: 262144, set to 524288
final receive size 1048576, send size 262144
     340 MB @  113.3 MB/sec, 340 MB @  113.3 MB/sec, at 1369103067
     680 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, at 1369103070
    1020 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 340 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, at 1369103073
    1360 MB @  113.3 MB/sec, 340 MB @  113.4 MB/sec, at 1369103076
    1701 MB @  113.4 MB/sec, 341 MB @  113.7 MB/sec, at 1369103079
    2040 MB @  113.3 MB/sec, 339 MB @  112.9 MB/sec, at 1369103082
    2381 MB @  113.3 MB/sec, 340 MB @  113.3 MB/sec, at 1369103085
    2721 MB @  113.3 MB/sec, 340 MB @  113.3 MB/sec, at 1369103088
    3060 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 339 MB @  112.9 MB/sec, at 1369103091
    3400 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 340 MB @  113.3 MB/sec, at 1369103094
    3740 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 340 MB @  113.3 MB/sec, at 1369103097
    4080 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, at 1369103100
    4420 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, at 1369103103
    4759 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 339 MB @  113.1 MB/sec, at 1369103106
    5099 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, 340 MB @  113.2 MB/sec, at 1369103109
output: Connection reset by peer

In the above example, the average network throughput is 113.2 MB/sec. If this network throughput is insufficient for the amount of data being protected, the network infrastructure needs to be examined and additional bandwidth needs to be added.

More Information

About network considerations