How to throttle or limit NetBackup so it will not use all available bandwidth on the network

Article: 100039058
Last Published: 2022-04-11
Ratings: 4 6
Product(s): NetBackup

Description

There are situations where you may need to limit the available bandwidth to NetBackup to ensure all data gets a chance to traverse the network. This can be useful in networks with firewalls that can be overrun by the amount of NetBackup data traffic.
 
Note: LIMIT_BANDWITH is still supported for back level compatibility, but THROTTLE_BANDWITH is the preferred method to constrain network traffic, at the NetBackup application level, during a backup.  Neither technique will restrict overall network usage, only the bandwidth consumed when transporting the backup image from the NetBackup file system client (bpbkar) to the NetBackup Tape Manager on the media server (bptm).  The transfer of backup image meta data and/or control information is not constrained, nor are backup types that do not use bpbkar to read the file system.

To limit the amount of bandwidth used by NetBackup, so backups do not use all the available bandwidth, set the limits for both IP subnets and individual clients using the GUI in Host Properties > Master Server > Properties > Bandwidth. (see the NetBackup System Administrator's guide for more details).

Or use the following entry in the master server's bp.conf file to reduce or limit the available bandwidth.

Example 1:
LIMIT_BANDWIDTH = 10.222.333.1 10.222.333.255 500  
This would limit the entire IP subnet 10.222.333.x to only 500 KB of bandwidth.

Example 2:
LIMIT_BANDWIDTH = 10.222.333.111 10.222.333.111 500
This would limit just the one client with the IP address 10.222.333.111 to only 500 KB of bandwidth.

Example 3:
LIMIT_BANDWIDTH = 10.222.333.111 10.222.333.111 0  
This would disable bandwidth limiting for just this one client with IP address 10.222.333.111

Note: If the bandwidth for a client is set than it is for the range, NetBackup ignores the client setting and uses the value for the range.

If the bandwidth limit for an individual client is equal to or lower than the value for the range, the client uses whichever value is the lowest.

Example 4:
LIMIT_BANDWIDTH = 10.222.333.1 10.222.333.255 500
LIMIT_BANDWIDTH = 10.222.333.111 10.222.333.111 300
In the above example, the client would use the lower value of 300 KB.
Note: This does not work with some types of backups (DB2, DataStore, Informix, Oracle, SQL-Backtrack, SQL-Server, Teradata etc.).

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