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

About zoning the SAN for NetBackup appliances

Before you can configure and use the NetBackup Fibre Transport (FT) mechanism, the SAN must be configured and operational.

The NetBackup appliance supports the following SAN configurations:

  • Node port (N_Port) switched configuration.

  • Fibre Channel arbitrated loop (FC-AL) configuration.

    FC-AL hubs are not supported.

For SAN switched configurations, proper zoning prevents Fibre Transport traffic from using the bandwidth that may be required for other SAN activity. Proper zoning also limits the devices that the host bus adapter (HBA) ports discover; the ports should detect the other ports in their zone only. Without zoning, each HBA port detects all HBA ports from all hosts on the SAN. The potentially large number of devices may exceed the number that the operating system supports.

Instructions for how to configure and manage a SAN are beyond the scope of the NetBackup documentation. However, the following recommendations may help you optimize your SAN traffic.

Table: Best practices for zoning the SAN on NetBackup appliances describes the best practices for zoning the SAN on NetBackup appliances.

Table: Best practices for zoning the SAN on NetBackup appliances

Guideline

Description

One initiator per zone, multiple targets acceptable.

Veritas recommends that you create zones with only a single initiator per zone. Multiple targets in a single zone are acceptable, only if all of the targets are similar.

Note:

For data duplication between two NetBackup 52xx or 53xx appliances, you must create zones with only one single initiator and one single target per zone.

Tape target resources should be in separate zones from disk target resources, regardless of initiator. However, both sets of resources may share the same initiator.

Be aware of performance degradation when a port is configured for multiple zones.

If you use a single port as an initiator or a target for multiple zones, this port can become a bottleneck for the overall performance of the system. You must analyze the aggregate required throughput of any part of the system and optimize the traffic flow as necessary.

For fault tolerance, spread connectivity across HBA cards and not ports.

To ensure the availability of system connections, if you incorporate a multi-path approach to common resources, pair ports on separate cards for like zoning. This configuration helps you avoid the loss of all paths to a resource in the event of a card failure.

Zone the SAN based on WWN to facilitate zone migrations, if devices change ports.

It is recommended that you perform SAN zoning based on WWN. If switch port configurations or cabling architectures need to change, the zoning does not have to be recreated.

Table: Appliance zones describes the zones you should use for your SAN traffic.

Diagrams that show the zones are available at the following link.

Note:

You must use physical port ID or World Wide Port Name (WWPN) when you specify the HBA ports on NetBackup appliances.

Table: Appliance zones

Zone

Description

Fibre Transport backup zone

A Fibre Transport backup zone should include only the Fibre Transport traffic between the SAN clients and the appliance.

The backup zone should include the following HBA ports:

  • The target port of the HBA - connect this port to a Fibre Channel switch port. If you have two HBAs, you can use both of them. The use of two ports provides redundancy.

    Note:

    The supplied QLogic FC HBA card in a NetBackup appliance uses a special NetBackup target mode driver for the target port. The target mode driver replaces the default, initiator mode Fibre Channel driver. The target mode driver applies only to the supplied QLogic HBA card.

    You must define the appliance target port by physical port ID or World Wide Port Name (WWPN). The target mode driver WWPNs are not unique because they are derived from the Fibre Channel HBA WWPN.

  • Ports on the SAN client HBAs that connect to the appliance - connect each SAN client HBA port to ports on the same Fibre Channel switch.

    You can define SAN client ports by either port ID or WWPN. However, if you use one method for all devices, zone definition and management is easier.

    The ports on the SAN clients use the standard initiator mode driver.

    To promote multistream throughput, each SAN client should detect all target mode devices of the appliance HBA port or ports in the zone. Each appliance HBA target port exposes two target mode devices.

  • Define the zones on the switch so that the client ports and the HBA target ports are in the same zone.

Some appliance models include one or more Fibre Channel HBA cards that can be used for Fibre Transport. If your appliance does not include any of these cards, an authorized sales representative must install and configure an approved FC HBA card.

Fibre Transport storage zone

A Fibre Transport storage zone carries the Fibre Transport traffic from a storage source to a storage destination.

The traffic can be either for duplication or for backups. For duplication, the deduplicated data is sent to the destination for storage. For backups, the data first travels to the NetBackup 52xx or 53xx appliance and is then sent to the NetBackup deduplication appliance for storage.

The storage zone should include the following HBA ports:

  • The initiator port of the HBA in the NetBackup appliance - connect this port to a Fibre Channel switch port. It does not have to be the same switch as the backup zone.

    The NetBackup 52xx or 53xx appliance is the source for the duplication.

    The initiator ports use the standard initiator mode driver.

  • Define the zones on the switch so that the NetBackup appliance initiator port and the NetBackup deduplication appliance target port are in the same zone.

External tape storage zone

If you use a tape library as storage, create a separate zone for that traffic. The tape storage zone does not use NetBackup Fibre Transport; it uses the standard initiator mode driver.