Evren Yurtesen wrote:
>> If your filesystem isn't a good place to store files, there is not much
>> an application can do about it. Perhaps it would help if you mentioned
>> what kind of scale you are attempting with what server hardware. I know
>> there are some people on the list handling what I would consider large
>> backups with backuppc. If yours is substantially smaller perhaps they
>> can help diagnose the problem. Maybe you are short on RAM and swapping
>> memory to disk with large rsync targets.
>
> I know that the bottleneck is the disk. I am using a single ide disk to
> take the backups, only 4 machines and 2 backups running at a time(if I
> am not remembering wrong).
That's still not very informative. Approximately how much data do those
targets hold (number of files and total space used)? Are you using
tar or rsync? If you are running Linux, what does 'hdparm -t -T' say
about your disk speed (the smaller number)? And what filesystem are you
using?
> I see that it is possible to use raid to solve this problem to some
> extent but the real solution is to change backuppc in such way that it
> wont use so much disk operations.
First we should find out if your system is performing badly compared to
others or if you are just expecting too much. As an example, one of my
systems is backing up 20 machines and the summary says:
Pool is 152.54GB comprising 2552606 files and 4369 directories
This is a RAID1 (mirrored, so no faster than a single drive) on IDE
drives and the backups always complete overnight.
>>> I wonder what is the mechanical stress this poses on the hard drive
>>> when it has to work 24/7 moving it's head like crazy.
>> They'll die at some random time averaging around 4-5 years - just like
>> any other hard drive. Disk heads are made to move...
>
> Perhaps, but there is a difference if they are moving 10 times or 100000
> times. Where the difference is that the possibility of failure due to
> mechanical problems increases 10000 times.
No, it doesn't make a lot of difference as long as the drive doesn't
overheat. The head only moves so fast and it doesn't matter if it does
it continuously. However, if your system has sufficient RAM, it will
cache and optimize many of the things that might otherwise need an
additional seek and access.
--
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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