On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 10:53:52AM -0400, Timothy J Massey wrote: > John Rouillard <rouilj-backu...@renesys.com> wrote on 09/17/2012 02:05:28 > PM: > > > On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 12:54:35PM -0400, Timothy J Massey wrote: > > My backup drive is a 1U linux box exporting its disks as an isci > > system running raid 5 iirc over gig-E. LSI hardware raid with bbu > > write cache I think. > > So this "backup drive" server is simply the iSCSI target that provides the > storage used by BackupPC running on a different system? Or is the "backup > drive" the client of the backup process?
The backup drive server exports it's raid 5 array as an iscsi device that is used as the root of the backup-pc storage area (with cpool/pc...). So I claim option 1 is correct. > > 4 drive JBOD/raid0, raid 1/0, raid 5, raid 6? I'll assume raid 5. > > All of that was clearly outlined at the top of the e-mail: Oops sorry. > 4 x 2TB Seagate SATA drives in RAID-5 (using md, which I''m > not sure I stated originally). > > > > My load average is 2, and you can see those two processes: two > > > instances of BackupPC_dump. *Each* of them are using 100% of > > > the CPU given to them, but they're both using the *same* CPU > > > (core), which is why I have 50% idle! > > > > Can you check that with the f J(IIRC) option. I don't see the P column > > in there that would tell us what cpu they are running on. > Thank you very much for your suggestion. It seems I might have been > wrong: my system has not two cores, but two *hyperthreaded* cores--four > total! So, the 50% response makes sense for two process: they're both > consuming 100% of a single hyperthread. Assuming that the Linux scheduler > is properly handling the HT cores (and I imagine it is... :) ), then I > truly am using 100% of each of the two separate cores. > > That's fairly bad news for me, then. These are embedded-style > motherboards, and upgrading to a >3GHz Xeon processor is not an option... > :( > > I'm going to turn off compression and see what type of results I > get. Also adjusting the compression level makes a big difference. For my files, compression level 3 seemed to be a sweet spot (I think it's also the default). Got most of the compression but with minimal resources. > You have a 24-core (what family and MHz?) They are Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5675 @ 3.07GHz so when I grabbed the MHz rate, it must have stepped down to 1600 it's capable of running faster. Which means compression is faster. > system with 48GB of RAM. This machine is attached via iSCSI using an > unknown number of unknown interfaces to an unknown storage unit (it can't > be that 1U machine you mentioned earlier, could it? I was wrong on how many U the system was. I stated 1U, it's at least 2 and maybe 3. It uses laptop drives mounted vertically in the chassis. Network is a single 1 Gig-E interface (not using 10 Gig in that box IIRC). Sorry for being so sketchy, it's been a long time since I have been to the data center and I didn't do the initial install/setup on either the iscsi storage server or the backuppc/fileserver system. > > Backuppc is configured with cached checksums. > > OK. What about compression? Compress at level 3. > > Local clients (we also back up systems over the WAN) are connected > > over Gig-E. > > How many GigE? Just 1, we don't usually saturate the interface so we haven't set it up with bonded or multi-homed configurations. -- -- rouilj John Rouillard System Administrator Renesys Corporation 603-244-9084 (cell) 603-643-9300 x 111 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/