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
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