On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 8:42 AM, David Lloyd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Does anyone know of a script / program I can run on a windows 2003 server to > check i/o speed to an external scsi tape drive?
To build upon other replies: I would try a combination of real-world and "synthetic" tests. In other words, try the tape drive manufacturer utilities, try something third-party benchmarks, and try actually backing up different types of files. This will help give you a picture of where performance bottlenecks are. A manufacturer utility will often bypass a lot of subsystems: Certainly the hard disks, and some even use commands using the drive's built-in intelligence, meaning even the SCSI bus doesn't get much activity. So if that's slow, there's something wrong with the tape drive, or *maybe* the SCSI host adapter. A synthetic benchmark will run data through the SCSI bus to the tape, but won't stress RAM, hard disks, disk controllers, or anything else a real backup would. So if the manufacturer utility is fast but the benchmark is slow, that's a sign of an under-performing SCSI bus. Check cables, host adapter, and host adapter driver. A "real world" test (running a dummy backup) stresses everything. That's a poor way to test a tape drive, but it will show you what you can realistically expect to get from the system as a whole. And by comparing with the above, maybe you can discover you have a slow disk subsystem, filesystem, or the like. When you do your dummy backups, also compare different filesets. You'll see different performance from backing up one big file vs backing up a large number of small files. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
