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14126
May 29th, 2012 03:00
MD3000i as backup target
We recently upgraded to a EQL PS6100, leaving our old MD3000i (with MD1000 extension) unused.
I've set it up to be a Veeam backup target, set the drive type as multimedia and connected it up via MS iSCSI initiator within a VM. The Dell multipathing software is enabled and seems to be working, looking at the NIC interface usage
The drive is formatted as NTFS GPT 23TB drive, RAID5, 15x SAS disks
When the backup starts, it churns along at around 38MB/s, then gradually over time, drops to 6MB/s. I have the iSCSI switch graphed using Cacti, and it shows the same gradual drop over time.
I initially started with Jumbo Frames, but performance was only 14MB/s max, going to normal frames improved performance greatly.
Can anyone recommend steps I can take to improve sustained write performance?
I'm trying to back up 15TB of data, and after 93hrs, only 2.5TB had been backed up
DELL-Kenny K
685 Posts
1
May 29th, 2012 10:00
PaulNSW,
I understand you are looking for ways to up your write performance. A couple things I would advised to do would be one to ensure everything is up to date. For example the firmware on the array and also the NICs on the host. I have seen in the past if those are out of date causing some slowness as well. Below is a link to a pdf that has all of the best practices for array tuning that will explain the best way to configure the MD3000i for best performance.
support.dell.com/.../MD3XarraytuningA01.pdf
Please let me know if there is anything else I can assist you with.
PaulNSW
16 Posts
0
June 21st, 2012 01:00
Thanks for that. Everything is up to date, firmware on all NICs and MD3000i. I'm not sure what's going on, I can get write speeds of around 80MB/s using Windows 2008 copy, but using it as a Veeam target, I'm only hitting 7MB/s. I have Cacti monitoring the iSCSI switch, I get a solid 3MB/s on the port using Veeam, and it jumps to 20MB/s on the port using normal copying.
Looking at the tuning guide, it says RAID5 is good for large sequential writes, which is what Veeam is doing.