Windows 2000 and 2003 clients TSM backups poor performance 2

[almond247]

Hello Everyone,


We have about 5 or 6 Windows clients whose backups performance is very poor. The incrementals backups start
at midnight and run throughout the whole day and sometimes run for a couple days.

we are using GigE as opposed to what we used to before (100mb ethernet full) and the dsm.opt files for these clients were based on those settings. Is there any documentation that recommends different parameter settings for GigE? What Parameters should be adjusted?


Here is an example of one of the clients dsm.opt file, They all basically look the same and the parameters
settings matches TSM windows clients recommendations.


Lang Ameng
Domain ALL-LOCAL
TCPSERVERADDRESS xxxx.xxx.xxxxx.xx.xx
Passwordaccess generate
TCPCLIENTADDRESS xx.xx.xxx.xx
NODENAME xxxx
SUBDIR YES
REPLACE PROMPT
TCPB 32
TCPW 63
SCHEDMODE PROMPTED
TXNBYTELIMIT 25600
ERRORLOGNAME
SCHEDLOGNAME
ERRORLOGRETENTION 14
SCHEDLOGRETENTION 7
TCPNODELAY YES
RESOURCEUTILIZATION 3
LARGECOMMBUFFERS YES
CHANGINGRETRIES 2
COMPRESSION
BACKUPREG YES
MANAGEDSERVICES WEBCLIENT SCHEDULE



AIX 5.3
TSM server 5.3.4
Windows 2000 and 2003 servers
TSM client 5.3.4


Thanks for any Help,Suggestions in advance.

 

[mbourne2006]

Hi Almond247

Have you tried an FTP test using your troublesome Windows systems as clients? What sort of througput do you get?

Was the backup performance so poor prior to the move to GigE?

For your "acceptable" clients, what LAN rates do you achieve during backups? And what do you get for the slow ones?



Kind Regards,
Matthew Bourne
"Find a job you love and never do a day's work in your life.

 

[ProbablyDown]

Check the NIC settings on the clients, make sure they aren't set to auto negotiate.

I had a similar issue - ended up setting them to 100Full...

 

[mbourne2006]

Folks

If we're using GigE, then we want to try to take advantage of that bandwidth, don't we? How does throttling back the cards to 100Mb/s help? I agree - I've seen some pretty odd behaviour linked to port and NIC settings, but I don't think I've ever come across a hard & fast rule that always works. It depends on the switch manufacturer, the NIC manufacturer, and the revision of the code on both.

Kind Regards,
Matthew Bourne
"Find a job you love and never do a day's work in your life.

 

[ProbablyDown]

Oh ya... All I'm saying is don't leave it set to auto neg.

 

[almond247]

Hi, thanks Melbourne2006 and Probablydown

I read your posts, Melbourne has a point with us using GigE. The NIC settings on the clients were double checked they are ok. From what I can remember the clients
have always had poor performance but not quite this poor and I wasn't here when thebackups first started. We do have other Windows 2000 & 2003 that work fine
and there dsm.opt settings are the same. I think it's safe to assume that there is no dsm.opt file parameters that can be tweaked to help the backups perform better if were using GigE. These servers are not located in our San/Server Data Center and I have been told that the
clients have to increase their bandwidth on there end.

Thanks again I appreciate the suggestions and advice!

Almond247