Thanks for the replies, everyone. I have not tried the backup yet, so I
don't know what to expect. I just didn't want to try it on a whim without
researching it a bit more. The servers are not just file servers. They run
Oracle and proprietary data modeling software that do a lot of data
crunching throughout the day. Just needed to make sure that rsyncing stuff
during the process was not going to hinder performance too bad.
Jake Wilson
On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 11:30 PM, Jeffrey J. Kosowsky <[email protected]
> wrote:
> Timothy J Massey wrote at about 22:46:39 -0400 on Tuesday, April 12, 2011:
> > Timothy J Massey <[email protected]> wrote on 04/12/2011 10:13:11 PM:
> >
> > > But give it a try first: unless that production server is a 600MHz
> > > machine with 512MB RAM and a single SATA spindle, you will most
> > > likely be fine (and if you *are* running like that, well, you have
> > > other problems! :) ). (Actually, I have one client with servers
> > > that are dual-processor 600MHz with 1GB RAM that I back up during
> > > the day and the users at this location almost *never* notice.)
> >
> > To clarify and expand this: they are IBM Netfinity 5600 servers. 2 x
> > 600MHz Intel P3 processors, 1GB RAM, and 6 x 18GB SCSI-160 10,000 RPM
> > drives in a RAID 5 array with an IBM ServeRAID hardware RAID controller.
> > The systems are old and (processor) slow, but the disk performance is
> > really pretty good, even today: it'll easily saturate GigE.
> >
>
> > My point for this: CPU power matters little on the client side. RAM
> > matters, but only once you have enough: depending on the number of
> files,
> > the amount of RAM you truly need is literally in the hundreds of
> > megabytes. What *really* matters is I/O and network throughput--and on
> > any halfway-decent server with multiple high-RPM hard drives, you will
> be
> > limited by network bandwidth more than anything else.
>
> As I have mentioned before, I have succeeded with just 64MB of RAM of
> which only about 20MB is free. I do have swap, but it really doesn't
> use much swap. Now I am just backing up "normal" Linux and Windows
> worstations and laptops where each backup has maybe a couple of
> hundred thousand files and 20-50GB... but it does work... I use the
> rsync/rsyncd transfer method and rsync >~ 3.0 is pretty memory efficient as
> long as you have a "normal" filesystem without "humongous" numbers of
> hard links or "insanely" large numbers of files per directory.
> On small systems, I still find the primary limitations are bandwidth
> (I backup many machines over 802.11g wireless) and cpu power for
> compression (when I use a 500MHz Arm processor).
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forrester Wave Report - Recovery time is now measured in hours and minutes
not days. Key insights are discussed in the 2010 Forrester Wave Report as
part of an in-depth evaluation of disaster recovery service providers.
Forrester found the best-in-class provider in terms of services and vision.
Read this report now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/ibm-webcastpromo
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