Thomas318 Posted March 13, 2008 Report Share Posted March 13, 2008 I am running the latest version of Retrospect and and backing up some DAS Xserve raids directly to an LTO 224 fibre drive. All connected to fibre on the same server. Speed tests on the XSR itself show 70000k to 80000k write speeds. My server is a 2x2 GHX Dual-Core Xeon 2GB of ram. 10.4.11. I started a backup to tape and was getting speeds of 80 MB/min. I updated the firmware and hard coded all fw interfaces to 2gb. I am now averaging 500 MB/min. My speeds should be 1200 to 1300 MB/min. Any suggestion on how to speed this up? I was getting the same 80 MB/min speed when backing up to a file on a lacie 2tb FW800 drive. This server is the main afp/smb share point btw. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank You, Thomas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted March 13, 2008 Report Share Posted March 13, 2008 What brand FC card are you using? If you only get 80 MB/Minute writing to a FW800 hard disk, it sounds like Retrospect is having trouble reading data from the source disk? What happens if you backup a different source to the tape drive? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas318 Posted March 15, 2008 Author Report Share Posted March 15, 2008 We are using apple FC cards. Other medium like clients backup fast. The problem seems to be related to the Fibre attached Xserve Raid. The problem seemed to show itself when we switched to an intel Xserve. Thank you, Thomas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted March 16, 2008 Report Share Posted March 16, 2008 Apple doesn't make FC cards. What does the Apple System Profiler say for the maker of the card? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas318 Posted March 17, 2008 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2008 LSI logic is the card. Sorry apple sold us the card. The same backup is running now @ 83mb/min down from 500mb/min. Thank You, Thomas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted March 17, 2008 Report Share Posted March 17, 2008 See http://kb.dantz.com/article.asp?article=9483&p=2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted March 17, 2008 Report Share Posted March 17, 2008 A recent trip to Apple test labs showed that the issue did not happen under Leopard but we did find one LSI card would totally lock up under leopard. I am trying to find out which model it was. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas318 Posted March 17, 2008 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2008 This article is for PCI-X cards. Is it safe to assume issues with pci-e intel machines? -Thomas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted March 17, 2008 Report Share Posted March 17, 2008 I believe the issue may exist in all configurations. I will try to post more specific info about our test results when I track them down. Overall Leopard seemed to work best during testing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas318 Posted March 17, 2008 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2008 We have a few other clients in this same configuration Intel/XSR DAS and LTO drives and are not experiencing any slow reads. Just would like to know what I can do to speed things up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted March 17, 2008 Report Share Posted March 17, 2008 This article is for PCI-X cards. Is it safe to assume issues with pci-e intel machines? Is it safe to assume that this is a PCI-e LSI card rather than a PCI-X card in a PCI-e adapter, or a PCI-e card in a PCI-X slot? You don't say, and have not provided any info about the card other than the manufacturer. Do you have some more complete information, such as from Apple System Profiler? Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas318 Posted April 1, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 1, 2008 Ok some more information here. The 2 fibre cards i have installed are lsi7204ep and lsi7404ep. These are PCI-E cards on an intel box. We have upgraded to leopard to prevent this issue and all writes to tape result in a kernel panic. We have 2 other clients with the same known slowness. One is a G5 server with PCIX FC card. Not sure what else to do. The client has asked us to look into other Vendors if this issue doesn't get resolved soon. We are now completely unable to backup to tape. Thank You, Thomas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted April 1, 2008 Report Share Posted April 1, 2008 Not sure what else to do. The client has asked us to look into other Vendors if this issue doesn't get resolved soon. You're talking about $10,000+ of hardware here; have you opened a support incident with EMC about this? Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted April 1, 2008 Report Share Posted April 1, 2008 Kernel panics are almost always hardware based, and not software. Retrospect itself can not cause a kernel panic. We went to the Apple labs recently and found that most Fibre channel performance issues are fixed in Leopard. We successfully tested the LSI 929X/LSI 7202XP Testing did show a problem hang with the LSI 7204EP. I would suggest trying the LSI 929X/LSI 7202XP cards Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antares Posted September 18, 2008 Report Share Posted September 18, 2008 We are having similar problems with an Xserve G5 (intel) with the LSI logic SCSI card. Where does one find what model SCSI card? I am looking in System Profiler but am not seeing any of the models you described. Was anyone able to get this resolved? We are trying to push 700GB onto a LTO3 tape drive and only getting 80-100MB per minute. Not good.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted September 18, 2008 Report Share Posted September 18, 2008 We are having similar problems with an Xserve G5 (intel) with the LSI logic SCSI card. First, there is no such thing as an Intel Xserve G5. The Xserve G5 is a PowerPC processor, and does not have the Intel architecture of the current Xserves. That said, The LSI Logic SCSI Card that Apple sells as its build-to-order dual-channel SCSI card is a piece of junk. If you look on the card, you will see that it's an LSI Logic 22320. Been there, done that, with our Xserve G5. Never worked right with that card. Replaced it with an ATTO UL4D and all the problems went away. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antares Posted September 19, 2008 Report Share Posted September 19, 2008 Not an Apple fan, but thanks. It may or may not be a G5, but it does have an Intel processor. Either way, the backup software available is extremely limited compared to PC software. Yes, it was the default SCSI card sold by Apple. One of the other factors I am noticing is that the DES encryption takes nearly twice as long as the Simplecrypt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted September 19, 2008 Report Share Posted September 19, 2008 Ok, then the right card for the Intel Xserve would be the ATTO UL5D low profile (PCIe). The LSI Logic 22320 is a piece of junk. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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