jsamek Posted March 17, 2003 Report Share Posted March 17, 2003 I was told by a Dantz engineer in part of a pre-sales information session that Retrospect clients will backup directly to the selected backup device. Specifically, I asked about having OS X Server backup client backing up directly to a FTP location with out having to use the Backup Server station as a go-between for all the data. This was carefully discussed, as I have some of my backup clients 20 miles away from the Backup Server on a partial T1 connection and need them to backup up to localized FTP storage servers. I was told that this is the operating behavior of Backup Server clients. When I am backing up clients to a FTP server with a 100Base fiber connection, all is happy with about 45 MBs per minute performance. When I try to backup the remote clients to remote FTP servers that are on the same remote LAN across my partial T1 WAN I am not getting the expected 45 MBs per minute from the client to FTP server. I am getting 3.5MBs per minute! It appears that the data is traveling from the remote client to the backup server and back to the remote FTP server. That doesn't work at all as advertised and is completely unrealistic for my time constraints: Network speed and storage figures: 1 Megabit per second (Mbps) = 1/8 Megabytes per second (MBps) A 100 Mbps (standard) Ethernet connection is approximately 12.5 MBps A 1000 Mbps (gigabit) Ethernet connection is approximately 125 MBps 100 GB copied at 1000 Mbps (gigabit) would take about 14 minutes. At 100 Mbps (standard 100Base-T) it would take about 2.3 hours. At 10Mbps (slower 10Base-T) is would take 23 hours. At a T1 speed (1.5Mbps) it would take 6.3 days. This assumes no other network activity or overhead in transfer, such as compression, etc, so actual speed will be less. Kinda hard to do a nightly backup of 100GB with a T1 connection bottleneck. I am hoping I may not have things setup correctly, so any advise would be greatly appreciated. Currently, I am using an Internet Backup Set configured on the Backup Server v5.0.238 as a location for four OS X 10.2.4 servers running the v5.0.540 client software. What are production performance stats like for other people using Backup Server in conjunction to a FTP storage server? Have I been misinformed by the sales team and engineer in regards to the Internet backup abilities? Please help! Joe Samek, Lead District Computer Tech Elk River Area School District #728 jsamek@elkriver.k12.mn.us Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted March 17, 2003 Report Share Posted March 17, 2003 This type of performance is actually not normal. I have seen this feature in Retrospect take full advantage of network bandwidth. I have seen bottlenecks on FTP servers that have been configured to throttle back performance. We have several large customer sites who copy GB's of data using this method, so performance is not normally an issue. I am sure some of our users in the forum will have a few suggestions for improving this performance. Go to Configure>Clients and "get info" on the clients. Make sure the connection speed to the client that is displayed is what you would expect (8,000 to 10,000 for GB Ethernet). If the speed is low, then maybe that is contributing to the problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted March 17, 2003 Report Share Posted March 17, 2003 Quote: I was told by a Dantz engineer in part of a pre-sales information session that Retrospect clients will backup directly to the selected backup device. Specifically, I asked about having OS X Server backup client backing up directly to a FTP location with out having to use the Backup Server station as a go-between for all the data. This was carefully discussed, as I have some of my backup clients 20 miles away from the Backup Server on a partial T1 connection and need them to backup up to localized FTP storage servers. I was told that this is the operating behavior of Backup Server clients. Whoever told you this was wrong. Packets from a Client return to the machine running Retrospect, and from there the data is delivered to whatever Backup Set is being used. >That doesn't work at all as advertised and is completely unrealistic for my time constraints I don't think Dantz claims this in their advertisements; but the fact that you were misinformed by either a salesperson or some other Dantz employee would probably entitle you to a refund if you wanted one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jsamek Posted March 17, 2003 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2003 I called in to customer service to figure out how exactly Internet backups work and they told me my pre-sales pitch was false. All data being backed up, no matter what method used, must travel to the Backup Server and then to the destination. As far as my purchase, I am out of luck. I can deal with that. Now that this had been made clear to me I realize I am in trouble. Does anyone have ideas on how to achieve backups for remote locations using Retrospect? Perhaps I need to purchase 3 more backup servers and use Remote Desktop to monitor them? Of course the real solution would be to run 1000Base fiber to all the servers, but that ain't likely to happen! Or has anyone tried using cronjobs and ditto to FTP stuff and email the results (not exactly my first choice, but I gotta find something)? Joe Samek Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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