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NetBackup™ Backup Planning and Performance Tuning Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): NetBackup (11.2, 11.1, 11.0)
  1. NetBackup capacity planning
    1.  
      Purpose of this guide
    2.  
      Changes in Veritas terminology
    3.  
      Disclaimer
    4.  
      How to analyze your backup requirements
    5.  
      How to calculate the size of your NetBackup image database
    6. Sizing for capacity with MSDP
      1. Key sizing parameters
        1.  
          Data types and deduplication
        2.  
          Determining FETB for workloads
        3.  
          Retention periods
        4.  
          Change rate
        5.  
          Replication and duplication of backups
        6.  
          Sizing calculations for MSDP clients
    7.  
      About how to design your OpsCenter server
  2. Primary server configuration guidelines
    1.  
      Size guidance for the NetBackup primary server and domain
    2.  
      Factors that limit job scheduling
    3.  
      More than one backup job per second
    4.  
      Stagger the submission of jobs for better load distribution
    5.  
      NetBackup job delays
    6.  
      Selection of storage units: performance considerations
    7.  
      About file system capacity and NetBackup performance
    8.  
      About the primary server NetBackup catalog
    9.  
      Guidelines for managing the primary server NetBackup catalog
    10.  
      Adjusting the batch size for sending metadata to the NetBackup catalog
    11.  
      Methods for managing the catalog size
    12.  
      Performance guidelines for NetBackup policies
    13.  
      Legacy error log fields
  3. Media server configuration guidelines
    1. NetBackup hardware design and tuning considerations
      1.  
        PCI architecture
      2.  
        Central processing unit (CPU) trends
      3.  
        Storage trends
      4.  
        Conclusions
    2. About NetBackup Media Server Deduplication (MSDP)
      1.  
        Data segmentation
      2.  
        Fingerprint lookup for deduplication
      3.  
        Predictive and sampling cache scheme
      4.  
        Data store
      5.  
        Space reclamation
      6.  
        System resource usage and tuning considerations
      7.  
        Memory considerations
      8.  
        I/O considerations
      9.  
        Network considerations
      10.  
        CPU considerations
      11.  
        OS tuning considerations
      12. MSDP tuning considerations
        1.  
          Sample steps to change MSDP contentrouter.cfg
      13. MSDP sizing considerations
        1.  
          Data gathering
        2.  
          Leveraging requirements and best practices
    3.  
      Cloud tier sizing and performance
    4. Accelerator performance considerations
      1.  
        Accelerator for file-based backups
      2.  
        Controlling disk space for Accelerator track logs
      3.  
        Accelerator for virtual machine backups
      4.  
        Forced rescan schedules
      5.  
        Reporting the amount of Accelerator data transferred over the network
      6.  
        Accelerator backups and the NetBackup catalog
  4. Media configuration guidelines
    1.  
      About dedicated versus shared backup environments
    2.  
      Suggestions for NetBackup media pools
    3.  
      Disk versus tape: performance considerations
    4.  
      NetBackup media not available
    5.  
      About the threshold for media errors
    6.  
      Adjusting the media_error_threshold
    7.  
      About tape I/O error handling
    8.  
      About NetBackup media manager tape drive selection
  5. How to identify performance bottlenecks
    1.  
      Introduction
    2.  
      Proper mind set for performance issue RCA
    3.  
      The 6 steps of performance issue RCA and resolution
    4. Flowchart of performance data analysis
      1.  
        How to create a workload profile
  6. Best practices
    1.  
      Best practices: NetBackup SAN Client
    2. Best practices: NetBackup AdvancedDisk
      1.  
        AdvancedDisk performance considerations
      2.  
        Exclusive use of disk volumes with AdvancedDisk
      3.  
        Disk volumes with different characteristics
      4.  
        Disk pools and volume managers with AdvancedDisk
      5.  
        Network file system considerations
      6.  
        State changes in AdvancedDisk
    3.  
      Best practices: Disk pool configuration - setting concurrent jobs and maximum I/O streams
    4.  
      Best practices: About disk staging and NetBackup performance
    5.  
      Best practices: Supported tape drive technologies for NetBackup
    6. Best practices: NetBackup tape drive cleaning
      1.  
        How NetBackup TapeAlert works
      2.  
        Disabling TapeAlert
    7.  
      Best practices: NetBackup data recovery methods
    8.  
      Best practices: Suggestions for disaster recovery planning
    9.  
      Best practices: NetBackup naming conventions
    10.  
      Best practices: NetBackup duplication
    11.  
      Best practices: NetBackup deduplication
    12. Best practices: Malware scanning
      1.  
        Understand malware scanning in NetBackup
      2.  
        Enable malware scanning for all critical backup jobs
      3.  
        Ensure antivirus software compatibility
      4.  
        Test scanning configurations regularly
      5.  
        Monitor and adjust based on backup job performance
      6.  
        Ensure malware scanning is part of the restore process
      7.  
        Maintain a security awareness program
      8.  
        Leverage IRE for malware scanning
      9.  
        Sizing for malware scanning of MSDP backup image
      10.  
        Malware scan performance issue analysis
    13. Best practices: Universal shares
      1.  
        Benefits of universal shares
      2.  
        Configuring universal shares
      3.  
        Tuning universal shares
    14. NetBackup for VMware sizing and best practices
      1.  
        Configuring and controlling NetBackup for VMware
      2.  
        Discovery
      3.  
        Backup and restore operations
    15. Best practices: Storage lifecycle policies (SLPs)
      1.  
        Data flow and SLP design best practices
      2.  
        Targeted SLP
      3.  
        Limiting the number of SLP secondary operations to maximize performance
      4.  
        Storage Server IO
    16.  
      Best practices: NetBackup NAS-Data-Protection (D-NAS)
    17.  
      Best practices: NetBackup for Nutanix AHV
    18.  
      Best practices: NetBackup Sybase database
    19.  
      Best practices: Avoiding media server resource bottlenecks with Oracle VLDB backups
    20.  
      Best practices: Avoiding media server resource bottlenecks with MSDPLB+ prefix policy
    21.  
      Best practices: Cloud deployment considerations
    22.  
      Best practices: Calculate file hash
  7. Measuring Performance
    1.  
      Measuring NetBackup performance: overview
    2.  
      How to control system variables for consistent testing conditions
    3.  
      Running a performance test without interference from other jobs
    4.  
      About evaluating NetBackup performance
    5.  
      Evaluating NetBackup performance through the Activity Monitor
    6.  
      Evaluating NetBackup performance through the All Log Entries report
    7. Table of NetBackup All Log Entries report
      1.  
        Additional information on the NetBackup All Log Entries report
    8. Evaluating system components
      1.  
        About measuring performance independent of tape or disk output
      2.  
        Measuring performance with bpbkar
      3.  
        Bypassing disk performance with the SKIP_DISK_WRITES touch file
      4.  
        Measuring performance with the GEN_DATA directive (Linux/UNIX)
      5.  
        Monitoring Linux/UNIX CPU load
      6.  
        Monitoring Linux/UNIX memory use
      7.  
        Monitoring Linux/UNIX disk load
      8.  
        Monitoring Linux/UNIX network traffic
      9.  
        Monitoring Linux/Unix system resource usage with dstat
      10.  
        About the Windows Performance Monitor
      11.  
        Monitoring Windows CPU load
      12.  
        Monitoring Windows memory use
      13.  
        Monitoring Windows disk load
    9.  
      Increasing disk performance
  8. Tuning the NetBackup data transfer path
    1.  
      About the NetBackup data transfer path
    2.  
      About tuning the data transfer path
    3.  
      Tuning suggestions for the NetBackup data transfer path
    4.  
      NetBackup client performance in the data transfer path
    5. NetBackup network performance in the data transfer path
      1.  
        Network interface settings
      2.  
        Network load
      3. Setting the network buffer size for the NetBackup media server
        1.  
          Network buffer size in relation to other parameters
      4.  
        Setting the NetBackup client communications buffer size
      5.  
        About the NOSHM file
      6.  
        Using socket communications (the NOSHM file)
    6. NetBackup server performance in the data transfer path
      1. About shared memory (number and size of data buffers)
        1.  
          Default number of shared data buffers
        2.  
          Default size of shared data buffers
        3.  
          Amount of shared memory required by NetBackup
        4.  
          How to change the number of shared data buffers
        5.  
          Notes on number data buffers files
        6.  
          How to change the size of shared data buffers
        7.  
          Notes on size data buffer files
        8.  
          Size values for shared data buffers
        9.  
          Note on shared memory and NetBackup for NDMP
        10.  
          Recommended shared memory settings
        11.  
          Recommended number of data buffers for SAN Client and FT media server
        12.  
          Testing changes made to shared memory
      2.  
        About NetBackup wait and delay counters
      3.  
        Changing parent and child delay values for NetBackup
      4. About the communication between NetBackup client and media server
        1.  
          Processes used in NetBackup client-server communication
        2.  
          Roles of processes during backup and restore
        3.  
          Finding wait and delay counter values
        4.  
          Note on log file creation
        5.  
          About tunable parameters reported in the bptm log
        6.  
          Example of using wait and delay counter values
        7.  
          Issues uncovered by wait and delay counter values
      5.  
        Estimating the effect of multiple copies on backup performance
      6. Effect of fragment size on NetBackup restores
        1.  
          How fragment size affects restore of a non-multiplexed image
        2.  
          How fragment size affects restore of a multiplexed image on tape
        3.  
          Fragmentation and checkpoint restart
      7. Other NetBackup restore performance issues
        1.  
          Example of restore from multiplexed database backup (Oracle)
    7.  
      NetBackup storage device performance in the data transfer path
  9. Tuning other NetBackup components
    1.  
      When to use multiplexing and multiple data streams
    2.  
      Effects of multiplexing and multistreaming on backup and restore
    3. How to improve NetBackup resource allocation
      1.  
        Improving the assignment of resources to NetBackup queued jobs
      2.  
        Sharing reservations in NetBackup
      3.  
        Disabling the sharing of NetBackup reservations
      4.  
        Disabling on-demand unloads
    4.  
      Encryption and NetBackup performance
    5.  
      Compression and NetBackup performance
    6.  
      How to enable NetBackup compression
    7.  
      Effect of encryption plus compression on NetBackup performance
    8.  
      Information on NetBackup Java performance improvements
    9.  
      Information on NetBackup Vault
    10.  
      Fast recovery with Bare Metal Restore
    11.  
      How to improve performance when backing up many small files
    12. How to improve FlashBackup performance
      1.  
        Adjusting the read buffer for FlashBackup and FlashBackup-Windows
    13.  
      Veritas NetBackup OpsCenter
  10. Tuning disk I/O performance
    1. About NetBackup performance and the hardware hierarchy
      1.  
        About performance hierarchy level 1
      2.  
        About performance hierarchy level 2
      3.  
        About performance hierarchy level 3
      4.  
        About performance hierarchy level 4
      5.  
        Summary of performance hierarchies
      6.  
        Notes on performance hierarchies
    2.  
      Hardware examples for better NetBackup performance

Sizing for malware scanning of MSDP backup image

This section outlines the methodology for sizing malware scan hosts when performing scans on backup images stored in MSDP storage. Proper sizing depends on several factors, including the nature and composition of the protected data, as well as the available spare IOPS capacity on the storage server where backup resides. The guidance provided here serves as a foundational framework for basic sizing considerations. For environment-specific sizing recommendations and advanced tuning, consult your Veritas account team or authorized reseller.

Key sizing parameters

Effective sizing for malware scan hosts requires answering several key questions related to the backup environment:

  • What type of data is being scanned? File types such as ZIP, image, or other archive formats require additional processing time, as contents must be extracted and individually scanned.

  • What is the volume and structure of the data? Understanding the total data size and the number of files per backup image is critical, as high file counts can significantly impact scan performance.

  • Where does the backup data reside? Identifying the specific storage server(s) used for scanning is essential.

  • Are multiple copies of the backup stored across different storage servers? This can influence scan strategy and scan host sizing.

  • What is the current load on the storage server? It's important to assess how many parallel scans the storage server can support to determine how many scan hosts are required.

The following formula can be used:

Number of scan hosts required = parallel scans limit set on
storage server / optimal parallelization per scan host

As the number of parallel scans on a scan host increases, throughput improves. However, the percentage gain diminishes with each additional scan. Optimal parallelization is achieved at the point where the maximum number of parallel scans yields the highest throughput in terms of files scanned per hour.

Based on in-house testing, optimal parallelization per scan host is determined as follows:

  • Linux scan host with NFS share type can support upto 6 parallel scans

  • Windows scan host NFS/SMB share type can support upto 3 parallel scans

For example: If a storage server can support a maximum of 20 parallel scans at its current load, then:

Number of Linux scan hosts required = 20/6 ~ 4. Hence, 4 Linux scan hosts would suffice.

Number of Windows scan hosts required = 20/3 ~ 7. Hence, 7 Windows scan hosts would suffice

To estimate the scan duration for a given number of files, measure the scanning throughput using the current deployment. Trigger the maximum number of parallel scans configured per storage server to determine the effective throughput, expressed as the number of files scanned per hour.

The following formula can be used:

Expected time to scan (in hours) = (Number of backups * Average number 
of files in backup) / Throughput per hour.

For example: For a Linux scan host using NetBackup Malware Scanner and NFS share type

If throughput per hour = 12 million files per hour

Number of backups to scan = 100

Average number of files per backup = 500k

Expected time to scan (in hours) = (100 x 500,000 / 12,000,000) ~ 4 hours

In-house testing shows

  • Linux scan host using NetBackup Malware Scanner and NFS share type provides 4 times throughput compared to Windows scan host using NetBackup Malware scanner and NFS share type.

  • Throughput numbers for Standard/MS-Windows policy backup scans are 10 times more than VMWare VM backup scans. This difference can be attributed to the use of additional virtualization layer to mount virtual disk - while creating instant access of VM backup.