Tuning NetBackup: Multiplexing and Multiple Data Streams
To put it simply, our goal as NetBackup administrators and engineers is to keep tapes spinning. What do I mean by that? Well, if your tapes are constantly spinning during your backup window, you will be taking full advantage of your underlying hardware and be backing up to tape as fast as possible. Sounds simple, right? Trust me, we all get the “Tim the Tool Man Taylor” fever, and want to purchase a beast of a backup device that will solve all of our backup problems. Of course, you must go through much red tape to purchase this “Tim the Tool Man Taylor” device, and more than likely it will be rejected because of “budget” or “It rained on Tuesday”. Whatever the reason for not purchasing, we still are left with backing up the same amount of data! What do we do? We make sure that we keep our tape drives we currently have spinning as much as possible. How do we do that? Well, let me introduce you to my friends Multiplexing and Multiple Data Streams (aka Multistreaming).
First, let me define the two methods, as most people get these mixed up.
MULTIPLEXING: Sends data from multiple clients to a single tape drive.
MULTIPLE DATA STREAMS (Multistreaming): Sends data from a single client to multiple tape drives.
Multiplexing is very useful for clients with limited bandwidth (most of the time this is network, but can be other things like disk or high CPU utilization). Since the network bottleneck is too slow to keep the tape drive spinning, multiplexing enables multiple clients to backup to a single tape drive simultaneously. If you are curious to see what that looks like, please see my wonderful artwork below.
Multiplexing interleaves the backup data of Client “A” and Client “B” to the same tape.
Multistreaming can be used when you have a client that can push data to a tape drive faster than a tape drive can handle. Multistreaming allows multiple backups of a single client to occur simultaneously to multiple tape drives. Again, see my wonderful artwork below.
Multistreaming allows for a single client to stream data from Drive A to Tape 1 and Drive B to Tape 2
Of course, multiplexing and multistreaming can be used together. Go ahead and give it a spin… no pun intended. J If you do give it a try, please ensure that you do not inadvertently create a “disk head thrashing” scenario, where you are doing concurrent disk reads (for backup), forcing the head to cross the disk for multiple backups. The reality of it is… is that your disks will perform under these conditions, but the life of your disk will drastically be reduced. Utilizing multiplexing and multistreaming should keep your tapes spinning!
Multiplexing interleaves the backup data of Client “A” and Client “B” to the same tape.
Multistreaming can be used when you have a client that can push data to a tape drive faster than a tape drive can handle. Multistreaming allows multiple backups of a single client to occur simultaneously to multiple tape drives. Again, see my wonderful artwork below.
Multistreaming allows for a single client to stream data from Drive A to Tape 1 and Drive B to Tape 2
Of course, multiplexing and multistreaming can be used together. Go ahead and give it a spin… no pun intended. J If you do give it a try, please ensure that you do not inadvertently create a “disk head thrashing” scenario, where you are doing concurrent disk reads (for backup), forcing the head to cross the disk for multiple backups. The reality of it is… is that your disks will perform under these conditions, but the life of your disk will drastically be reduced. Utilizing multiplexing and multistreaming should keep your tapes spinning!
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