HP Data Protector Software Performance White Paper

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HPReadData
The HPReadData PAT utility is useful in assessing the rate at which your disk subsystem can
supply data, which is ultimately what will limit backup performance. It simulates the way Data
Protector reads files. A single instance of HPReadData can read eight streams simultaneously
from your array. To read more than eight streams, initiate multiple instances of HPReadData.
HPReadData is available for Windows, HP-UX, Solaris, and Linux.
HPReadData version 1.2.4 was used for testing. Figure 12 shows an example for reading
Windows test data.
Figure 12. HPReadData for Windows example
The screenshot shows HPReadData reading 1 LUN from a file system in a manner similar to the
way a backup application will read files. You can see that the maximum read rate from this
configuration is 105.25 MB/s, so we cannot expect any higher back-up transfer performance to
tape than this figure.
Note: For simulating Data Protector disk read agents, start the equivalent number of
HPReadData instances, in which each instance should only read from one file system.
HPReadData can be downloaded free from http://www.hp.com/support/pat
.
LoadSim 2003
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Load Simulator (LoadSim) is a benchmarking tool to simulate
the performance load of MAPI clients.
For this white paper it was very useful to use its additional features for data creation:
• Create Topology
• Initialize Test