HP Data Protector Software Performance White Paper

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Executive summary
This white paper provides performance-related information for HP Data Protector software 6.0
together with some typical examples. The emphasis is on backup servers and two common
backup and restore performance questions:
• Why are backups so slow?
• Why are restores so slow?
The first step towards estimating backup requirements and performance is a complete
understanding of the environment. Many performance issues can be traced to hardware or
environmental issues. A basic understanding of the complete backup data path is essential in
determining the maximum performance that can be expected from the installation. Every backup
environment has a bottleneck. It may be a fast bottleneck, but it will determine the maximum
performance obtainable in the system.
There are many configuration options and procedures available that can help IT professionals to
improve the performance of their backup environment. This white paper focuses on servers
running HP-UX 11.11 (11iv1) and Windows Server 2003, which are backing up file servers and
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 in Local Area Network (LAN) and Storage Area Network (SAN)
environments. All data was located on an HP StorageWorks 6000 Enterprise Virtual Array
(EVA6000) and backed up or restored with an HP StorageWorks Ultrium 960 tape drive.
The following hardware and software was installed and configured:
• HP9000 rp3440 with HP-UX 11.11 (11iv1)
• HP ProLiant DL380 G5 with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP2 and Exchange Server 2003
• HP ProLiant DL380 G4 with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP2 and HP Data Protector
software 6.0
• HP ProCurve LAN switch 20 10/100/1000-ports
• HP ProCurve SAN Switch 4/16
• HP StorageWorks 6000 Enterprise Virtual Array
• Two HP StorageWorks Ultrium 960 tape drives
The HP-UX test environment showed good performance results across all tests. The NULL
device backup performance was 386 MB/s or 1,359 GB/h, and the HP StorageWorks Ultrium
960 tape backup performance 156 MB/s or 548 GB/h.
The Windows test environment also showed good performance results, except for the test with
millions of small files. In such environments, the Windows NTFS file system responds very
slowly if a file is restored and its attributes recovered. The restore performance from the HP
StorageWorks Ultrium 960 tape drive was just 3.38 MB/s. See the section
Local restore of small
files on page 48.
As a result of these tests, several recommendations and rules of thumb have emerged:
1. HP Data Protector software tuning can help to improve the performance, for example, for file
systems with millions of small files where the first tree walk is disabled and the backup
concurrency increased. See the section Tuning Recommendations on page 77
.
2. Data Protector’s default configuration parameters are well sized for most use cases.
3. Some changes of configuration parameters have almost no performance impact, for
example, the Disk Agent buffers. See the section Disk Agent buffers on page 71
.
4. Software compression causes high CPU loads and poorer backup performance than the
Ultrium 960 built-in compression. See the section Software compression on page 50
.
Overview
HP servers, storage, and software can help to provide a seamless enterprise backup and
recovery solution. The solution starts with understanding what server and storage components
work best for the required workload. Being able to determine performance baselines and
uncovering potential bottlenecks in the solution can help to focus on areas that may need
improvement, and can also provide information that helps with planning for data growth.
Understanding the backup and recovery requirements for a data center can also help to