HP Data Protector Software Performance White Paper

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maintain a consistent process and set expectations for data backup and recovery. Often these
business expectations are documented in a Service Level Agreement (SLA).
HP has conducted testing in typical solution configurations for backup and recovery. While
solutions can be designed by directly attaching storage devices, using SCSI or Fibre Channel,
attaching to Backup Servers on the LAN, attaching to devices over a Fibre Channel SAN, or by
offloading backup processes to a dedicated Backup Server for a non-disruptive backup solution,
or Zero Downtime Backup, this paper focuses only on SCSI-attached tape devices in LAN and
SAN configurations.
Objectives and target audience
The objective of this white paper is to educate and inform users of HP Data Protector software
about what levels of performance are achievable in typical backup scenarios.
The emphasis is in showing mid-size environments and not very large installations with
academic performance. This white paper highlights where the performance bottlenecks are and
how these can be overcome. User loads are disregarded on the assumption that backups and
restores are executed in idle environments, for example, executing backups at night when
nobody is online.
The target audience are system integrators and solution architects, and indeed anyone involved
in getting the best backup performance out of their HP infrastructure investments.
Introduction and review of test configuration
Testing was conducted in a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and HP-UX 11.11 environment
using an HP StorageWorks 6000 Enterprise Virtual Array for the file server and Microsoft
Exchange Server 2003 data. The HP StorageWorks Ultrium 960 tape drive was used for
backups and restores via LAN and SAN. The configuration details are described in the following
sections.