VERITAS NetBackup White Paper page 51

How much data can VERITAS NetBackup back up to a single peripheral in an 8-hour shift?
This depends on the sustained transfer rate achieved.
For a file system backup to an 8500XL, the following calculations indicate the aggregate data you could back up in eight
hours at typical transfer rates:
• 8.6 GB at 300 KB per second
• 12.9 GB at 450 KB per second
• 23.0 GB at 800 KB per second
• 28.8 GB at 1 MB per second
For a raw partition backup to a DLT 4000, at a transfer rate of 2.3 MB per second, you could back up 72 GB in eight hours.
The above numbers do not count the time needed to locate and mount the media. Also, in both cases, adding another
drive would increase throughput by a factor of 1.5 to 1.8.
How many clients do your current customers typically backup on a single server? What is your experience in
production with multiple NetBackup servers?
Media servers, operating under the control of a single master server, help decrease network traffic and make more
peripherals available. Several current customers are backing up more than 5000 clients to domains of NetBackup servers,
and are continually adding more client workstations to the configuration.
How many peripheral devices can VERITAS NetBackup use in parallel?
VERITAS NetBackup can concurrently utilize as many peripherals as can be configured (disregarding performance
considerations and system limitations). For example, VERITAS' test environment has a single Sun IPC using the following
peripherals simultaneously:
• Exabyte 10i (1 drive)
• Exabyte 60 (2 drives)
• HP Optical Library (2 drives)
• Metrum RS-48 (2 drives)
In this configuration, VERITAS NetBackup can perform seven backups in parallel.
What dynamic load balancing features does the VERITAS NetBackup scheduling process provide?
You can balance network loads by adjusting the "Max Jobs/Class" attribute of the client class definition. This can give
clients in one class preference over those in another class. If you group your client workstations by network location, this
could balance networks of differing capabilities.
Does VERITAS NetBackup work simply and easily with a single tape drive if no robotic peripherals are available in
the network?
VERITAS NetBackup, working in conjunction with Media Manager, provides an operator interface that tracks the status
and mount requests for a stand-alone tape drive. Mounting previously labeled or used media will allow automatic
assignment of a single drive.
The real advantage of Media Manager, however, is its powerful ability to coordinate the operation of multiple robotic
peripherals, which lets you increase the capacity of small networks as your needs grow.
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