Tape Jobs don't go any faster than 4mb/s

[cigrosskoes05]

We replaced some switches and also did some firmware and driver updates on our Dell TL2000. Now our tape backups or restores won't go any faster than 4 mb/s. Not sure it matters, but the speed on the network port says it's going about 32mb/s.

Does anyone have any ideas what to try?

A little more about our setup:
Dell TL2000 with the iscsi bridge. The backup server is a virtual machine. I'm connecting iscsi to the VM using iscsi initiator on Windows 2012 R2. NICs are configured correctly for jumbo frames to match the switches, storage, and tape drive.
Library Firmware is D.10, Drive Firmware is F991. iscsi bridge firmware is at 1.02.04, and I have the latest drivers from Dell's site. I ran the nonexclusive executable to install them. Windows device manager seems to have no problems with it. All of our storage devices that are using iscsi seem to have to problem either.


I'm at a loss for things to try. I've created a few new jobs, and have attempted a few restores. I can't get over 4mb/s.

[veremin]

Can I ask you several questions? What component is identified as a major bottleneck in the tape job session statistics? What type of tape job are you using? Backups to tape or files to tape? What is chosen as a source for it?

If it's backups to tape job, then, where does a backup repository reside? On the very same virtual machine? Otherwise (files to tape), how many files are you archiving to tapes and what size do those files have?

Thanks.

[cigrosskoes05]

Target is the bottleneck.
It is files to tape.
The source for the files is a Snynology device (same device that we back up everything to, which is getting speeds over 100mb/s)

I'm backing up the full backups to tape (because we haven't paid for enterprise). There are 7 files. The largest being 2.5tb, and the smallest is probably around 100gb. It's about 4.6tb total.

[cigrosskoes05]

Well I think I have it "fixed". We're back to where we were, around 42mb/s. It isn't great, but it works for us. We rolled back firmware and drivers on everything and that seems to have solved the problem.

Thanks!

[veremin]

Hmm, so the performance degradation was related to device firmware and drives. Glad to hear that you were able to nail it.

We do plan to optimize performance of files to tape jobs further in the next product releases; so, stay tuned.

Thanks.

[cigrosskoes05]

Hmm, so the performance degradation was related to device firmware and drives. Glad to hear that you were able to nail it.

We do plan to optimize performance of files to tape jobs further in the next product releases; so, stay tuned.

Thanks.

That sounds good. Thanks! I think most of the slowness is our set up. We may look into a standalone Veeam server with SAS connected to the tape Library. We haven't treated our backup infrastructure real well. Used tape drives, low end storage, ect.

[Dima P.]

We may look into a standalone Veeam server with SAS connected to the tape Library

Sounds like a good plan. By the way, if you got a chance to test and compare the performance with backup to tape job, which was specifically designed to write backup files to tape, please let us know. Thanks.