Re: NAS or USB Backup?

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Is the point not that disk writes are the bottleneck, and it won't matter didly whether the network or USB is used?

--
Les Connor [SBS MVP]


"kj [SBS MVP]" <KevinJ.SBS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:e4Nik2yMIHA.4688@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dave W wrote:
On Nov 29, 10:26 pm, "kj [SBS MVP]" <KevinJ....@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Dave Nickason [SBS MVP] wrote:

I hate to ask the obvious, but are you sure there are no 100 mb
ethernet devices between the server and the NAS? If there's a slow
switch in the path, that would obviously have an effect.

And not all GigaBit switches are equal. Compare the specs, noteably
the max store - forward rates and make sure the ports are in full.
I've seen a couple of low end 1G switches underperform a decent 100M
one. ( I still get better backup performance to the USB drives than
my 'storage server' on the same HP GB switch.)







"Brian Cryer" <bri...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23zMrNCnMIHA.4688@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Dave W" <mtd...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:0a502c22-ef3b-4e87-a2f7-bd57ac0601a4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I feel stupid asking this question but I keep getting different
answers. Can someone help me figure out which option will
produce a faster backup?

Server has USB 2.0 and a gigabit NIC. Looking at Western Digital
External hard drive solutions

Gigabit 1TB NAS drive or a USB 2.0 1TB connected?

I wouldn't have thought it would make much difference. If you are
copying large amounts of data then you are limited by how fast you
can stream that data to the disk. Both USB and gigabit can stream
data faster than it can be written to the disk so logically neither
of those will be a bottleneck. (I'm not an expert, but in most
cases I would expect USB to outperform NAS, but there are many
factors so there may be cases where NAS would outperform USB.)

If you want to speed things up then I think you are probably
looking in the wrong place. Consider how much you are backing up,
and whether some of those can be differential backups rather than
full backups. Consider also the read speed of the drives you are
backing up from and the write speed of the drive you are backing
up to.

Given a choice between NAS or USB for backup, my question would be
how often are you cycling the backup off-site and which is the more
convenient to configure, unplug and carry? I use NAS for providing
additional network storage for users but backup to USB.

Hope this helps.
--
Brian Cryer
www.cryer.co.uk/brian

--
/kj- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I appreciate the feedback. If USB 2.0 is 480 Mbps and a gigabit NIC
(with a gigabit switch connected to a gigabit NAS) is running at 1000
Mbps, shouldn't the NAS External Drive outperform? Right now, our NAS
Western Digital is the end point for the full system backup as per the
standard backup process in SBS 2003. Once it hits our data drive, it
is taking 17 hours to complete.

I'm going to double check connections but I can say for sure, we don't
have any 10/100 switches in the mix.

I'm not familiar with max store - forward rates. We are using Dell
Powerconnect 2724 switches if that helps bring anything to light.


Your suggestions and feedback are greatly appreciated.


Thank you.
Dell Powerconnect 2724;
Forwarding Rate 35.6 Mpps

HP Procurve 2724;
Forwarding Rate 35.6 Mpps

Looks like a buy-out / knock off with near equal specs.

Anyway, I have a HP2724 so I can make some comparisons, but not a true NAS.

Usually it's the slowest component of the sub system (bottleneck) that makes all the difference. Remember those are the 'speeds' at which data is transferred over the media, not how much data transfer can be sustained over a long period of time.

The data path times from;

disk to controller to memory to NIC to Net to NIC to memory to controller to disk

may take substantially more time than;

disk to controller to memory to controller to disk


Isn't benchmarking / baselining fun?
--
/kj


.

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