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From: Mark D. M. I. <tec...@te...> - 2004-09-30 18:14:47
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On Tue, 28 Sep 2004 16:16:37 -0400 "Guillaume Filion" <gf...@lo...> wrote: > "Mark D. Mongtomery II" <tec...@te...> wrote: > > I've been pondering some things as I browse the list and work on the > machine I've been configuring and was wondering if anyone had some insight > for me and any others who may be pondering the same things. >=20 > I've been using BackupPC for a bit more than two years now with good > success, so here are some toughts. >=20 > > 1. How much does the CPU speed affect the BackupPC process? > > I know that a better CPU would allow more jobs to run simultaneously, b= ut > how much does the speed really affect each job? >=20 > I think that the only real CPU constrain is to be able to compress with g= zip > fast enough. The other tasks should not too be CPU intensive. Ok. That's kinda what I thought. > > 2. How does network speed affect the process? Obviously, a faster > network would allow the files to transfer faster, but they still have to = be > processed and compressed. >=20 > I think that it's the most important part of the system speedwise. ah. >=20 > > 3. Assuming a standard 100Mbit lan, would a 1Gb NIC in the BackupPC box > make any difference when doing multiple simultaneous backup jobs? My log= ic > tells me only if there was actually a Gigabit port on the switch that the > BackupPC box was plugged into. But, as always, I may be wrong. >=20 > Of course, the gigabit NIC on the PC will work at gigabit speed only if i= t's > connected to a gigabit port on the switch. If you connect a gigabit NIC t= o a > 100 Mbps port, you'll get 0 speed gain compared to a 100 Mbps NIC. If you > have a fast enough PC, a gigabit NIC (and switch) should make an > improvement. OK. So spending $50 for a decent GB NIC for the box would be a waste unles= s they felt like upgrading the switch too. Somehow I doubt it. > > 4. Assuming a pure IDE system, with the backuppc disk separate from the > system disk, how much does hard disk speed affect the BackupPC process? > > We currently have an older 20GB as the primary system disk, and then a > nice new ATA133 80GB disk on the second channel as the backuppc disk. > > The main issue is that the machine is a Cyrix MII 333 (250Mhz) so the > disks are most likely running ATA33 or ATA66 (I haven't checked). > > I'm trying to figure out if putting in an ATA controller to run the > BackupPC disk (and also the disk we want to backup the backup onto > eventually) would make any performance difference. >=20 > As far as I know, the disk only has to be as fast as the network. So you > shouldn't have problems with an ATA33 disk on a 100 Mbps network if your = PC > has enough RAM to avoid swaping. On a gigabit network, you'll need at lea= st > ATA66 with DMA and no swap. However, a 233 MHz CPU is quite slow; I'm not > even sure if it can compress traffic at 100 Mbps. If I were you, I would > rather buy another motherboard/CPU than a ATA controller. >=20 > The specs really depend on how much hosts that you want to backup. I'm > backuping 10 hosts on a 10 Mbps network with a PC similar to yours. It wo= rks > well, but it's a bit slow; if I had to backup more than 15-20 PCs, I would > consider buying a bigger PC. ah. I'm only backing up 2 PCs. It is a bit slow, but it's all we could come up= with. Now I don't feel quite as bad about the slow critter. :) It has 256MB RAM, so it shouldn't be swapping much, if at all, since all it= really does is backuppc. > Hope this helps a bit, > GFK's Yah. Thanks. That clears my head up a bit. :) Mark II > --=20 > Guillaume Filion, ing. jr > Logidac Tech., Beaumont, Qu=E9bec, Canada - http://logidac.com/ > PGP Key and more: http://guillaume.filion.org/ >=20 --=20 END ----------------------------------- TechieM2 (Mark D. Montgomery II) https://techiem2.no-ip.com tec...@te... Isaiah 40:28-31 ----------------------------------- QED. ----------------------------------- |