[Burp-users] Millions upon millions of tiny files

[gabrielknight2 <gab...@pr...>]

Hi all,

I hope it will help a little,

We are also using Burp for backup Windows XP-7-10, MacOS (not anymore) and GNU/Linux desktops

all in protocol 1 and with
working_dir_recovery_method = resume


on first older server,
Dell PowerEdge R510, Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5650  @ 2.67GHz (6 cores/12 threads), 8Gb RAM
for 65 clients, 16 Tb of data on the burp server


I have performance problems too with phase4 and a lot of small files on a XFS filesystem (on 12x Nearline SAS 7200 rpm 2Tb hard drives with Dell PERC H700 1Gb cache RAID6)
I don't know if the problem is more XFS or low-sized cache on the PERC RAID card
I tried to play with burp-server.conf parameters, perhaps it will help in your case I don't know :

I tried as recommanded in the burp documentation :
I also followed advices on https://github.com/grke/burp/wiki/Performance-Tips

hardlinked_archive = 1
librsync = 0
max_children = 4 (and even less, 3 or 2 to avoid I/O concurrency)

I also tried :
manual_delete=/raid/trashcan/manual-delete
and deleting this directory once by night (it seems it was one of my problem loosing a lot of time with erasing tons of small files with XFS)

I also tried :
compression=zlib1
ssl_compression=zlib1
to speed-up the compression part of each file and transfer

I tried excluding already compressed data for not loosing time with it (but not too much since if I understood it checks the whole extension list for each file, so setting a lot of exclude could slow down)
exclude_comp = jpg
exclude_comp = gif
exclude_comp = png
exclude_comp = mp3
exclude_comp = mov
exclude_comp = mkv
exclude_comp = mp4
exclude_comp = zip
exclude_comp = 7z
exclude_comp = gz
exclude_comp = cab

and at last, i choose to keep only necessary backups to speed-up the process :
keep = 3
keep = 2

at the end, I had to space the time between two backups so that each machine succeeds in saving itself, without causing imbalance (when the server is saturated, some machines often manage to backup, when others never had an available slot anymore)
timer_arg = 40h






on second server, It seems to work a lot faster,
Dell PowerEdge R540, Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 5122 CPU @ 3.60GHz (4 cores / 8threads), 32Gb RAM

I keep the default configuration, and I don't have problem with too long phase4 that blocks next backups, for 65 clients, 10 Tb of client data on the burp server
this time I choose EXT4 filesystem, but it is now on a PERC RAID6 H740P with 8 Gb cache, I guess it makes a difference too (with 14x Nearline SAS 7200 rpm 4Tb hard drives)
so probably I guess that to manage a lot of very small files, cache is useful, and ext4 is better suitable for that too
I can't have a good conclusion, since the whole server is newer and better, and I could not try other combinations (what would it be with XFS or ZFS on the same server ?)





anyway, for the ZFS question, I never tried it myself for Burp Backup, but perhaps with activating ZFS cache system with write-intensive SSD and a lot of RAM for ZFS, it could probably do a better work (probably what we don't buy in Hardware RAID card we must pay in write-intensive SSD and RAM)
https://linuxhint.com/configuring-zfs-cache/

I don't know if processor and huge amount of ram even really count when using "classic" filesystems like ext4 and xfs ?

probably, as hnsz2002 said, RAID10 would be even better too


I'm looking for feedback too to share best practices about infrastructure needed using Burp Backup, so if we can talk too of solutions that works well for you ? :)


Best regards









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