topic Re: What is the max NDMP performance/transfer rate to be expected? in ONTAP Discussions

What is the max NDMP performance/transfer rate to be expected?

galchen — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 07:28:28 GMT

Hi !

I'm suggesting a customer to stop using TSM agents for his 300 VMs on HDS, to move them to Netapp and use SMVI + NDMP instead.

Can anyone share, what is the max NDMP transfer rate expected from 6080 with 7.3 and LTO4 tapes? (the number of tapes is not limited - I can get as many as I recommended).

Thank you.

Re: What is the max NDMP performance/transfer rate to be expected?

josef_radinger — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:51:40 GMT

would be interested, too.

system 3020

lto4 fc-attached via ibm tsm 5.3

my measurements when dumping to null:

dmp Wed Nov 18 07:44:22 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Start (Level 0)
dmp Wed Nov 18 07:44:22 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Options (b=63)
dmp Wed Nov 18 07:44:22 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Snapshot (snapshot_for_backup.397, Wed Nov 18 07:44:21 CET)
dmp Wed Nov 18 07:44:25 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Tape_open (null)
dmp Wed Nov 18 07:44:25 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Phase_change (I)
dmp Wed Nov 18 07:45:45 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Phase_change (II)
dmp Wed Nov 18 07:46:00 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Phase_change (III)
dmp Wed Nov 18 07:46:08 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Phase_change (IV)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:45 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Phase_change (V)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Tape_close (null)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) End (71252 MB)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (reg inodes: 103615 other inodes: 0 dirs: 8798 nt dirs: 0 nt inodes: 0 acls: 0)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Phase 3: directories dumped: 8799)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Phase 3: wafl directory blocks read: 8995)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Phase 3: average wafl directory blocks per inode: 1)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Phase 3: average tape blocks per inode: 1)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Phase 3 throughput (MB sec): read 4 write 1)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Percent of phase3 time spent for: reading inos 0% dumping ino 87%)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Percent of phase3 dump time spent for: convert-wafl-dirs 83% lev0-ra 5%)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Phase 3 averages (usec): wafl load buf time 311 level 0 ra time 23)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Phase 4: inodes dumped: 103615)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Phase 4: wafl data blocks read: 18217761)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Phase 4: average wafl data blocks per inode: 175)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Phase 4: average tape data blocks per inode: 701)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Phase 4 throughput (MB sec): read 40 write 40)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Percent of phase4 time spent for: reading inos 0% dumping inos 99%)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Percent of phase4 dump time spent for: wafl read iovec: 70% lev0-ra 2%)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Phase 4 averages (usec): wafl read iovec time 1063 level 0 ra time 365)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Tape write times (msec): average: 0 max: 21)
dmp Wed Nov 18 08:16:49 CET /vol/medispace/(0) Log_msg (Tape changes: 1)

seems to be very slow (40MB/s)

Re: What is the max NDMP performance/transfer rate to be expected?

rgraves2572 — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:34:29 GMT

Enviroment

NetApp 2050

Two X 7 disk raid dp aggregates 1TB sata drives

HP LTO-4 4GB FC

Netbackup 6.5.4 with shared storage option

NDMP dumps of SnapVault volumes 70MB to 90MB/Sec

The 2050 can only handle sending a single NDMP dump to one drive at time. If I send a second NDMP dump to another drive I experience high CPU loads, I assume the larger controllers would handle multiple drives at the same time easily.

-Robert

Re: What is the max NDMP performance/transfer rate to be expected?

eric_barlier — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:12:30 GMT

Hi,

If you are after checking throughput on the controller you could test this by doing a dump to null of a volume on the controller:

date;dump 0f null /vol/vol0

If you run the command above this will show you in details how long it takes to run a dump on vol0. I believe NDMP

uses dump for it to work. By using this you ll isolate the controller from any other limitations such as network/SAN, tape issues

etc etc. It should give you a good idea of expected throughput.

Eric

Re: What is the max NDMP performance/transfer rate to be expected?

stevedegroat — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:21:37 GMT

Make sure the VM environment has no misalignment, as I believe that is one reason for my slowness when backing up VM volumes (from SnapMirror). I have a 3160 (v8.0.2P3) with 15K disks trying to send 24 x 1.5TB volumes out to LTO3 tapes. I have 2 x FC ports configured as initiators and we're seeing 50-70MB/s, peak, from the system. Broke the volumes down to run 5-6 per day, but still see them taking 20-30 hours to run (these are deduped volumes so rehydration is needed).

This was taken just now with 6 NDMP backups running and inbound mirrors from the production systems.

CPU NFS CIFS HTTP Total Net kB/s Disk kB/s Tape kB/s Cache Cache CP CP Disk OTHER FCP iSCSI FCP kB/s iSCSI kB/s

in out read write read write age hit time ty util in out in out

99% 0 0 0 3 90206 3282 120316 128762 0 47033 5s 98% 96% Hf 54% 3 0 0 0 0 0 0

99% 0 0 0 0 73173 2589 107754 89935 0 48908 5s 98% 90% Zs 55% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

97% 0 0 0 0 71027 2441 113594 110577 0 56741 5s 98% 100% Zs 48% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

97% 0 0 0 0 65305 2402 113220 75327 0 53022 6s 98% 100% Zs 53% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

98% 0 0 0 0 77251 2503 122379 95750 0 48029 6s 98% 100% Zf 50% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

99% 0 0 0 7 66954 2356 139913 106198 0 57149 7s 98% 100% Zv 49% 7 0 0 0 0 0 0

99% 0 0 0 339 33515 1115 143937 54100 0 86590 7s 98% 99% Zf 47% 339 0 0 0 0 0 0

99% 0 0 0 0 58591 1968 139635 97258 0 55979 7s 99% 100% Zf 56% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

99% 0 0 0 0 70017 2413 136683 80636 0 61761 7s 99% 100% Zv 53% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

99% 0 0 0 0 86483 2798 136521 92080 0 68402 5s 99% 100% Zv 53% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

99% 0 0 0 7 87185 3089 145459 137559 0 65341 6s 98% 99% Zs 51% 7 0 0 0 0 0 0

99% 0 0 0 0 118244 3633 138931 106383 0 87924 3s 98% 100% Zs 49% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

97% 0 0 0 0 80027 2943 139214 143770 0 41001 5s 98% 100% Zf 50% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

97% 0 0 0 0 79169 2614 118847 103037 0 75111 3s 98% 100% Hf 46% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

97% 0 0 0 0 99457 3742 124381 169562 0 39815 3s 98% 96% Zs 51% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

97% 0 0 0 3 137791 4244 109982 132099 0 60395 2s 98% 100% Hs 52% 3 0 0 0 0 0 0