Hotcopy needs 29 hours for Backup of 40GB C/SIDE

JoeSan

Hi,

Our Goal was to configure an "Optimum Performance System" for 40 GB C/SIDE Database, so that's what we use:

Configuration: Attain 3.60
Database: C/SIDE 40GB, 78% Used
split into 5 database files (*.fdb) of 8GB each.
Each database file resides exclusive on a RAID1 array of 2x36GB HD (that's 10 Hardisks!)
System has 4GB RAM, a single fast Xeon CPU and Fibre-Channel Contollers for a Fast FibreCat-RAID-Subsystem
DBMS Cache is 800Mb
CommitCache is on

We have real good performance for our daily work, but:

Hotcopy needs innacceptable 29 hours to do a single backup.

Client-Based backup only needs 1hour to create compressed *.fbk of ~5GB (split in 3 Files)
:shock:

Is this nomal?

What would you use for Backup instead, some Macro recorder?

Joe San

g_dreyer

Are you copying to the same machine, or to a different machine?
Try doing the hotcopy to a different machine on the network.

Regards,
Gus

aohlfsen

As I recall hotcopy furthermore has the drawback (or used to have perhaps), that it doesn't do a simple integrity check, which the normal backup does.

You could take a look at the the backup-utility offered by www.expandit.com.

Gives you the abillity to perform a normal backup in an automated fashion.

Not that expensive and works like a charm.

B.R.

JoeSan

g_dreyer wrote:

Are you copying to the same machine, or to a different machine?
Try doing the hotcopy to a different machine on the network.

Regards,
Gus

Thanks for your replies,

Yes, i copy to the same machine, actually to the same Drive into a subfolder. Copying to a different machine increases speed only about 20%, that is not enough to do the backup within the available time-window of nine off-buisiness-hours.

My next step would be to add more local drives to the existing on-board SCSI-Controller (and try to do the backup to a from the FC-AL seperate Controller and Array)

ExpandIt is a nice tool if you have a smaller Database, but the recovery process from *.fbk-Files of 5Gig size needs too long time (deleting or renaming the corrupt Database, creating and expanding the new database of 5x8GB, import and re-calculate keys and tables would take about 6-7 hours).

Anyway - that's better then nothing...

Thanks, JoeSan

Timo_Lässer

One of our customers uses Hotcopy as well.
In the first step it needs 50 hours for 2 x 10 GB.
Hotcopy.exe runs on the Navision-Server (RAID1) and copied over the LAN to another server.
This was not acceptable, so we installed another HDD (no RAID) at the Navision-Server.
Hotcopy copies now to this new HDD and needs 50 Minutes for 2 x 10 GB.