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Network Throttling for Aux Copies

  • 8 February 2021
  • 5 replies
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Userlevel 2
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Hello,

 

We have multiple sites and all these sites have different WAN bandwidths. All are DASH copying to  a single location. All these locations have different working hours. We want to create multiple bandwidth throttling rules. What would be the best way to approach this? Should we create the rules at the source Media Agent with throttling the send traffic?

 

Thank You

 

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Best answer by Joey Gorana 2 March 2021, 22:53

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Userlevel 7
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Hi @Abdul Wajid - I’d agree that throttling at the source will give you more flexibility. I am assuming it's the remote sites that need to throttle their outbound more than the destination media agent(s) need to throttle inbound traffic.

Just in case - make sure that you don't have 8400 (CVD port) as an ‘additional port’ on the network settings and it would bypass throttling. Sometimes that was done to improve performance a few years ago.

Userlevel 2
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Hi @Damian Andre  - Thank you. We don't have that advanced setting. We have two media agents at the destination. Should we select both in the client selection list? If we select both, the throttling is applied on both or both get half of what we set? When this setting is changed, it reflects on the running jobs or on the next scheduled jobs? I was thinking of a way to monitor the network performance using a script and change the throttling values when the link is over-utilized on the go.

Userlevel 1
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Hello @Abdul Wajid, their are a few different ways to go about this.

  1. If all your Aux copies are going to one site with 2 Media Agents, and these 2 destination Media Agents only handle Aux Copies and not local backups then you can just setup throttling for Send on the source MediaAgents and Receive on the destination MediaAgents, obviously setting up different times with Client Throttling. You will also want to do Absolute throttling and set it for the amount of bandwidth you want to send and receive (do not cut in half or split between source and destination) 
  2. If the Destination MediaAgents (for the aux copy) do also local backups then you will want to forgo the Receive options on the destination MA.
  3. Also if you have both local and aux copies going to this destination MA and you only want to throttle the Aux copies then there is an option to use Copy throttling which I will list the documentation below, you can set throttling per copy. Setting Network Bandwidth Throttling for a Storage Policy Copy (commvault.com)

If you do Client Throttling then it will happen on running jobs unless you select the option “Exclude Immediate Jobs”, when doing Copy throttling it will be the next scheduled or manually ran jobs after the changes have been made.

 

Hope this answers your questions and concerns.

 

Thank You

Userlevel 2
Badge +4

Hello @Abdul Wajid, their are a few different ways to go about this.

  1. If all your Aux copies are going to one site with 2 Media Agents, and these 2 destination Media Agents only handle Aux Copies and not local backups then you can just setup throttling for Send on the source MediaAgents and Receive on the destination MediaAgents, obviously setting up different times with Client Throttling. You will also want to do Absolute throttling and set it for the amount of bandwidth you want to send and receive (do not cut in half or split between source and destination) 
  2. If the Destination MediaAgents (for the aux copy) do also local backups then you will want to forgo the Receive options on the destination MA.
  3. Also if you have both local and aux copies going to this destination MA and you only want to throttle the Aux copies then there is an option to use Copy throttling which I will list the documentation below, you can set throttling per copy. Setting Network Bandwidth Throttling for a Storage Policy Copy (commvault.com)

If you do Client Throttling then it will happen on running jobs unless you select the option “Exclude Immediate Jobs”, when doing Copy throttling it will be the next scheduled or manually ran jobs after the changes have been made.

 

Hope this answers your questions and concerns.

 

Thank You

@Joey Gorana Thank you for the response. We have two destination media agents which are also responsible for backups at local site. 

We are configuring the throttling on the source media agent and we are controlling the send traffic. We have multiple rules in the throttling configuration, these rule apply only to the jobs that get triggered in that specific window, that job keeps on running following the same rule under which it was triggered and it does not adjust the send rate when the new schedule kicks in. For example, if a job started at 12:15PM, it starts using 100Mbps and does not adjusts down to 25Mbps when the second schedule comes into play. 

Rules:

12:01PM -- 6PM --- 100Mbps
6PM ---- 11:59PM --- 200MBps

 

I could not find the option “Exclude Immediate Jobs” in the throttling configuration. Maybe I am not doing it the right way.

 

We cannot use the copy configuration because that sets a static limit. We want to control the send traffic dynamically. What would be the best way to approach this?

Userlevel 1
Badge +2

Hello @Abdul Wajid ,

 

My apologies for the delay, the option “Exclude Immediate Jobs” may not be available depending on which Service Pack your on. 

It is possible that if your throttling up to 200 Mbps from 100 and your not getting to 200 Mbps then it could be that its because when we throttle via client we have to use only one connection which is the only way we can accurately throttle. If the network cannot reach 200 Mbps with 1 connection then we would not be able to achieve those speeds with client network throttling.

When your monitoring the throttling, Are you going by speeds in the GUI or via the OS/Network? As if within the GUI and deduplication is enabled, those speeds may seem higher even with throttling due to the calculations with deduplication not sending duplicated data across which skews the numbers.

If your not seeing the numbers go down within the network/OS when throttling down from 200 to 100 Mbps then their is a possibility of being an issue. The way you have it setup to change at different times should adhere but if it does not then it may be best to reach out to our Support Team directly and to further investigate why the throttling rules are not being followed.

 

Thank You

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