[rescue] Re: intel vs. sun- for real

[Kurt Mosiejczuk]

On Sun, 21 Jul 2002, Robert Novak wrote:

> I moved from sh+tar to Amanda, and found that using gzip on the server
> rather than the drive's compression got me as much as 52GB on a 20GB
> native tape (vs 35-40GB with the drive's compression, as I recall). The
> problem was that a full backup took 2-3 days and the nightly backup ran
> most of the day. This was on an Ultra 2 2300 with 512MB RAM that was doing
> nfs and nameservice at the same time.

Amanda is great but the gzipping can kill you.  You also need good
spare space for it to really shine.

> It may be outside the scope of your arrangement, but you might consider
> adding disks and eliminating the gzip/gunzip step. Reducing the level of
> compression in the gzip step (gzip -1 instead of gzip -9) might also save
> you some time and cpu power, and cost you a bit less disk than eliminating
> the gzip altogether.

Also consider that most versions of gzip you may find (or even ones
you compile yourself) are done with gcc and generate sparc v7 code.
Definitely compile it with -mcpu=ultrasparc.  It makes a HUGE difference.
Without it the Ultras will look like they are limping in comparison.

--Kurt