On-line backup priority

Yahoo Archive
1
Is anyone using After-Image journals? At the Perspectives conference we were
warned at a Progress sessions that is causes significant performance
problems. I would prefer AI journals as I have used them quite
satisfactorily in other DB engines, but of course each engine has its own
peculiarities.

Thanks

Mercer Sisson
Insaco Inc

-----Original Message-----
From: william [mailto:william@...]
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2001 10:53 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Vantage] On-line backup priority


An alternative to very frequent backups is to enable after-imaging. This
allows you to restore from a backup, and the roll forward transactions
since the backup. With this functionality, very little work is lost. It
is not difficult to set up, with the caveat that the ai files should be
on a different disk than the db that is being imaged.

Just a thought.

Chris Lantz wrote:
>
> We do two on-line backups a day, one at 11am and one at 10pm. People
> complain that at 11am Vantage slows to a crawl. Is there a way to
> lower the priority of the backup, giving more processor to the users,
> and less to the backup?
>
> Useful links for the Yahoo!Groups Vantage Board are: ( Note: You must
have already linked your email address to a yahoo id to enable access. )
> (1) To access the Files Section of our Yahoo!Group for Report Builder and
Crystal Reports and other 'goodies', please goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/files/.
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/files/.>
> (2) To search through old msg's goto:
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<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/messages>
> (3) To view links to Vendors that provide Vantage services goto:
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<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/links>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
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--
/* ================================================================*/

Specialists in Progress Databases and Software since 1986

William E. Colls william@...
PROComputer Systems Tel 613 591 0079
67 Willow Glen Dr. Fax 613 591 3924
Kanata Ontario Canada www.procomsys.com
K2M 1T1

Useful links for the Yahoo!Groups Vantage Board are: ( Note: You must have
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<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/files/.>
(2) To search through old msg's goto:
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
2
We do two on-line backups a day, one at 11am and one at 10pm. People
complain that at 11am Vantage slows to a crawl. Is there a way to
lower the priority of the backup, giving more processor to the users,
and less to the backup?
3
I don't have an answer, except to say that we also do two on-line back-ups a
day, one at noon, and one at 9:00 PM. Very few people use the system at
noon (our lunch time), so most people don't notice the slowdown. I am
usually in the system at noon and notice a slowdown, however, our back-up
only takes 3 minutes to complete on a 350 Meg db, so it's not a big deal.




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
4
I would love to hear responses on this as well. We do a backup at noon, which is definitely better than most other daytime hours, but it does slow the system considerably. Our's takes about 12 minutes (800 MB database). We're using a simple batch file to do the "vntgbkup" routine.

Troy Funte
Liberty Electronics

----- Original Message -----
From: sarah.vareschi@...
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2001 2:39 PM
Subject: RE: [Vantage] On-line backup priority


I don't have an answer, except to say that we also do two on-line back-ups a
day, one at noon, and one at 9:00 PM. Very few people use the system at
noon (our lunch time), so most people don't notice the slowdown. I am
usually in the system at noon and notice a slowdown, however, our back-up
only takes 3 minutes to complete on a 350 Meg db, so it's not a big deal.




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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Useful links for the Yahoo!Groups Vantage Board are: ( Note: You must have already linked your email address to a yahoo id to enable access. )
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
5
Chris,

I do mine at 12:10 PM when people are at lunch. That really helps.


Dave Cole
Reeder & Kline

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Lantz [mailto:clantz@...]
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2001 2:22 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] On-line backup priority


We do two on-line backups a day, one at 11am and one at 10pm. People
complain that at 11am Vantage slows to a crawl. Is there a way to
lower the priority of the backup, giving more processor to the users,
and less to the backup?


Useful links for the Yahoo!Groups Vantage Board are: ( Note: You must have
already linked your email address to a yahoo id to enable access. )
(1) To access the Files Section of our Yahoo!Group for Report Builder and
Crystal Reports and other 'goodies', please goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/files/.
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/files/.>
(2) To search through old msg's goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/messages
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/messages>
(3) To view links to Vendors that provide Vantage services goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/links
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/links>

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service
<http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/> .




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
6
I watched the system while running a backup once and noticed that it sucks
up all of the available memory to run the backup process. So its no wonder
everything slows down. The system keeps having to swap pages in and out of
memory to accommodate the other operations.

In any case, I don't think you'd want to lower the priority. I'm trying to
remember the exact explanation from my Progress Administrator's class. What
I recall is that while the backup is running, every time somebody modifies
something that has already been backed up, the backup program has to append
a change to the backup file. So you can see that if the priority of the
backup was lowered, more changes would get through, and the backup would
take even longer.

Brian Boyes,
Systems Administrator,
Precision Resource Canada Ltd.
<http://www.precisionresource.com>
<mailto:brianb@...>

> We do two on-line backups a day, one at 11am and one at 10pm. People
> complain that at 11am Vantage slows to a crawl. Is there a way to
> lower the priority of the backup, giving more processor to the users,
> and less to the backup?
7
We also do our 'midday' backup during lunch time but if that is not possible or practical for you I would give these folks a choice:
1) Put up with a short term performance hit, or
2) Be prepared to re enter a full day's worth of data because the midday backup had to be eliminated due to their complaints.

I trust they would make the correct choice. Backups are done for good reasons and one big reason is to make life easier for them when the inevitable system crash occurs.


Marty Kuphall
Ultra Tool & Mfg., Inc.
Controller

Ph. 262-703-0455
Fx. 262-703-0468

marty.kuphall@...


Chris Lantz wrote:

> We do two on-line backups a day, one at 11am and one at 10pm. People
> complain that at 11am Vantage slows to a crawl. Is there a way to
> lower the priority of the backup, giving more processor to the users,
> and less to the backup?
>
>

--



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
8
I don't know about lowering the priority but upgrading the hardware might
work.
Our backups are performed in 2 hour intervals starting 10:00 am. To on-line
backup 1.99 GIG database using "backvan.bat" takes 6.5 minutes. Nobody can
notice the slow down now. I should have told you that we just got our new
server Compaq Proliant ML 370, 1.266 GHZ, 1 GIG RAM, 4 x 18 GIG x 15K RPM
hard drives on REID-0+1, Win 2000 Server OS. We have twenty people using
Vantage at almost any given time. Our old server was HP Netserver LH Pro
200MMX, 387MB RAM, 6 hard drives on RAID-5, NT 4.0 Server OS. It was taking
almost an hour to do the on-line backup.


Mike Tonoyan / MIS Manager
All American Products Co.
1135 Aviation Place
San Fernando, CA 91340
USA
Tel.: 818-361-0059 Ext.: 246
Fax 818-898-2236
E-mail: miket@...
Web: www.allamericanproducts.com


----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Lantz" <clantz@...>
To: <vantage@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2001 11:22 AM
Subject: [Vantage] On-line backup priority


> We do two on-line backups a day, one at 11am and one at 10pm. People
> complain that at 11am Vantage slows to a crawl. Is there a way to
> lower the priority of the backup, giving more processor to the users,
> and less to the backup?
>
>
> Useful links for the Yahoo!Groups Vantage Board are: ( Note: You must
have already linked your email address to a yahoo id to enable access. )
> (1) To access the Files Section of our Yahoo!Group for Report Builder and
Crystal Reports and other 'goodies', please goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/files/.
> (2) To search through old msg's goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/messages
> (3) To view links to Vendors that provide Vantage services goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/links
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>
9
I was thinking of doing backups every hour on the hour. The most data that I could lose would be an hours worth. The thought was that everyone would know that on the hour it would slow a bit.

I guess maybe my idea needs more work/thought...

Rick Gors
----- Original Message -----
From: Chris Lantz
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2001 2:22 PM
Subject: [Vantage] On-line backup priority


We do two on-line backups a day, one at 11am and one at 10pm. People
complain that at 11am Vantage slows to a crawl. Is there a way to
lower the priority of the backup, giving more processor to the users,
and less to the backup?


Useful links for the Yahoo!Groups Vantage Board are: ( Note: You must have already linked your email address to a yahoo id to enable access. )
(1) To access the Files Section of our Yahoo!Group for Report Builder and Crystal Reports and other 'goodies', please goto: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/files/.
(2) To search through old msg's goto: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/messages
(3) To view links to Vendors that provide Vantage services goto: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/links

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10
At 02:43 PM 11/9/2001, you wrote:
>We do two on-line backups a day, one at 11am and one at 10pm. People
>complain that at 11am Vantage slows to a crawl. Is there a way to
>lower the priority of the backup, giving more processor to the users,

A couple speed tips I found:
* Dump the backup image to a disk that doesn't have your Vantage DB or
other highly active files on it.
* The regular Epicor backup script also does a verify pass after the
backup. You could turn that off, at least for the mid-day backup. It
takes about as long as the backup extraction, and uses even more CPU. I
think it was originally intended for dumping out to tape back in the old
days. If errors turn up in a disk file, you've probably got bigger
problems looming! It's good assurance to leave it on for the 11pm run, if
no one is logged in anyway. But skipping it on the daytime runs seems
reasonable to me.

-Wayne Cox
11
An alternative to very frequent backups is to enable after-imaging. This
allows you to restore from a backup, and the roll forward transactions
since the backup. With this functionality, very little work is lost. It
is not difficult to set up, with the caveat that the ai files should be
on a different disk than the db that is being imaged.

Just a thought.

Chris Lantz wrote:
>
> We do two on-line backups a day, one at 11am and one at 10pm. People
> complain that at 11am Vantage slows to a crawl. Is there a way to
> lower the priority of the backup, giving more processor to the users,
> and less to the backup?
>
> Useful links for the Yahoo!Groups Vantage Board are: ( Note: You must have already linked your email address to a yahoo id to enable access. )
> (1) To access the Files Section of our Yahoo!Group for Report Builder and Crystal Reports and other 'goodies', please goto: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/files/.
> (2) To search through old msg's goto: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/messages
> (3) To view links to Vendors that provide Vantage services goto: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/links
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

--
/* ================================================================*/

Specialists in Progress Databases and Software since 1986

William E. Colls william@...
PROComputer Systems Tel 613 591 0079
67 Willow Glen Dr. Fax 613 591 3924
Kanata Ontario Canada www.procomsys.com
K2M 1T1