backup puts huge load on server?

[lnguyen]

I haven't been able to duplicate the problem yet, but one particular user I have went through the backup process, and basically caused my loads to jump to the hundreds.

When I slowly got my way into an ssh session, restarting apache cured all.

Has anyone ever run into something like this before?

And I'll throw in a suggestion that for user backups, it should forward to a page that says "you're in the queue, you'll get a msg when it's done" as the resellers get. Some folks may think the page froze :(

Linh

[nobaloney]

I've never seen loads like that, Linh. But I have no idea if any of my users are doing backups.

The next time it happens try looking at "top" to see what the problem is.

Or give me a shout, and if I'm available I'll take a look.

Jeff

[lnguyen]

I was looking at top, and httpd was hitting 99.9 every so often, but it wasn't very consistant.

When I did restart apache, it seemed gzip and tar were starting up (around the 10% marker) and maybe finishing the job?

[nobaloney]

Backup doesn't do a thing with httpd.

So I'd think the problem was something else.

Jeff

[GlobalDC]

I can vouch, that running the backups causes high loads. caused my CPU to jump to about 30% proc usage.

[nobaloney]

Agreed, GlobalDC.

What I don't see yet, is how restarting httpd could help; httpd usage should be quite dynamic, depending on requests.

Jeff

[GlobalDC]

not sure either

[lnguyen]

It's not exactly that httpd is causing high loads, but rather I think it's crashing and getting stuck...

I had recompiled apache and things seemed to be doing well, but now, it's starting to creep up again. As soon as I kill httpd, my loads drop, and gzip takes over in top for a quick bit.

[nobaloney]

Linh,

Let me know if you want me to log in and look at your server during a backup.

Jeff

[Daijoubu]

Please make it possible to exclude some (big) accounts/directories from being backup
Happens every night

[nobaloney]

Daijoubu,

What that graph shows is bits per second, and since the directories are not all sent at the same time, but rather sequentially, leaving out directories won't change the height of the spikes, but only the amount of time they take.

That said, you can't list exclude directories (it's a limitation of the sysbk program DA uses) but you can customize which directories you do back up, and you can do the /home directories one at a time instead of all at once.

Jeff

[Daijoubu]

Hm, this graph shows the load average @ 30mins (data is gathered twice an hour, I made it so I must know what it is ;))

The server lags during this process (well, it usualy spike to 3-4), lowering the amount of time this takes should already helps
Any tutorial on how to customise sysbk?

[nobaloney]

Originally posted by Daijoubu
]Hm, this graph shows the load average @ 30mins (data is gathered twice an hour, I made it so I must know what it is ;))
Sorry, it wasn't clear to me previously.

Any tutorial on how to customise sysbk?
Sysbk is developed by R-fx Networks; you can find their sysbk website here (http://www.rfxnetworks.com/sysbk.php).

Jeff