How to get the best performance

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GaryML
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Apr 30, 2020 8:34 pm

How to get the best performance

Post by GaryML »

Hi,

I'm trying to build a file server with Backup4all as the central backup solution. As far as I can tell Backup4all uses a single processor core when backing up for all the hard work of encrypting and compressing. On a i7 7700K with 24GB RAM spare while the back up is running and no other taxing jobs, with no encrypting and low compression I get about 30MB/s processed; up that to include encryption and high compression I see a small drop of to around 25MB/s. The hard drives used aren't being overly taxed nor close to their throughput limit, however the core that is being used has very high utilisation.

So I'm guessing it is the CPU that is the bottleneck. Do these speeds appear correct? If I use a 'better' processor what types of speeds should I be able to get? What would constitute a 'good' processor for these tasks?

Thanks,
Best Regards, Gary

Adrian (Softland)
Posts: 1946
Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2009 12:46 pm

Re: How to get the best performance

Post by Adrian (Softland) »

Hi,

Backup4all uses a single core, that is correct.
As for the speed, please let us know:
- the source drive location (local, usb, lan)
- the destination localtion
- the temp drive location (if default was modified)

What is speed for creating the same zip file using WinZip (on the same computer)?

GaryML
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Apr 30, 2020 8:34 pm

Re: How to get the best performance

Post by GaryML »

Hi Adrian,

Apologises for the delay.

I hit a problem, due to using Samba, there was no way for Backup4All to access the last change information, so had to do a complete scan of the data for every increment. As such I've changed what I'm doing to store a copy on a ReFS inside the VM.

Use 1:
-Source: Ubuntu Server 20.4, ZFS pool using raidz1 (RAID5) on top of 4 8TB Toshiba MG drives, a dynamic VM disk sat on top of this mounted inside a Windows 2019 VM using ReFS.
-Destination: OneDrive Cloud (with 110Mbps upload, note I'm excluding the upload timings)
-Temp drive location: A NMVe Samsung Evo drive formatted as EXT4, with a static VM disk sat on top of this mounted inside the same Windows 2019 VM.


Use 2:
-Source: 2 NMVe drives
-Destination: Ubuntu Server 20.4, ZFS pool using mirror striped (RAID10) on top of 4 8TB Toshiba MG drives, over 10Gbps LAN samba mount.
-Temp drive location: one of the source drives


Using the i7 7700k and WinRAR (using default options, sorry not got WinZip installed) I'm getting about 60MB/s from the raid10 pool (this time using samba over a 1Gbps LAN in Windows 10) to a local NMVe drive.

As Backup4All is single core, running multiple job simultaneously produces a lot better results for me, and it scaled up nicely.

- My question is really what CPU would handle the compression, encryption and checking well, compared to the i7 7700K?
- I'm looking at Intel's Intel Xeon Gold 5220 and AMD's Epyc 7302P. Is there any noticeable difference for this particular task between these two CPUs, or a third CPU that would be worth looking into? or
-Are processors from the i7 7700k to CPUs costing twice as much as the two mentioned all got very similar performance for this task?

Thanks,
Best Regards, Gary

Adrian (Softland)
Posts: 1946
Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2009 12:46 pm

Re: How to get the best performance

Post by Adrian (Softland) »

Hi,

It seems that AMD's Epyc 7302P has higher base frequency.

GaryML
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Apr 30, 2020 8:34 pm

Re: How to get the best performance

Post by GaryML »

Hi Adrian,

Thank you very much, so for all new(ish) CPUs particular instruction sets and cache don't really feed into it, it's purely clock speed?

As the 7700K has a base of 4.2GHz and the 7302P has a base of 3.0GHz, should I expect noticeably slower compression (high compression and encryption) rates on the Epyc 7302P than I'm getting now which is ~25MB/s on the 7700K?

Thanks,
Best Regards, Gary

Adrian (Softland)
Posts: 1946
Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2009 12:46 pm

Re: How to get the best performance

Post by Adrian (Softland) »

Hi,

Sorry, we compared only Intel Xeon Gold 5220 and AMD's Epyc 7302P.
Between all 3 processors, i7-7700K seems to be the best for what you need (backup).

GaryML
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Apr 30, 2020 8:34 pm

Re: How to get the best performance

Post by GaryML »

Hi,

Thank you very much, understood, clock speed is king for this :D

Thanks,
Best Regards, Gary

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