Urbackup Tuning

Hi to everyone !!

I want to make a backup server in a virtual environment with good performance.
This is what I have:
– HOST: HP Proliant Quad Core Q9400+ 8GB DDR2 with 2xHDD SAS 12K, virtualizing OS: PROXMOX with ZFS-raid1 on this 2 Hard Drives, without hardware RAID.

– GUEST OS: URBACKUP installed on Ubuntu 14.04, Hard Disk with RAW format, NETWORK: virtio.

How can I increase the performance of this config?
Should I change HDD format on Ubuntu…, on Network…, in ZFS config on the host… or maybe is there another option?
I will have only Internet clients, without lan clients.

Thank You
Adam.

If you only have one volume, your performance is going to suffer as you will have your database and files to be stored on the same drives and have contention for disk access. I initially evaluated UrBackup on a server with a similar setup and performance was just adequate. Moving the OS and database to one set of disks and storing on another made a world of difference for performance.

I will also second @Uroni’s recommendations on his blog to put the database on SSDs if possible. That made a huge difference in performance also as sqlite is not the most performant.

All that being said, if you are not backing up that much data, you should be fine with your current arrangement.

I am curious though, why are you virtualizing UrBackup? The machine you are putting it in only has 8GB of RAM, why not just install to bare metal? It is not as though you have a ton of resources there.

Thank You for the quick answer!!

My first quiestion is, You said: “your performance is going to suffer as you will have your database and files to be stored on the same drives”
From how much number of clients and GB date will performance suffering? For example 30 internet client and 300GB date is still ok? Is there a rule wich help me to calculate this server loading.

“Moving the OS and database to one set of disks” - You mean: UBUNTU and the folder “/var/backup” one disk, folder “/media/urbackup” - on other disk.
If I use USB drive for database instead of SSD, is a big fault?

I will use it in virtual environment, because is independent of the host, if the host “dies” (Ubuntu won’t to start or other anomaly), I copy the image to another host and everyting is ok.
While if I put to bare metal, after the OS crash I must copy the “date” folder and the “/var/urbackup” folder also to the new disk.
Thank You
Adam

Hi again,

Another question.
If I have one server with UBUNTU 16.04 + BTRFS + Urbackup server 2.0.x.
The backup folder: with “du -sh” is 115GB, but “df -h” said that OS+backup folder are only 20GB.
If I want to transfer Urbackup to a new server (the new server is also Ubuntu 16.04+BTRFS), database folder + backup folder most be copied. Database folder with rsync is done very easy.
But how can I copy the backup folder to a new server (with all snapshots, but only the real size of the backup, not the “duplicates” also )? If I copy with rsync to the new server, it will copy the “virtual big size” and not the “real” size of the backup folder.

Thanks
adam