DD BOOST EVERYWHERE - DD BOOST FILE

SYSTEM PLUG-IN INTEGRATION GUIDE

Application Validation and Best Practices for DD Boost File
System Plug-In

ABSTRACT
This White Paper provides a set of best practices and configuration guidelines for
applications with the Data Domain® DD Boost File System Plug-In (BoostFS). In
addition, the paper contains insights and tips on how the application should be
configured to maximize all the benefits of BoostFS.

October 2017

INTEGRATION GUIDE
Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Dell, EMC, and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its
subsidiaries. Other trademarks may be the property of their respective owners. Published in the USA, 8/17, White Paper, H15470

Dell EMC believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without
notice.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ............................................................................................................ 6
Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 6

Audience ............................................................................................................................................................ 6

Executive summary ........................................................................................................................................... 6

Supported Configurations ........................................................................................................ 6

Applications:...................................................................................................................................................... 6

Operating Systems: ........................................................................................................................................... 6

NOTE: Fuse v2.8 or higher is required ........................................................................................................... 7

Data Domain Platforms: .................................................................................................................................... 7

Application Server Sizing for the Cloud: ......................................................................................................... 7

Performance ...................................................................................................................................................... 7

MongoDB: mongodump ........................................................................................................... 7

Setup BoostFS ................................................................................................................................................... 7

How to perform backup..................................................................................................................................... 8

How to execute a restore .................................................................................................................................. 8

Performance: mongodump ............................................................................................................................... 8

MongoDB: Operations Manager .............................................................................................. 9

Storage Engine Type: ........................................................................................................................................ 9

OpsManager Performance: ............................................................................................................................. 11

Setup BoostFS plug-in .................................................................................................................................... 11

How to perform a backup and restore ........................................................................................................... 11

Best Practices – MongoDB OpsMgr ............................................................................................................... 12

MySQL: Enterprise Backup ................................................................................................... 12

Setup BoostFS ................................................................................................................................................. 12

How to disable compression and encryption: ............................................................................................... 13

How to perform a backup ................................................................................................................................ 13

How to execute a restore ................................................................................................................................ 13

Best Practices – MySQL Enterprise Backup ................................................................................................. 13

MySQL Backup Tools ............................................................................................................. 13

MySQL: mydumper......................................................................................................................................... 13

Setup BoostFS ................................................................................................................................................. 13

Disable compression....................................................................................................................................... 13

How to configure multiple streams ................................................................................................................ 13

How to perform a backup ................................................................................................................................ 14

How to execute a restore ................................................................................................................................ 14

How to configure multiple streams ................................................................................................................ 14

Best Practices – MySQL Enterprise Backup ................................................................................................. 14

MySQL: Percona Xtrabackup ............................................................................................... 14

Setup BoostFS ................................................................................................................................................. 14

Disable compression and encryption ............................................................................................................ 14

Configure multiple streams ............................................................................................................................ 14

How to perform a backup ................................................................................................................................ 14

How to execute a restore ................................................................................................................................ 14

Best Practices – Percona Xtrabackup............................................................................................................ 14

Performance: MySQL ...................................................................................................................................... 15

Commvault Simpana v10, v11 ................................................................................................ 15

Setup BoostFS ................................................................................................................................................. 15

Initiating a backup ........................................................................................................................................... 15

Setting up a disk library .................................................................................................................................. 15

Set up a storage policy ................................................................................................................................... 18

How to configure multiple streams ................................................................................................................ 24

How to perform a backup ................................................................................................................................ 25

How to execute a restore ................................................................................................................................ 25

Performance: Commvault Simpana ............................................................................................................... 26

Best Practices – Commvault Simpana ........................................................................................................... 26

IBM: Tivoli Storage Manager/ Spectrum Protect ............................................................. 26

Setup BoostFS ................................................................................................................................................. 26

Disable compression and encryption ............................................................................................................ 26

Configure TSM v7.1 for BoostFS .................................................................................................................... 27

How to perform a backup ................................................................................................................................ 27

How to execute a restore ................................................................................................................................ 28

Best Practices – IBM TSM ............................................................................................................................... 28

Performance: IBM TSM ................................................................................................................................... 28

Enterprise DB (postgresQL) ................................................................................................... 29

Backup and Recovery Tool (BART) ................................................................................................................ 29

Configure BART for BoostFS ......................................................................................................................... 29

BART Backup & Restore ................................................................................................................................. 29

Best Practices – Enterprise DB with BART ................................................................................................... 29

PG_DUMP......................................................................................................................................................... 29

Install BoostFS on application host ............................................................................................................... 30

Configure BoostFS on application host......................................................................................................... 30

PG_DUMP Backup and Restore .................................................................................................................... 30

Best Practices – Enterprise DB with pg_dump ............................................................................................. 30

Performance: Enterprise DB ........................................................................................................................... 30

Storware vProtect: .................................................................................................................. 30

Overview and BoostFS Integration Guide ..................................................................................................... 31

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 31
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Introduction
This purpose of this paper is to provide best practices for deploying and using applications with the Data Domain DD Boost File System
Plug-In (BoostFS). These best practices and insights for using these applications with BoostFS have been validated through lab
testing. Administrators and operators will better understand how to configure the application to optimize all the benefits of BoostFS.

Audience
This paper is intended for Dell EMC customers, Dell EMC sales, Dell EMC systems engineers, EMC partners, and anyone else who is
interested in learning more about the DD Boost File System Plug-In technology and all the unique benefits that it can provide.

Executive summary
Within the Data Domain community, the popularity of DD Boost is at an all-time high with an over 70% attach rate. You might wonder:
With all this success why did Dell EMC create BoostFS? The answer is simple: to make the benefits of DD Boost immediately available
to hundreds applications by introducing a single feature.

Introduced in DD OS 6.0, the DD Boost File System Plug-In (BoostFS) resides on the application system, presenting a standard file
system mount point to the application. With direct access to a BoostFS mount point, the application can leverage the storage and
network efficiencies of the DD Boost protocol for backup and recovery. Only simple qualification is needed for the application to
support BoostFS, shortening the time to market. Also, the file system interface makes BoostFS easy to deploy, allowing it to be up
and running in minutes. By leveraging the DD Boost technology, BoostFS helps reduce bandwidth usage, can improve backup-times,
offers load-balancing, in-flight encryption, and supports the Data Domain multi-tenancy feature set.

As a file server system implementation, the BoostFS workflow is similar to NFS but also leverages the DD Boost protocol. In addition,
BoostFS improves the backup times compared to NFS and various copy-based solutions. Redirecting NFS workloads to BoostFS is
easy and non-disruptive to the environment in addition to being transparent to users.

BoostFS is now available for customers with active licenses for the DD Boost Software Option or Data Domain Virtual Edition.

Supported Configurations
BoostFS is a program available for any application or workload that supports the NFS protocol on Data Domain. The benefits of
BoostFS were validated before BoostFS was put into production. See the following list of validated applications:

Applications:

Application Version Backup Software Platform

Commvault Simpana V10,v11 Commvault On-prem, AWS, Azure
MongoDB V2.6,v3.0, OpsMgr, mongodump On-prem, AWS, Azure
v3.2, v3.4
MySQL V5.6, v5.7 MySQL Enterprise Backup, On-prem, AWS, Azure
Percona XtraBackup, mydumper
Enterprise DB V9.x EDB Backup and Recovery Tool On-prem, AWS, Azure
(BART)
IBM TSM/Spectrum V7.x Spectrum On-prem
Storware vProtect V2.x vProtect On-prem
Oracle Incremental 12c Oracle ASM 2.0 On-prem
Merge (OIM)
Redis v3.2 redis.dump On-prem

6
Operating Systems:
 Linux Distribution
Redhat Enterprise v6, v7
SUSE Enterprise v11, v12
Ubuntu v14, v12
Oracle Linux v6,v7
CentOS v6, v7

NOTE: Fuse v2.8 or higher is required

Data Domain Platforms:

Systems
DD OS v6.0, v6.1
DD VE v3.0, v3.1
IDPA 2.0

Application Server Sizing for the Cloud:

Supported configurations listed in the chart below. Platform that are recommended are highlighted in bold, to optimize the storage and
network effeciencies with BoostFS.

Storage Type Server Instance

AWS ST1 m4.xLarge
GP2 m4.2xLarge
m4.4xLarge
Azure EBS/HDD Standard_F4
ST1 Standard_F8

Performance
This document is intended to help customers understand the performance characteristics of BoostFS v1.0 with different applications
and with DD OS 6.0. Each application section contains charts that compares backup and restore performance of BoostFS with NFS, in
percentages. The percentage represents the performance difference between BoostFS and NFS for that workload. The figures in this
paper should only be used as a guideline.

There are a large number of factors that affect the potential achievable performance of both the Data Domain system itself and the
customer’s backup environment as a whole. Blindly using the data provided herein without proper knowledge of the customer’s
environment is a recipe for setting unrealistic customer expectations or designing for unachievable performance.

While this integration guide touches on many aspects of how BoostFS performs with different applications, it is not meant to be used as
a substitute for the sizing process that includes collecting the customer’s information and the need to model the solution in the
Dell/EMC Solution Builder. Solution Builder is the official application used to size Data Domain and Avamar with Data Domain
Solutions. The DPS Backup and Recovery Design Center (BRDC) is your primary source for sizing help. Contact them by email at
DPADBRDC@dell.com or through their website, http://brdc.corp.emc.com/. Solution Builder bug reports and Requests for
Enhancements should be emailed to DPAD Presales Tools Support.

MongoDB: mongodump
The mongodump utility is provided by MongoDB to dump the whole database to a desired location. You dump the database to a
BoostFS file system mounted on the server where the MongoDB database process mongod is running. mongodump backs up the
database, which can consist of several collections.

Setup BoostFS 7
Install BoostFS on the MongoDB server to be backed up.
Create a mountpoint /backup and mount DD Storage Unit using BoostFS.

How to perform backup

The use of numParallelCollections in mongodump enables us to backup n collections is parallel. If there are more than n collections in
the mongodb database, they will be backed up n collections at a time
This creates the testdb directory under /backup and stores all the collections (test1 – test5) as shown below:

NOTE: The numParallelCollections enables us to use multiple write streams (one per collection) to the DataDomain system.

How to execute a restore

Use mongorestore to restore the database dump to a running mongod instance.

To restore the database “data” backed up to the boostfs mount point /mnt/mongo-bkp using mongodump, use the mongorestore
command as shown below. This restores the files to the database “demo-restore”.

# mongorestore --db demo-restore /mnt/mongo-bkp/data/

2016-08-24T12:58:08.675-0400 building a list of collections to restore from /mnt/mongo-bkp/data dir

2016-08-24T12:58:08.680-0400 reading metadata for demo-restore.cc from /mnt/mongo-bkp/data/cc.metadata.json

2016-08-24T12:58:08.757-0400 restoring demo-restore.cc from /mnt/mongo-bkp/data/cc.bson

2016-08-24T12:58:11.397-0400 restoring indexes for collection demo-restore.cc from metadata

2016-08-24T12:58:11.397-0400 finished restoring demo-restore.cc (75000 documents)

2016-08-24T12:58:11.398-0400 done

Restores can also be done in parallel using multiple streams. Mongorestore first opens the meta data file, keeps it open ad begins
reading the data file, and finally closes both files, for each collection.

Performance: mongodump

The following chart shows the write and read performance for this application with BoostFS compared to the same workload over NFS.
The percentages represent the amount of incremental performance measured in our labs for this use case. The write figures are
based upon multiple databased backups (0-3) with a change rate of 10%. 8
 Number of Streams Single Multiple

Writes % > NFS 30% 50%

For recovery, testing has shown the restore performance of BoostFS to be about the same as NFS.Best practices - mongodump

1. mongodump writes the backup files to the Data Domain systems in an uncompressed format, with using either Wired Tiger or
MMAPV1 storage engine.

2. MongoDB backups using mongodump always dump whole databases, which are full backups.

3. One mongodump stream per MongoDB server.

4. Up to 63 streams per BoostFS plug-in.

MongoDB: Operations Manager

MongoDB Operation Manager (OpsMgr) is the only tool that provides a consistent enterprise backups across a sharded cluster, and will
consolidate backups of all shards into one location. From this location, Operations Manager moves the snapshot to Data Domain through
the DD Boost file system plug-in. With Operations Manager, a number of factors come into play to optimize the storage and network
efficiencies of DD Boost, including

1. Storage Engine Type

a. Wired Tiger
b. MMAPv1
2. Operations Manager Version & Compression
a. V2.7.0 with File System Store Compression Level
b. V3.4.0 with Wired Tiger Snapshot Compression Setting

Storage Engine Type:

With MongoDB you have the option to choose one of the two storage engines available – Wired Tiger or MMAPv1. MMAPv1 was the
default engine for all versions of MongoDB until v3.2, which stores production data in a uncompressed format (see chart).

ired Tiger is the newer, more advanced storage engine that was released with the introduction of MongoDB v3.0, which data is
compressed by default. Backing up compressed data to Data Domain will result in lower than expected deduplication that will impact
storage efficiencies.

9
To optimize BoostFS efficiencies compression and encryption need to be disabled at the application so the MMAPv1 storage engine will
provide the best results. Data Domain can consume backups from Wired Tiger implementations but at a lower dedupe rate (4:1), about
50% less than what you would see with MMAPv1.

Operations Manager Compression: In addition to storage engine compression, OpsMgr allows operators to compress the files a second
time before they are sent to backup storage.

Backup Snapshots use multiple levels of GZIP compression ranging from ‘0’ to ’10’, with “6” being the default setting. To optimize
BoostFS, the compression level for OpsMgr v2.7.0 should be set to ‘0.’ It important to point out that Level to ‘0’ does apply a small
amount of compression, resulting in some overhead. OpsMgr eliminates this problem by allowing admins to set the snapshot
compression level to ‘none.’ Plus the compression level is a global setting.

Note: OpsMgr v2.7.0 or higher is required for BoostFS.

Level 1-10, Default 6

Create File System Store – Compression Setting

With OpsMgr v3.4.0, administrators can set the compression level at the file system mount point when creating a file systems store.

Over-rides backup
snapshot compression

Set the WiredTiger / MMapV1 storage compression setting to “none” for each BoostFS mount point so files are sent uncompressed to the
Data Domain. This becomes the default this mount point, overriding the global (GZIP) compression setting.

With Wired Tiger snapshot compression set to “none”, we have seen a 60% increase in write performance compared to backups with
GZIP level ‘0’ compression.

The chart below summarizes the BoostFS result of the OpsMgr use cases with compression disabled for each storage engine.

10
 OpsManager Performance:

OpsManager Storage Engine Compress Level % > NFS Single Stream

Write (MiBs)

V2.7.0 MAPPv1 Backup SnapShots - +40% 110

Set to "0"
V2.7.0 WT Backup SnapShots - +30% 110
Set to "0"
V3.4.0 MAPPv1 File System Store - +60% 150
Set to "none"
V3.4.0 WT File System Store - +50% 230
Set to "none"

Notes: Figures based upon 3 backup sets with a 10% change rate. Single stream write throughput is based upon 3 rd backup.

Setup BoostFS plug-in

1. Let /mongodb-backup be the mountpoint where BoostFS is mounted on the Ops Manager Server.
2. From the Ops Manager GUI, navigate to Admin  Backup  Snapshot Storage and click on create New File System Store.
3. Provide File System Store Name and for Path fill in /mongodb-backup and Save.

How to perform a backup and restore

Refer to the MongoDB Backup and Restore deployments for backing up replica sets and shards using Ops Manager.

https://docs.opsmanager.mongodb.com/current/tutorial/nav/backup-use/

Set OpsMgr Compression to level 0

1. Log into the Ops Manager

11
2. Navigate to Admin  General  Ops Manager Config  Miscellaneous tab

3. For Backup Snapshots set the File System Store Gzip Compression Level to 0.

Refer to MongoDB Configuration Options for additional details: https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/reference/configuration-

options/#storage.wiredTiger.collectionConfig.blockCompressor

Best Practices – MongoDB OpsMgr

1. Set file system compression level to “none” in OpsMgr v3.4

2. Set Backup SnapShot compression level to “0” in Ops Mgr

3. Always use OpsMgr 2.0.7 or higher.

4. For the best results, MMAPv1 storage engine with OpsMgr v3.4 is preferred.
5. Wired Tiger backups contain compressed data

6. OpsMgr backup streams are limited to one per server

7. BoostFS plug-in should be installed on the OpsMgr server

8. Up to 63 streams per BoostFS plug-in

MySQL: Enterprise Backup

MySQL Enterprise Backup provides enterprise-grade backup and recovery for MySQL. It delivers hot, online, non-blocking backups on
multiple platforms including Linux.

Setup BoostFS
Install BoostFS on the MySQL server to be backed up.

12
Create a mountpoint /backup and mount DD Storage Unit using BoostFS

How to disable compression and encryption:

--compress=TRUE/FALSE (default) by default compression is disabled, so backup command without this option will backup without
compression.

--encrypt=TRUE/FALSE (default) by default encryption is disabled, so backup command without this option will backup without
encryption.

How to perform a backup

mysqlbackup --no-defaults --debug --force --trace=0 --user=root --password=passwd --host=ostqa-len35.datadomain.com --port=3306 -
-with-timestamp --backup-dir=/mounts/bfs/si-gen1 --backup-image=/mounts/bfs/si-gen1.img backup-to-image &> mysqlbackup-
$BFSPREFIX.out

How to execute a restore

mysqlbackup --no-defaults --debug --force --trace=0 --user=root --password=passwd --host=ostqa-len35.datadomain.com --port=3306 -
-with-timestamp --backup-dir=/mounts/bfs/si-gen1 --backup-image=/mounts/bfs/si-gen1.img --datadir=/mnt/1tbpart/mysql copy-back-
and-apply-log &> mysqlbackup-$BFSPREFIX.out

Best Practices – MySQL Enterprise Backup

1. Disable software compression and encryption for better data deduplication
2. Avoid using incremental backup
3. One backup stream per database

MySQL Backup Tools

To determine the best backup application for BoostFS with MySQL, three different backup tools were tested with BoostFS: MySQL
Enterprise Backup, MyDumper, and Percona Xtrabackup.

MySQL: mydumper
mydumper is a free, open source online backup tool for MySQL data, providing:

1. Parallelism (hence, speed) and performance (avoids expensive character set conversion routines, efficient code overall).
2. Easier to manage output (separate files for tables, dump metadata, etc, easy to view/parse data).

3. Consistency - maintains snapshot across all threads, provides accurate master and slave log positions, etc.

URL: https://answers.launchpad.net/mydumper/+faq/338

Setup BoostFS
Install BoostFS on the MySQL server to be backed up.

Create a mountpoint /backup and mount DD Storage Unit using BoostFS.

Disable compression
--compress/-c option enables compression on output files during backup by default this option is not enabled, so if we don't specify the
option on CLI compression will be disabled.

How to configure multiple streams

CLI option –threads (<64) will enable multiple streams during backup or restore as shown above.

13
How to perform a backup
/emc/src/mydumper/mydumper-0.9.1/mydumper --user=root --password=passwd --host=ostqa-len35.datadomain.com --port=3306 --
database db1 --threads=63 --outputdir /mounts/bfs/gen0

How to execute a restore

/emc/src/mydumper/mydumper-0.9.1/myloader --user=root --password=passwd --host=ostqa-len35.datadomain.com --port=3306 --
threads=63 --directory=/mounts/bfs/gen1

How to configure multiple streams

CLI option --threads will enable multiple streams during backup or restore as shown above.

Best Practices – MySQL Enterprise Backup

1. Install mydumper on each MySQL server
2. Disable software compression and encryption for better data deduplication

3. Enable multiple streams for greater throughput

4. Multi-stream recovery is not supprted

5. Up to 63 streams per BoostFS plug-in

MySQL: Percona Xtrabackup

Percona XtraBackup is a free, open source, complete online backup solution for all versions of Percona Server, MySQL® and
MariaDB®. With over 1,000,000 downloads, Percona XtraBackup performs online non-blocking, tightly compressed, highly secure
backups on transactional systems so that applications remain fully available during planned maintenance windows.

URL https://www.percona.com/software/mysql-database/percona-xtrabackup

Setup BoostFS
Install BoostFS on the MySQL server to be backed up.

Create a mount point /backup and mount DD Storage Unit using BoostFS

Disable compression and encryption

--compress[=name] Compress individual backup files using the specified compression algorithm. Currently the only supported
algorithm is 'quicklz'. It is also the default algorithm, i.e. the one used when --compress is used without an argument. By default
compression is disabled, so backup command without this option will backup without compression.

--encrypt=name Encrypt individual backup files using the specified encryption algorithm.

Configure multiple streams

CLI option --parallel as shown in above backup/restore command enables multi-stream (<64).

How to perform a backup

/usr/bin/xtrabackup --user=root --password=Password@123 --host=ostqa-len35.datadomain.com --port=3306 --databases=db1 --
parallel=50 --backup --target-dir=/mounts/bfs/gen0 --data-dir=/mnt/1tbpart/mysql &> xtrabackup-$BFSPREFIX.out

How to execute a restore

/usr/bin/xtrabackup --user=root --password=Password@123 --host=ostqa-len35.datadomain.com --port=3306 --databases=db1 --
parallel=60 --copy-back --target-dir=/mounts/bfs/gen0 --data-dir=/mnt/1tbpart/mysql &> xtrabackup-$BFSPREFIX.out

Best Practices – Percona Xtrabackup

1. Disable software compression and encryption for better data deduplication
14
2. Enable multiple streams for greater throughput

3. Multi-stream recovery is not supported

4. Up to 63 streams per BoostFS plug-in

Performance: MySQL
The following chart shows the write and read performance for this application with BoostFS compared to the same workload over NFS.
The percentages represent the amount of incremental performance measured in our labs for this use case. Write figures based upon
multiple databased backups (0-3) with a change rate of 10%.

BoostFS ingest performance (%) greater than NFS

Backup Application MySQL Mydumper** XtraBackup*

Enterprise
Backup*

Single 30% 35% 25%

Multiple N/A 50% 40%

* BoostFS restore performance was measured to be about the same as NFS.

** BoostFS restore performance was 25% slower than NFS.

Commvault Simpana v10, v11

Setup BoostFS
Mount the BoostFS filesystem on the media agent (Linux box).

Example: opt/emc/boostfs/bin/boostfs mount -d <ddr_hostname> -s <storage_unit> /mnt/bfs_mp/

Initiating a backup
This involves three steps:

1. Setting up disk library to a BoostFS mount point

2. Setting up a Storage Policy
3. Setting up a subclient

Setting up a disk library

In the Simpana Commcell Console, create a disk library.

15
Under Storage Resources->Libraries, Right Click on Libraries->Add->Disk Library.

16
Choose a library name and the media agent on which BoostFS was mounted. And the Disk Device is the location of the BoostFS mount
point on the media agent.

17
Set up a storage policy

Under Policies, Right Click on Storage Policies->New Storage Policy.

18
Choose the BoostFS disk library we intend to use.

Choose the media agent where BoostFS is mounted.

19
The number of stream here has no significance as far as BoostFS streams are concerned. You can leave it as default.

20
Under the new storage policy we just created, Right Click on Primary(Snap)->Properties.

Under the Advanced tab, Uncheck the “Enabled software compression on clients” checkbox to disable Commvault compression as a
best practice when using with BoostFS.

21
Setup a sub-client to choose what data to backup.

Under the Client Computers, under the client computer from where the backups should be done (in this example the client and the
media agent are the same machine), choose File System, Right Click on defaultBackupSet->All Tasks->New Subclient. This will take
you the Subclient properties window.

You can also create new backup sets if needed (The Commvault admin should know how to do this).

22
Under the General tab, choose a name for this sub-client. A sub-client actually specifies what data on the clients should be backed up.

Under the Content tab, choose the files/directories to be backed up.

Under the Storage Device tab, under Data Storage Policy, choose the storage policy for this backup as the appropriate BoostFS
storage policy. This is how the backups know where it should go. The subclient knows which policy to use, which in turn knows which
library to backup to, which in BoostFS is a disk library pointing to a BoostFS mount point.

23
Under the Storage Device tab, under Data Transfer Option, choose “Off” for software compression. “Use Storage Policy Settings” can
be chosen if software compression is disabled at the Storage Policy properties.

How to configure multiple streams

The number of data readers under the Advanced options tab is used for multiple stream counts with BoostFS. After choosing all the
configuration options under all specified tabs, click OK finally.

24
How to perform a backup

How to execute a restore

25
Performance: Commvault Simpana

The following chart shows the write and read performance for this application with BoostFS compared to the same workload over NFS.
The percentages represent the amount of incremental performance measured in our labs for this use case. Write figures based upon
multiple databased backups (0-3) with a change rate of 10%.

Number of Streams 1-8 16-48 48+

Writes – % > NFS 25% 25% 25%

Reads - % > NFS * 5% 10% 10%

Best Practices – Commvault Simpana

1. Disable software compression and encryption for better data deduplication
2. Enable multiple streams for greater throughput
3. Up to 63 streams per BoostFS

IBM: Tivoli Storage Manager/ Spectrum Protect

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (IBM TSM) is an enterprise class backup and archiving application. IBM TSM, like all enterprise
backup software products, is designed to make copies of an organization's data to protect against data loss.

Setup BoostFS

Disable compression and encryption

Do not select deduplication in TSM configuration.

Do not select compression in TSM configuration.

26
 Configure TSM v7.1 for BoostFS

On the TSM server, define device class named boostfs of device type ‘file’ and destination folder /mnt_boostfs (BoostFS mount point).

tsm: TSMCLIENT>define devclass boostfs devt=file dir=/mnt_boostfs

ANR2203I Device class BOOSTFS defined.

Define storage pool named boostfs belonging to the device class boostfs.

tsm: TSMCLIENT>define stg boostfs boostfs maxscratch=9999

ANR2200I Storage pool BOOSTFS defined (device class BOOSTFS).

Update standard copy group’s destination storage pool to boostfs.

tsm: TSMCLIENT>upd co standard standard standard dest=boostfs

ANR1532I Backup copy group STANDARD updated in policy domain STANDARD, set
STANDARD, management class STANDARD.

Activate the policy.

tsm: TSMCLIENT>act po standard standard
Do you wish to proceed? (Yes (Y)/No (N)) y
ANR1514I Policy set STANDARD activated in policy domain STANDARD.
tsm: TSMCLIENT>

How to perform a backup

The methods available to backup databases (structured) and files (unstructured) differ with IBM TSM. TSM offers full backups for
databases and files, and the option of incremental backups for files. Full backups are recommended to get the most out of the network
and storage efficiencies of DD Boost. Boost offers the speed of an incremental with the operational benefits of full backups. BoostFS
can receive and store Incremental backups but with less compression.

It’s important to note, database backups are multi-stream while file system backups are restricted to a single stream.

Summary of TSM backup methods:

 Database (ie DB2) - Full backup (single or multi-stream)

 Files System - Full or Incremental backup (single or multi-stream)

Multi-stream Backup and Restore

To use multiple sessions or streams for backup, select the resourceutilization option in dsm.sys file and maxnummp server parameter on
“UPDATE NODE” command to allow multiple session backup and restore.

Note: Streams are allocated one per file.

Filesystem backup using TSM

On the TSM client (dsmc), we initiate the backup or restore. The command can either be for selective backups (backup) or
incremental backups (incremental) or restores (restore)

 dsmc incr <data-dir> -subdir=yes

Command to set up incremental file system backups

 “dsmc incremental /data/ subdir=yes” will do incremental forever backup.

Command to set up full file system backups

27
  “dsmc selective /data/ subdir=yes” will do full backup all the time.

Note: File system backups will default to using multiple streams if enabled.

Database backup using TSM (DB2 example)

 db2 backup db <db-name> use tsm open <n> sessions

 db2 restore db <db-name> use tsm open <n> sessions taken at <time>

Note: For mutli-stream backups, multi-streaming must be enabled and the <n> session parameter must have a value greater than 1.

How to execute a restore

File System Restore

 dsmc restore <data-dir> <restore-dir>

Note: Use options pitdate and pittime to restore backup taken at a specific time.

Database restore (DB2 example)

 Restore to db: “db2 restore db <db-name> use tsm open <n> sessions taken at <time>”

Note: For mutli-stream backups, multi-streaming must be enabled and the <n> session parameter must have a value greater than 1

Best Practices – IBM TSM

1. Disable software compression and encryption for better data deduplication
2. Enable multiple streams for greater throughput

3. Use full backups for file systems

4. Up to 63 streams per BoostFS plug-in

Performance: IBM TSM

The following chart shows the write and read performance for this application with BoostFS compared to the same workload over NFS.
The percentages represent the amount of incremental performance measured in our labs for this use case. Write figures based upon
multiple backup sets (0-3) with a change rate of 10%

Number of Streams Application Type Single Multiple

Writes - % > NFS Database Full 200% 250%

Writes – % > NFS File System Full 400% 220%

Writes - % NFS File System Incr 500% 250%

Note: BoostFS for TSM restore performance was measured to be about the same as NFS.

28
 Enterprise DB (postgresQL)
The EDB Postgres Platform is an enterprise-class data management platform based on the open source database PostgreSQL,
complemented by tool kits for management, integration, and migration; flexible deployment options, and services and support to enable
enterprises to deploy Postgres responsibly at scale.
Backup and Recovery Tool (BART)
The EDB Backup and Recovery Tool (BART) is an administrative utility providing simplified backup and recovery management for
multiple local or remote Postgres Plus Advanced Server and PostgreSQL database servers. Managing backups of your important
business data and the speedy recovery of your data in case of an incident is critical for any organization.

Configure BART for BoostFS

On the BART server, edit BART configuration file “/usr/edb-bart-1.1/etc/bart.cfg”, and define backup path pointing to BoostFS mount
point. Here is a simple example of bart.cfg for the BoostFS device mounted on the mount point “/mnt_boostfs”

[BART]
bart-host= postgres@10.1.1.1
backup_path = /mnt_boostfs
pg_basebackup_path = /opt/PostgresPlus/9.5AS/bin/pg_basebackup
xlog-method = fetch
logfile = /tmp/bart.log
# keep compression disabled
wal_compression= disabled Disable Compression

[BoostFS_BKUP]
host = 10.1.1.1

The following configuration parameters must be set in the postgresql.conf file on the database server to be backed up to enable W AL
archiving

 Set wal_level to archive.

 Set archive_mode to on.
 Set the archive_command to copy the WAL files to the BART backup catalog.
 Set max_wal_senders to a value high enough to leave at least one session available for the backup. If the xlog-method=stream parameter
setting is to be used by this database server as determined in the BART configuration file, the max_wal_senders setting must account for an
additional session for the transaction log streaming (that is, the setting must be a minimum of 2).

The pg_hba.conf file must include a corresponding replication connection entry for the BART replication user (postgres – default user is used for this
example) as shown in the following example. The replication database user must have access to database template1 as well.

local replication postgres md5

hostnossl replication postgres samehost trust

BART Backup & Restore

BART is run using “postgres”, switch to postgres user.

Initialize BART configuration (CATALOG): ./bart -d -c /usr/edb-bart-1.1/etc/bart.cfg init -s BoostFS_BKUP –o

Backup: ./bart -d -c /usr/edb-bart-1.1/etc/bart.cfg BACKUP -s BoostFS_BKUP --format=p

Restore: - ./bart RESTORE -s BoostFS_BKUP -i <backup ID> -p <restore path>

For complete details of BART backup and restore command reference, please refer to online “EDB Backup and Recovery Tool Guide”

Best Practices – Enterprise DB with BART

1. Disable software compression and encryption for better data deduplication
2. Multi-stream recovery is not supported
3. Up to 63 streams per BoostFS plug-in

PG_DUMP

pg_dump is a utility for backing up a PostgreSQL database. It makes consistent backups even if the database is being used concurrently.
pg_dump does not block other users accessing the database (readers or writers). Dumps can be output in script or archive file formats.

29
 Install BoostFS on application host

 rpm -ivh DDBoostFS-1.1.0.0-556196.rhel.x86_64.rpm (RHEL and SuSE)

 dpkg -i DDBoostFS_1.1.0.0_556196_amd64.deb (Ubuntu)

After installation, the DDBoostFS package files are located under /opt/emc/boostfs

Configure BoostFS on application host

Setup lockbox:
/opt/emc/boostfs/bin/boostfs lockbox set -d <DDR/DDVE IP or Hostname > -s < storage-unit > -u <DDR/DDVE user> [Press Enter]

Example: /opt/emc/boostfs/bin/boostfs lockbox set –d 10.1.1.23 –s bfs –u bfs_user

Mount BoostFS:
/opt/emc/boostfs/bin/boostfs mount -d <DDR/DDVE IP or Hostname > -s < storage-unit >
-o allow-others=true <mount point>

Example: /opt/emc/boostfs/bin/boostfs mount -d 10.2.1.23 –s bfs –o allow-others=true /mnt_boostfs

PG_DUMP Backup and Restore

BoostFS mount point can be specified as a “target” location in pg_dump commands:

Backup (plain) - Ensure not to encrypt and not to compress backup

./pg_dump --format=p --file "/mnt_boostfs/bfs_gen0.backup" --dbname="bfsevaluation" --host=localhost --port=5432 --

username="root" –password

Backup (directory with multi streams)

./pg_dump -h localhost -p 5432 -U "postgres" --no-password -F d -j 10 -Z 0 --verbose -f "/mnt_boostfs/dirbkp" "bfsevaluation"

Restore
Psql –set ON_ERROR_STOP=on bfsevaluation < /mnt_boostfs/bfs_gen0.backup

Best Practices – Enterprise DB with pg_dump

1. Disable software compression and encryption for better data deduplication
2. Multi-stream recovery is not supported
3. Up to 63 streams per BoostFS plug-in

Performance: Enterprise DB
The following chart shows the write and read performance for this application with BoostFS compared to the same workload over NFS.
The percentages represent the amount of incremental performance measured in our labs for this use case. Write figures based upon
multiple databased backups (0-3) with a change rate of 10%.

BoostFS ingest performance (%) greater than NFS

Backup Application BART PG_Dump

Single 200% 180%

* BoostFS restore performance was measured to be about the same as NFS

Storware vProtect:

Storware vProtect is an enterprise backup solution for virtual environments. It facilitates the implementation of virtual machine backup
running on open platforms such as Citrix XenServer, Xen (based on a regular Linux distribution), RHEV, oVirt, KVM, KVM for IBMz,
Proxmox and Oracle VM. By using hot-clone feature one is now able to quickly push VM’s backup to vProtect Server. Dynamic
reconfigurations are available directly from the web interface.

30
Overview and BoostFS Integration Guide

BoostFS integraton guide with Storware vProtect and other content can be found on the DD community site:

https://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-58976

https://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-59052

Conclusion
This integration guide has provided some best practices for deploying and using applications with the DD Boost File System Plug-In
(BoostFS). These best practices and insights for using these applications with BoostFS have been validated through lab testing. After
reading this paper, administrators and operators will better understand how to configure the application to optimize all the benefits of
BoostFS.

31