virtualmin backups

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#1 Sun, 01/30/2011 - 14:58

helpmin

virtualmin backups

I scheduled a virtualmin backup. the job usually runs for two hours (including ftp to another server). The job apparently puts quite some load on the server, because other websites timeout during that time.

Is it possible in Virtualmin to schedule the backup in a way that it runs the backup "more gentle"?

#2 Sun, 01/30/2011 - 15:05

andreychek

Howdy,

Yeah, the backups can be a bit IO intensive... that would be even more of an issue on a VPS that shares it's resources with other systems.

To reduce the load, you could try going into Webmin -> Webmin -> Webmin Configuration -> Advanced Options, and look at the options "CPU priority for scheduled jobs" and "IO priority for scheduled jobs".

-Eric

#3 Sun, 01/30/2011 - 15:07

helpmin

Thanks for the quick response. I appreciate it!

#4 Sat, 02/05/2011 - 05:10

helpmin

I changed the settings and verified with top that the settings changed. Unfortunately these settings didn't help much (only a "little"). Is there a more gentle way to do a backup? Any ideas or pointers are appreciated as always.

#5 Sat, 02/05/2011 - 10:32

andreychek

Unfortunately, the backup process is CPU and IO intensive -- it takes a lot of resources to review all the files on the server, and to load them into a tar archive.

Two thoughts though --

You may want to review different archive types. For example, pbzip2 is supposed to better take advantage of multiple CPU's (and cores). Depending on your server, you might find that pbzip2, or some other archive type, helps reduce the load on your server. Those are options you can select within the backup settings.

Alternatively, although there's no way to configure this within Virtualmin -- you could always use another tool for backing up the files on your server.

So, allow Virtualmin's backup process to backup everything but the files in user's homedirs -- and then use another tool such as rsync to backup the files themselves, perhaps sending them to a remote server.

You would need to configure rsync manually to do that, but it would work, and would likely result in requiring less resources to run.

-Eric

#6 Sat, 02/05/2011 - 11:51

helpmin

Unfortunately I am not quite sure what part of the backup makes apache timeout (anybody knows a good tool?). Tar? Gzip? Ssh? Or pretty much everything? I will experiment with all the different options :-)

#7 Sat, 02/05/2011 - 14:45

Locutus

Easy to find that out: turn them off one by one, starting with those you suspect most (home directory contents and databases are hot candidates), and see when it stops timing out. :)

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