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Thread: cPanel daily backup: Load issues
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05-05-2008, 06:29 AM #1Aspiring Evangelist
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cPanel daily backup: Load issues
Hello,
I have my WHM/cPanel installation configured with daily and weekly backups. I checked at what time of the day the server load was at the minimum and configured the cPanel backup cron to run then.
The problem now is: Backing up a few hundred accounts results in a high server load. My server configuration:
Dual Processor Quad Core Xeon 5335 2.0GHz with 4GB RAM and 2 x 250GB SATA HDD hosted at SoftLayer.
The accounts are located on the first HDD and the backup archives are placed on the second HDD.
What can I do about this? I'd like to take daily backups of all accounts but not if my server load increases up to 10... That kind of renders the cPanel backup feature useless if it doesn't even work on a powerful server like this one...
Would it help if I use an application such as Auto Nice Daemon to give the backup process a lower priority? But then again that won't work on the MySQL dumps? And I think it's not a CPU problem but an I/O wait problem? Other processes have to wait for disk access because the disk-intensive backup process is running?
Any other suggestions?
Thanks!
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05-05-2008, 07:49 AM #2Web Hosting Master
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You can set least priority to the process by altering the backup cron command as follows
nice -n 19 /scripts/cpbackupDavid | www.cliffsupport.com
Affordable Server Management Solutions sales AT cliffsupport DOT com
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05-05-2008, 10:07 AM #3Aspiring Evangelist
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Some questions:
- Will lowering the priority of this script actually resolve the issue?
- Will other processes spawn by the cpbackup script also run with lower priority? For example the gzip command that is executed to package the archive in a .gz file.
- This won't have any effect on the MySQL dump process, right? That one will still run with regular MySQL priority?
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05-05-2008, 10:48 AM #4Web Hosting Master
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Yes, all process spawned by the process will run with least priority. No other process will be affected.
David | www.cliffsupport.com
Affordable Server Management Solutions sales AT cliffsupport DOT com
CliffWebManager | Access WHM from iPhone and Android
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05-05-2008, 12:04 PM #5
While nice might help the issue, there are other things that will help more.
Firstly, have your users remove mail from the system. I've seen cases where users literally have thousands of (unread or read) mails on the system. This adds a great deal of time. Mail should never be stored 'on the server', always on the local PC.
Secondly, do NOT use compression for backups. Compression is THE #1 reason your backup is slowing down, because it is going to just kill your server with load.
Thirdly, move the larger accounts to their own server. Charge them more to make up for it, but move them off. This will reduce the load, and actual copy time.Tom Whiting, WHMCS Guru extraordinaire
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05-05-2008, 04:07 PM #6Aspiring Evangelist
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Thanks for the advice. Though how do you force users to remove mail from the server? I keep all my emails hosted on the server myself since I'm using IMAP on multiple locations. This is a great advantage.
About compression: Unless you use the incremental cPanel backup method, it's always compressed with GZIP as far as I can tell... Correct me if I'm wrong.
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05-05-2008, 04:15 PM #7About compression: Unless you use the incremental cPanel backup method, it's always compressed with GZIP as far as I can tell... Correct me if I'm wrong.Tom Whiting, WHMCS Guru extraordinaire
Linux problems? WHMCS Problems? Give me a shout
Check out my WHMCS Addons
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05-05-2008, 04:20 PM #8Newbie
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very detailed and helpful, thanks a lot.
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05-05-2008, 05:47 PM #9Aspiring Evangelist
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05-06-2008, 11:07 AM #10Junior Guru
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I'm using also Incremental method for backup but latly I find out I have weird problem, one database (as I know) is NOT created on the backup HDD, the mysql dump is just 300bytes .. ~10 lines of code.
This happents on a medium size database ~200Mb
I have wrote about my problem here : http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=690283 .. and still no solution yet