Snapshot performance

[Paul Lathrop]

Hi all,

We're working on deploying a new mail server on FreeBSD 6.1-STABLE. One
of the major selling points was the ability to take filesystem snapshots
in order to make backups from a consistent filesystem on such a
high-traffic system. Unfortunately, when I take a snapshot, performance
slows to a crawl - to the point where the system stops responding to
network requests (ping, SMTP, etc.). Also, the snapshot takes 10-15
minutes to complete.

Is this a typical situation? Will I need to schedule downtime for
backups in spite of this nifty new feature? Am I doing something wrong?

Could use some advice.

Regards,
Paul Lathrop
Systems Administrator
SquareTrade, Inc.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 254 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/attachments/20060901/7198f41a/signature.pgp