How to use the NetWorker "bigasm" direcetive on Solaris?

bigasm is a NetWorker tool that can be used to test network throughput between clients and servers via expanding small files into larger files.

All this without having to create huge data files on your systems. The bigasm tool is also useful in generating large savesets that span multiple tapes.

For Solaris/UNIX

If you are looking for the same article but with Microsoft Windows examples, click here.

1. Create a temporary directory on the client system. In this example we will use /tmp/bigasm.
2. Create a number of zero length files in your new folder

   % touch /tmp/bigasm/1
   % touch /tmp/bigasm/2

   Creating about 5-10 files are sufficient for most tests.
3. Create a directives file in that folder to invoke bigasm. You can use your favorite editor to create a .nsr file within the folder. It should contain the following command:

   bigasm -S<size>GB: *

   For example, to set the size of 10GB, we would use:

   % echo "bigasm -S10GB: *" >/tmp/bigasm/.nsr

   NOTE: You can adjust the amount of data written by adjusting the value of the -S option for bigasm here. In this example, for each file created in step #2 there will be 10GB of data generated.
4. Run a command line save from the client to the server:

   % save -vvv -s <NetWorker_Server> /tmp/bigasm

You can now monitor the throughput from the client to the server via network monitors and the NetWorker Management Conole while the backup runs.