BE 11d 7170 Slower Backups via Network Share VS. Local Storage

[Adrian_Wells]

Hello all.  We are experiencing significantly different performance with backups and verifications between local disks vs. network shares as backup sources.

The environment:

- Symantec Backup Exec BE 11d for Windows Servers version 11.0 Rev. 7170
- Installed on a dedicated backup server, a Dell 745N - 2.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4, 1 GB RAM, 7200 RPM SATA drives in RAID 5 configuration on W2K3 Standard Edition (service pack 1) (using hardware RAID controller on the system's motherboard)
- Connected to Dell PV 122T LTO2 tape autoloader (1 drive and 8 slots) via SCSI with a Adaptec 39160 SCSI controller card
Under the "Drive Properties" within Backup Exec:
Compression is enabled
Block size (per device): 64K
Buffer size (per device): 64K
Buffer count: 10
High water count: 0
Read single block mode is NOT enabled.
Write single block mode is NOT enabled.
Read SCSI pass-through mode is NOT enabled.
Write SCSI pass-through mode is NOT enabled.
- Gigabit ethernet network between backup server and other hosts (1 hop between hosts)
- Network share is a source from a clustered NetApp filer

Backup from local RAID 5 set is 700+ MB/min to tape
Verify (as part of the same backup job) from tape to local RAID 5 set is 1700+ MB/min

Backup from network share (mounted on the W2K3 server) are 200+ MB/min to tape
Verify (as part of the same backup job) from tape to network share (mounted on the W2K3 server) is 2300+ MB/min

Tried Windows registry change per <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897346> as mentioned in this post <https://forums.symantec.com/syment/board/message?board.id=115&message.id=18276>.  No change in performance.

The same type of data is being backed up in both cases - hundreds of thousands of small files.

Why are backups from the network share considerably slower than those from the local RAID 5 set?

Thank you,
-Adrian

[PHOENIX_2]

Hi,

Well the performance of of local backup that is from RAID 5 is upto average performance. But the performance of Network Share Backup is slow.

Now let me confirm you that the performance of local backups will be higher than remote backups or network share backups.

Now in your case the same type of data is being backed up in both cases - hundreds of thousands of small files. If the data to be backed up contains too many smal files than it will definetly be slower in performance. I will suggest you try a backup of large files and check the performance rate which will be higher than earlier. It will definitely solve your query.

Thanks.