Backup Exec 12.5 running very slow

[Ink]

Ever since upgrading to 12.5 my restores and backups have been running incredibly slow.  The job rate is usually well below 10 MB/min.  Currently I have a test job running and it is going at a rate of 3.00 MB/min.  After 6 hours it has backed up 1.5 GBs of a 16 GB test job.

I am running Windows Server 2008 Standard and a Dell Powervault 124T Autoloader.

Before upgrading to 12.5 and Windows 2008, our backups would take about 4 hours to do a full backup of 60 GBs.

I have moved the Powervault to another machine and the backup rates are still well below 10 MB/min.

One thing to note, when I was running the backup yesterday, I openend up a DOS window and was copy files to the server running Backup Exec and my Job Rate went up to 22 MB/min.  Still well below what I think it should be, but better than 3 MB/min.

[Ken_Putnam]

Verify that the settings for your NIC/Switch ports are NOT set to AutoMNegotiate.  rather hard set each end of each pipe to the max supported by both ends

[Ink]

The backup is being done from the local server and the tape backup is attached to the backup server via SCSI cable.

[CraigV]

Hi Ink,

There can be numerous reasons for this, from faulty hardware or tapes, to the NIC/switch port settings as Ken mentioned, to problems with your DB.
I've attached 2 links for you to read through:

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/231488.htm

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/285756.htm

Just make sure that the Removable Storage service is disabled, and that the Symantec drivers are being used. You can also check that your autoloader is not attached to a RAID controller that disks are attached too. This is another culprit for slow backups.

Laters!

[Ink]

I think we can rule out NIC/Switch port settings since I have the test server isolated on it's own and it is directly connected to the tape backup via a stand alone SCSI card and cable.  There is nothing else attached to the SCSI card.  I will look over the links to see if they can shed any light.

Anyway I can go about diagnosing if the problem is the autoloader?

[CraigV]

HP Have Library & Tape Tools which is a diagnostic toolset to troubleshoot their drivers.
I'd suggest checking the Dell website to see if they offer something similar. Run that, and see what sort of errors it might pick up.
Have you tried power-cycling your autoloader?

[Ink]

Yep, I have power cycled the autoloader.

BTW, the tape driver is Symantec version 5.1.37.0.

[CraigV]

Mmm...doesn't appear as if Dell have something like HP's LTT.
Here's a link to do some diagnostic testing from the OCP of the autoloader:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/stor-sys/124t/en/124tvs16/diag.html

[Ink]

Ok.  Some updates.  I built a test system running Windows server 2003 and tried out BEWS 10d, 11d, and 12.5 and all ran perfect.  Excellent backup and verify times.  I was using about 18GB of data for the test backup on the local server and all took about 30 minutes to backup and verify.

I rebuild the test system with Windows 2008 and throw on BEWS 12.5 and everything comes to a crawl.

I could have sworn I saw an article about Windows 2008 and some sort of SCSI check that it runs that slows down throughput or greatly effects the throughput and there was a registry edit that you could do to correct this.  For the life of me I can't find it now though.  Anyone have a clue?  There was even some sort of abbreviation for what this check was on Windows 2008.

It seems like I need to do something in 2008 to get things to run back to the speeds I saw in Windows 2003.

[Ink · Accepted solution]

Figured out what the problem was.

seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/255501.htm

seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/269214.htm

The Medium Changer was using the Dell drivers.  Once I removed them and set the medium changer to Unknown medium changer it worked like a charm.  Job rate went from 5 MB/Min to 1,130 MB/Min.



Oh and the site that I had thought I had seen, looks like it applies to Windows 2003.
support.microsoft.com/kb/842411
TUR is the abbreviation for Test Unit Ready.