Backup Exec 2010 Backup Seped question

[JerrySysAdmin]

Hello, I have gone rounds and rounds with Backup Exec and I do realize there are a lot of factors to backing up stuff but I feel like our tape backups should be faster.

We are on LTO 4 with BackupExec 2010 on a Windows 2008 platform.  I have all the servers on a Gb switch now as well.

When I do a full backup of about 2.6 TB and about 30 servers and its taking about 68 hours to backup over the weekend for which the backups dont finish until Monday.

When I do full backups I am doing system state, shadow copy and utility partition etc.....  I am also doing Verify.

Do people use Verify....?  It seem slike I can cut 10 hours off my backups if I dont use this option.

Does 2.7TB really take that long?

[Striker_303]

During verify, backup exec reads back from  tape and also connects with server to check

(It does not consumes network bandwidth or server resources during this time,

So if its left running your other operations should not be affected)

It is recommended that you use verify and most customer follow the best practice.

You can try unchecking stuff like utility partition etc which is not necessary for restore.

(Utility partition is part of dell servers which keeps server info).

[Ken_Putnam]

Does 2.7TB really take that long?

Does any specific machine run slowly, or are all of them about the same?

Do people use Verify....?  It seem slike I can cut 10 hours off my backups if I dont use this option.

Most modern drives do read-after-write, so strictly speaking, a verify is not required, but if you are a belt and suspenders kind of person ...

(Verify does NOT compare source data to data on the backup media, it reads the backup media computes checksums and compares them to checksums writtem on the media.  If the checkums match, the backup verifies)

[Ken_Putnam]

also connects with server to check
 

No, it does not.  All it does is compute and compare checksums.  Comparing backed up data to disk data on a live file server is kind of silly if you think about it

[JerrySysAdmin]

C	6,338,832,060	Friday, July 23, 2010 11:20:50 PM	Friday, July 23, 2010 11:27:38 PM
D	905	Friday, July 23, 2010 11:27:47 PM	Friday, July 23, 2010 11:28:04 PM
E	1,023,604,267,842	Friday, July 23, 2010 11:28:16 PM	Saturday, July 24, 2010 1:38:25 PM
F	148,428,402,416	Saturday, July 24, 2010 1:38:53 PM	Saturday, July 24, 2010 4:38:47 PM
Shadow Copy	27,400,850	Saturday, July 24, 2010 4:39:02 PM	Saturday, July 24, 2010 4:39:21 PM
System State	7,515,748,143	Saturday, July 24, 2010 4:40:00 PM	Saturday, July 24, 2010 5:06:38 PM

The main chunk of time backing up is our file server which is about 1.4 TB.  It takes about 19 hours to back it up.  The Verify take almost 4 hours.

C	6,338,832,060	Monday, July 26, 2010 2:30:00 AM	Monday, July 26, 2010 2:31:20 AM	Verify
D	905	Monday, July 26, 2010 2:31:21 AM	Monday, July 26, 2010 2:31:22 AM	Verify
E	1,023,604,267,842	Monday, July 26, 2010 2:31:22 AM	Monday, July 26, 2010 6:22:30 AM	Verify
F	148,428,402,416	Monday, July 26, 2010 6:22:30 AM	Monday, July 26, 2010 6:54:58 AM	Verify
Shadow Copy	27,400,850	Monday, July 26, 2010 6:54:58 AM	Monday, July 26, 2010 6:55:00 AM	Verify
System State	7,515,748,143	Monday, July 26, 2010 6:55:00 AM	Monday, July 26, 2010 6:56:36 AM	Verify

Does 19 hours to backup 1.4TB on one server sound about right?

I am 1/2 tempted to take off verify but I am kinda nervous about doing it for obvious reasons.

I have also recommended to my manager to just add another write drive to our tape backup device.

[teiva-boy]

Yes more drives will help, so will adding in some backup to disk for some of your jobs too, then duplicate to tape.

If you want to speed up your file server backup, look into disk defragging, check AV settings, add more bandwidth (NIC trunking), add faster source disk so that it can read and send data faster.  Also if Win2k3 file server, disk alignment is key.

[Ken_Putnam]

C:     6.3GB  in       7 minutes     = about        .9 GB/min

E:      1.3TB  in     19 hours         = about    1.14 GB/min     

F:     150GB in    180 minutes     = about      .83 GB/min

so your big drive is actualy the fastest backup by about 135%

The entire verify only takes about 4 1/2 hours and should in no way affect your network traffic as long as the target devices are local to the media server.  If you include the Verify in your backup job, it would be finished by about 10PM Sat night

The disk optimization tips inTeiva-boy's post could also help cut down on your times

[JerrySysAdmin]

Is backing up Shadow Copy Components important?

If I recall I was told that only do Shadow Copy components on domain controller because of DHCP etc....

[JerrySysAdmin]

I would like an opinion on weekly backups as well pls.

I do full backups on weekend and Incrementals on weekdays.  In my incremental backups, I was choosing System State and Shadow Copy on my DCs and File Server.  Is this really necessary?  I was thinking just doing a system state on weekends would be good enough.

[teiva-boy]

Using the NTFS change journal (using modified time) should speed up incrementals.

Try that on some of the file based incremental backups

[pkh]

You should backup your system state and shadow copy because they are used to recover your server to the time of the backup.  If you just back them up on weekends then you can only recover to the state as of the previous weekend.  Anyway, they should be quite small.