Backup Exex 2010 R2 Slow Backups - w2k3 w/ scsi lto3 drive

[michael_t_ander]

I have a server that was backing up normally with backup exec 10d, it slowed to less than 400mb per minute, causing the backup to run for over 24 hours.  I tried several suggestions in the forums, without success.

I upgraded the software from be 10d sp4 to backup exec 2010 R2, in the hope that it would fix the issue.  However, I am still having the same issue and the backups are still very slow, still taking a day plus to complete the daily full backups. 

I have tried modifying the SCSI configuration, removing Write single block node and removing all compression without getting an increase in speed.

I have taken the step of running incrementals Monday through Thursday and only running fulls on Friday's, to make sure the backups complete.

I have also rebooted the server and drive and reseated the scsi and tape drive connections to see if that would help clear things up.

Any ideas of what to look at next would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

.

[pkh]

Is the disk of the problem server badly fragmented? 

To eliminate tape as the cause of the slowness, you might want to backup to a disk and compare the speed.

[CraigV]

...having an AV scanning data or even the BE services can also cause some issues with backups so check and make sure that your AV isn't doing that.

[michael_t_ander]

I checked the volume for fragmentation and will see if I can get a defragmentation run on the system.

I looked through the event logs and don't see any issues with the av software. 

The backups were running fine, they started to hang on a particular file, we deleted the file as it was a local copy of a pst and the backups from that point on started running slow.

At that point we were running be 10d, I have since that point upgraded the software to be 2010 r2 to bring it into support and in the hope the speed would improve.  I have had the local admin shutdown the server and tape drive and then bring them back up, which helped in a previous case, but not in this situation.

I am somewhat limited in what I can do with the system as it is a production system.

I thought about trying ntbackup to tape to rule out the possibility that it might be the tape drive, however cannot get a window to do that work.

Any other thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks

[michael_t_ander]

Was unable to defrag the drive, not enough space or time.

At the direction of Dell applied the following changes to the registry:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;842411

Running test backups to see if speed increases.

Dell ran some diagnostics which indicated it was not a drive problem.

They also indicated that we needed more space available on the c: drive (8 GB) vice the (6.5 GB) that is currently available.

Any other ideas out there?

Thanks