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Backup Performance: Backup Exec 2010 R3 and Enterprise Vault 9 SLOW

KnutsonIT
Not applicable

We are a relatively small environment (150 mailboxes or so) and recently implemented Enterprise Vault 9 mailbox archiving.  We have our database on a SQL 2008 R2 server, the index files and vault partitions are on a dedicated ReadyNAS 4200 appliance.  We have Backup Exec 2010 R3 with the Enterprise Vault Agent backing up this data daily in a dedicated backup job.  Right the job is about 200gb in size and backup throughput is only about 270mb/min which is much much slower than anticipated ~13 hours!!  Non EV data backs up in our environment at 1300/1400 mb/minute (7 times faster).  I am looking for advice on best practices on backing up EV data in this type of environment as well as any other suggestions and ideas to boost the performance we're getting.  Performance is the same whether we send the job to our attached LTO-3 tape drive or internal SATA B2D folder.  Our BE server has 2 NICS that are teamed as well as the ReadyNAS appliance for a theoretical 2GB lan connection.

 

Thanks!

4 REPLIES 4

teiva-boy
Level 6

LAN speeds and disk speeds are often far apart from each other...  Have you tested the disk read and write speeds possible on your NAS?  Add to that, tested those speeds during heavy operations?

That said, turning on collections could improve performance to some degree for reading data off to back it up.  But lower performance when you need to retrieve data for an end user recall..

I take it SQL is being run off an iSCSI volume?  Have you tuned that?  jumbo frames, MPIO, etc?  Followed Netgears and MS's best practices fo ISCSI?

EV Index files should be plaed on fast direct attached disk or fiber channel.  Not iSCSI.  But this is for EV performance and wouldn't address backup performance...

 

You have a lot of testing to do to figure out your actual performance, before isolating what the actual culprit is.

ZeRoC00L
Level 6
Partner Accredited

This is pretty normal as EV will contain lots of small files.

What you can do is enable Collector on the Vault Store Partition(s):

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH141917

teiva-boy
Level 6

Remember, turning on collections may speed up time to backup files by CAB'ing files into larger singular files, it also slows down access time when a user wants to recall/open a file.  

Also, collections cannot be disabled once enabled for a given partition.  Keep that in mind when doing so.  There are ramifications to having to open mulitple partitions like losing SIS between partions.

In my experience when turning on collections, while it lowered the file count in a given partition greatly, backup throughput only increased by about 20% at most.  The downsides were greater than the end result of trying to get more speed...

ZeRoC00L
Level 6
Partner Accredited

True, but all depends on the speed of your EV / SQL server.
And in my experience users only rarely open archived mails, of course this also depends on the archiving strategy you choose.

What you also can do is to close the current partition, and depending on your settings, it may stop modifying this partition. If the partition is not modified anymore, you can skip the backups for it. (make sure you have at least one good backup in a secure place!)

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO27826