Backup's Running Extremely Slowly

[Delo819]

Morning All,

We're having an issue with Backup Exec 2010 R3 (All Fully Patched) on a Server 2008 server.

We currently have 4 jobs in operation on this server - two SQL backups, an Exchange GRT backup and a Flat File backup.

The two SQL backups backup the databases from our two SQL servers and copy them to SAN for storage which are then backed up to tape.

The Exchange backup is the same, backing up mailboxes to the SAN and then transferred to tape.

The flat files backup, takes the majority of flat files from our main file server and the SQL servers (DB backups, word docs etc.) and then copies them to the same SAN ready to be transferred to tape.

The problem we're having is:

The SQL backup's and the Exchange backups all run at around 3000MB/minute or more and maxing out the 1Gb connection between the servers.

The flat file backup has an average job rate of 500MB/minute at best, and this is a backup that has to backup 420GB's of data overnight, but its doing this in more like 24hours+

We have tested the throughput between servers using standard Windows copy which all copy at around 100MB/s regardless of size, the only slow down comes when there are lots of small files (like the affected job is doing) where it slows down to about 70MB/s at worse but this is still 4200MB/minute which is a lot quicker than what Backup Exec is backing up at.

We have rebooted servers, turned off anti-virus completely and everything else we can think of but nothing seems to help.

Could anyone reccomend what we do next?

[CraigV]

Hi,

Database backups are always going to be faster as they are backing up a single, large file at a constant rate. This allows the drive itself to run as fast as it can.

With files, there is a lot of stop/start action on the head of the drive. This means that the drive can't backup at a consistent speed, which in turn causes your job to slow down considerably.

maybe consider tuning your drive as per pkh's article below:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/tuning-my-lto4-tape-drive

Thanks!

[Siddhant_Saini]

Hello,

In addition to Criag's comment, I've taken the following from the 'Backup Exec 2012 Tuning, Performance, and Troubleshooting Guide': http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=DOC5481 and am hoping that it helps you.

Tips for backing up many small files:

Backup Exec may take longer to back up many small files than a single large file.

The following tips may improve performance when backing up many small files:

■ On Windows, make sure that virus scans are turned off (turning off scans may double performance).

■ Turn off or reduce logging.

The Backup Exec logging utilities have the potential to affect the performance of backup and recovery processing. Logging is usually enabled temporarily, to troubleshoot a Backup Exec problem. The amount of logging and its verbosity level can affect performance. Chapter

■ Consider upgrading NIC drivers as new releases appear.

■ When initially configuring the Windows server, optimize TCP/IP throughput as opposed to shared file access.

■ Always boost background performance on Windows versus foreground performance.

■ Regularly review the patch announcements for every server operating system.

Install the patches that affect TCP/IP functions, such as the correction of out-of-sequence delivery of packets.

[Delo819]

Hi CraigV,

I may have got confused somewhere.

The tape speed isn't the problem (that speed is fine).

The problem is the flat file backup over the network the SAN (running SAS drives) and then once the backup is complete to the SAN, the tape drive backup starts and the original backup file is copied to the tape drive.

[CraigV]

...have you set up a duplicate job to run after the primary backup to the SAN?

THanks!

[Delo819]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean...

Do you mean set up another job with the same selection list? Or...something else?

[lmosla]

Hello,  Have you recreated the flat file job?

Verify that there isnt any other maintenance or utility jobs running at the time of of the backup and check to see if Windows Event Logs show any errors during the job.

[Delo819]

Hi,

We have recreated all jobs now - and have split up the jobs (so we don't have one large job), we have 4 different jobs now - one SQL2008, one SQL2000, one Server backup and one Files backup.

The SQL backups run fine (around 3GB/minute)

But the server and files backups run at around 300MB/minute - just for reference backup exec is installed on the main DC and when I say "Server" backup I mean the DC! So essentially it is going 300MB/minute backing up itself to the SAN (and the same for backing up the Files server).