Backups taking longer and longer

[Anthony_Lamb_2]

Hi,

We have a customer who has a Windows 2003 SBS server running Backup Exec Version 10.0 Rev. 5520 who has a strange problem their backups keep taking longer and longer to run. they started off taking 9:11 hours to back up 84.8Gb of data and now 4 days later thay are taking 12:37 hours and yet the data has only gone up to 84.9Gb.

The backups run over night and we recently had the tapes and tape drive replaced so the usual cuplrits have gone, the server is fully updated with Windows Updates and there are no real errors in the event log.

Has anyone come across this sort of thing before?

Thanks for any help at all.

Anthony

[links10]

Is there anything running at the time of the backups? Such as anti-virus software? Either on the source or the media server?

[RahulG]

you need to check which resourse is taking too much of time (you can find that from the job log )
check if you are backing up any remote server which is too much of time

[riva11]

Do you see something changed in the Job Rate ?

[Anthony_Lamb_2]

Hi,

As an update this is  a SBS server and is only backing up itself the job rate slows down from 233Mb on the 9 hour backup to 168Mb on the 12 hour one, so far last nights backup has taken over 14 hours and is still 60% of the way through the verify.

The only scheduled task I can find is for the Shadow Copy, the virus checker was set to do an update at 3am I have now moved this to 10am but apart from that nothing.

To me it is as if a cache some where is filling up and so the backup is slowing down.

Thanks

Anthony

[RahulG]

just check if the removeable storage services is disabled ....as i have seen many time the RSM services caused the backup job to run slow

[Anthony_Lamb_2]

the removeable storage is set to manual. What does it want to be set to?

[RahulG]

it has to be set to disabled

[Claudio_Veronez]

Remember that a server w/ a lot of small files can drastically slow you backup

here we have a server w/ IMSS (Trend)  there is a directory that contains 10.000 small files that server blows my backup windows everyday

so I put that directory on the exclude list and ZIP that directory to another location.


problem:
          When you need to restore a single file tat is in the zip file. you will have to restore the ZIP file.

[Anthony_Lamb_2]

The trouble is this is a cumaltive slow down over several days. I am trying a reboot tonight to see if this helps at all.

[Claudio_Veronez]

last week I was backing a server up and some "wonderfull person" let wireshark running getting a lot of LOGS and stuff,  try to snif for something that is generating Logs, DNS server backups usually R very slow

[Anthony_Lamb_2]

I have had a good look at the job logs and on the backup that finished in 9 hours the major times taken were:

C Drive: 19mins
D Drive: 1hr 43
Mailboxes: 3hr 33
Verify C: 12 min
Verify D: 1hr 39
Verify MB: 1hr 25

On the last back up to run the times were:

C Drive: 29mins
D Drive: 2hr 54
Mailboxes: 6hr 25
Verify C: 20 min
Verify D: 2hr 58
Verify MB: 4hr 20

I am just beginning to wonder if this is a general server slow down or just the backup but if it was the server I would expect such a slow down to be almost catastrophic.

[Claudio_Veronez]

Humm I undestand,

In my opinion things that showld slow down

Is the amount of data growing?
the network is flapping (duplex and half duplex)

Try to look for the LOGS in master server.

bpbkar for example.

[Anthony_Lamb_2]

Where do I find this file?

[Anthony_Lamb_2]

Okay so I scheduled a reboot to take place before the backup ran on Friday night and this time the backup only took 9hrs 15 minutes.

This sounds like some sort of memory leak thing to me, what does anyone else think?

Anthony

[Colin_Weaver]

If it is a memory leak - you probably need to consider

a) Monitoring memory handling with Task manager or Performance Monitor
b) Whether is is Backup Exec causing it or something else that is then affecting Backup Exec
c) if it is Backup Exec consider upgrading as 10.0.5520 is no longer under engineering level support witin Symantec (5 versions of Backup Exec have been released since that version)

[Ken_Putnam]

I'd suggest the free upgrade to the latest build of v10d just on GP. 

From the Product Support page at


select Downloads  on the right side, then filter for v10d and

Install
Patch
Drivers

[Anthony_Lamb_2]

Hi,

I have done the upgrade and we are still getting the slow downs, the details are:

Day 1  9.52hrs
Day 2  10.27hrs
Day 3  14.10hrs

If I do a reboot all looks okay again. There is nothing in the Event Viewer, I keep checking Task Manager and there is no variation in there.

Any help gratefully accepted.

Thanks,

anthony

[Anthony_Lamb_2 · Accepted solution]

I finally sorted this, what had happened was the UPS had been replaced with a different brand but the software had not been removed so it was running both UPS's software and this was causing the issue.

I removed the redundant version and everything has returned to normal.

Anthony