Corporate File Server Slow Backup

[JessePAIT]

Hello, I am looking for a possible solution to speed our a server backup.

Our main corporate file server (Windows 2008 R2) has four drives

• C and D drives that are local storage and backup around 3 GB / min
• H and I drives that are SAN storage and backup at 1 GB a minute

The H and I drives are about 2.5 TB and the local storage is 1 TB.  

I have a weekend full backup this server that hits all these drives and takes about 42 to 45 hours to complete which I'd like to lower.  Is it possible in a Backup Exec policy to run multiple full backups of a server at the same time?  This is what I was thinking

1. Weekend Full Backup of C and D to run Friday at 8pm
2. Weekend Full Backup of H to run Friday at 8pm
3. Weekend Full Backup of I to run Friday at 8pm

So the idea is Backup Exec is running three jobs against the server at the same time to get the data faster.  Is it possible to do this and would it possibly increase the speed?  Does anyone else do this?

Thanks

[pkh]

You can run multiple jobs if they are backed up to disk.  BE does not support simultaneous writing to tape. The simultaneous jobs may not run faster.  This is because they would have to comtend for the CPU cycles of the remote server and the media server.  Also, if you are writing to the same B2D folder, there would be I/O contention.  You would just have to experiment and see how many jobs can you run at the same time.

[teiva-boy · Accepted solution]

If you B2D location had at least 5 spindles, I don't see why this wouldn't work, or using some advanced OST device.

In the enterprise world with NetBackup, NetWorker, Commvault, etc; where multistreaming is a feature that is standard (I absolutely HATE how BackupExec doesn't have this) you can stream multiple volumes at the same time.  3 stream minimum with most hardware, more if you have a faster server...