GRT Exchange Backups Suddenly Taking Much Longer

[Protronics]

One of our customers uses Backup Exec 2010 R3 running on Windows Server 2003 (64bit) to backup Exchange 2007 to a RAID5 volume on a Buffalo TeraStation NAS.

The backups hve been running fine for a couple of years, with the Exchange backup taking between 2 and 2 and a half hours to backup a database of abour 100GB in size.

Recently, however, the backups started taking over 8 hours most nights, although some nights they drop back to the normal 2 hours or so.  There's nothing extra in the logs when the backups take longer, they just seem to take a lot longer to run.

So far, we've upgraded from R1 to R3 but this made no difference.  If we disable GRT, backups are consistently quick so the issues definitely appears to be related to GRT.  I've just completed the B2Dtest to check the NAS is okay and it reported reparse and sparse warnings but repeating the test against the temp backup location for GRT is fine so I don't believe this is an issue (although I'm not convinced the NAS isn't to blame).

A restart of the server usually fixed this for a couple of days but then the backups get slow again.  What's odd, is they are always either about 2 hours or about 8 hours, never anything in between.

Anyone else seen this or got any suggestions as to how I can resolve it as the customer is started to get a bit fed up with backups running for so long.

Thanks

[CraigV]

Hi,

Any other changes in the environment, ie. an AV update or Windows/Exchange update?

Have you ruled out the AV (if installed) as being a culprit by checking to make sure it isn't scanning the BE services or the B2D folder?

Thanks!

[Sush---]

Hello there,

    SP3 for BE 2010 R3 has recently been released. There are some Exchange backup performance improvement in it. So first of all I would suggest to update to BE 2010 R3 SP3 from the following link:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH203157 : Backup Exec 2010 R3 revision 5204 Service Pack 3

Next, what you can try to do is if possible take backups to normal B2D for a week or so and see if the issue occurs or not. By this test we can isolate if the issue happens only when NAS is used or not.

Also you may check the Event viewer on both the Media server and Exchange server for the days when the backups go slow and see if there are any events or other process happening at the same time on the Exchange server.

Thanks,

-Sush...

[Protronics]

Sorry for the delay in responding - thanks for the replies!

The only major change which has happened recently is a switch to Kaspersky AV.  This doesn't tie exactly with the problem, but it is high up on my list of suspects.  However, as far as I can tell there is no scanning of the NAS going on and I've tried disabling Kaspersky and this has no effects on the lenght of the backup.  I still have some suspicions though...

I'll get that update installed and see what happens.  We don't have any spare internal space for a B2D folder for Exchange, but one of my next steps was to connect a USB drive with a single NTFS disk and redirect the GRT backups to this for a while and see what happens.

Nothing that we can see in Event Viewer that is different between a slow and fast job.  All the entries are the same, just more spaced out.  And nothing else major seems to be running at the same time.

Thanks again

Joe

[VJware]

Does the Exchange maintenance schedule coincide with the backup schedule ? If yes, would recommend to reschedule it so these two tasks don't conflict.

Lastly, compare the job logs for the 8 hours backup vs the 2hr backup. Is only the 'backup' portion slow or the verify portion or the device and media portion ?

[RANZCP]

I am having a similar issue.

Evironment - Backup Exec 2010 R3

Exchange 2003 SP2

Windows 2003 R2 SP2 Backup server with B2D and D2T setup

Our Exchange bankup suddenly takes a lot longer to the tune of 8plus hours where as earliar it was less than 4hours.

Haven't found any solution yet.

[Sush---]

Hello RanZcp,

    Have you confirmed what is mentioned above about the Exchange DB Maintenance timing is clashing with the backups timing??

Regards,

-Sush...