LAN Backup Job rate speed differs;

[Edward_Charles]

We have many 2003 servers for our clients and most have backup with a speed of about 600MB/Min.

However we have one client with identical hardware and backup solution and it's Job rate is only about 135MB/Min.

They are both backing up to a hotswap removable SATA drive on the same server Symantec Backup Exec is installed on.

Backing up 65GB for the one client takes only 2 to 3 hours, the other almost 12 hours which is a problem.

I was wondering if you have any suggestions or recommendations for troubleshooting this issue.

Both servers also run Exchange and we're trying to figure out where the slowdown occors.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Regards,

[Ken_Putnam]

Same type of data for the two servers? or does the slow server have lots and lots of small files (Lots of small files will always backup slower than a few large files?

[Edward_Charles]

Thanks for that, good point.

However both servers have around 250.000 files and 15.000 directories.

I did change the jobs regarding Exchange to do the singe instance attachments backup to see if that make a difference.

I was just wondering if some other users have experience the same thing, it might be related to how it backs up the Exchange mailboxes since it's job rate it the lowest , only 35MB/min.

Regards,

[Ken_Putnam]

if you are including Mailbox backups on the slow server, then that is most likely the problem.  As you have discoved they are SLOOOOOOOW, and there is nothing you  can do about it.

Unless you have some kind of corporate/legal directive, you may want to re-think Mailbox backups entirely, since they cannot be used to recover Exchange should the Exchange server die, so you have to do Stores backps anyway

Take a look at http://mail.tekscan.com/nomailboxes.htm for a fuller discussion

[Edward_Charles]

Thanks Ken,

We're backing up the entire IS and the individual mailboxes for maximum recovery. The IS for disaster recovery and the mailboxes to be able to restore idividual mailboxes or folders.

So we have to backup both ways and it does work fine for most other clients except this one which is significantly slower.

Thanks