Long delay before backing up data

[greghampton]

Scenario:
Through 5/31 - Backing up approx. 267GB, job starts 8PM. Media created, etc. until about 8:35PM when data would actually start being written to tape. Backup window was roughly 10.5 hours.

On 6/1, backup was approx. 273.5GB, job starts 8PM. Data written to tape starting at just before midnight. Backup window was 17.5 hours.

I have since recreated the job, reordered the targets, pared backup down to approx 260GB. Still there is a huge (almost 4 hours) delay between job start time and actual data written to tape. With a smaller data set, the window is down to 16.75 hours, but it's over 6 hours longer than on 5/31 (and months of backups before then).
No SP's or hotfixes were applied to Backup Exec, or the server it's on, on or around the day this happened. Anyone have any ideas?
Running BE 11d rev 6235 (hotfixes 2, 6, 9, 10, 13, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21) on Win 2003 Server w/SP1.

Thx

[Dean_Bliss]

Recommendations:

1) Upgrade to revision 7170, run LiveUpdate, and deploy new agents:  http://www4.symantec.com/Vrt/offer?a_id=30140

2) Run a local backup to tape and then to disk and compare the throughput.

3) Run a backup of the first server that was in your original backup job - run to disk and compare throughput vs the local backup to disk.

4) Are you using AOFO? Turn it off. (snapshot processing always increases the amount of time for the backup - especially if you have multiple volumes on each server.)