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Mailbox(es) Backup VERY Slow

ross_aseron
Level 4
I've already spent HOURS troubleshooting this issue, have logged one support call and spent time with a 'technician' on the phone, but still no resolution. here's the deal, it seems to be a common one.

running bews 10d, sav 10, smse 4.6

when backing up the mailboxes (not the information store), the throughput throttles down to less than 1mb/min or hangs. oftentimes i can backup individual mailboxes successfully, but if i try to do them all (20), it invariably hangs.

i've already been referred to (or tried myself) the following tech docs:

symantec 2001010813441454
veritas 264851
veritas 238618
veritas 267437
veritas 275013

in fact, this last one seems to be the best fit. except that it suggests that i disable virus scanning via the registry, and that's just plain ridiculous.

i've searched and read several threads here, but they only seem to offer the following suggestions:
- turn off anti-virus scanning (kind of defeats the purpose of having AV)
- make sure all occurrences of outlook are closed (this will never happen)
- ask veritas/symantec for this 'enhancement' (having products of the same company effectively work together hardly seems to me an 'enhancement', but rather something that should be fundamental)

my question for you veritas/symantec tech support is this: is there a solution to this problem, a problem that others have as well, that doesn't involve disabling anti-virus scanning?

thank you,

ross
85 REPLIES 85

Mike_McGovern
Not applicable
Has anyone tested or considered the merits of changing between VAPI/MAPI & MAPI when doing backups to speed up the brick level process? As I am considering trying this.

Are per the article at http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/264851.htm

We've recently upgraded to SAV 10.0 from ver 9 & it seems more than coincidental that our throughput times have suddenly dropped for this aspect only.

Running bews 10d also & previously 10 but this upgrade didn't seem to make any difference.

Thanks,
Mike

Phil_Seman
Level 3
I read this thread all the way through, and agree with most that the support from Symantec on this is a joke. I have been using Veritas since version 8. At least when I called them before, I got someone that knew the product and was quite helpful. I have the same issue, but with IBM servers and a HP Ultrium 1 SCSI tape drive, where the mailbox backup was running around 20-25mb and now it dropped to 4-6 mb on transfer rate for no apparent reason. No changes to the server has been done. The stores aren't even that big to start with, usually around 2 GB in size.

The store backup is around 440 MB/min.

I did try the AV switch on VAPI/MAPI, and got no improvement. I made it a scheduled job on the exchange server to run the first command 1 minute before the backup starts, and then the other command at a scheduled time regardless of whether the backup is finished. I don't dare shut off AV on the server. What the heck is the point in having it in the first place if that is a suggestion?

I have stopped and restarted the services and hope to see an improvement on this issue tomorrow.

I currently use version 10 build 5484.

Telling me to update my drivers - reinstall software - apply this patch - shouldn't be an answer as to why this issue happens in the first place when it has been working all along.

Phil

Jeffrey_Owen
Level 3
I'm using Trend Micro Scan Mail for virus scanning. It seems to only have two settings. Just VAPI and VAPI/MAPI. The VAPI/MAPI setting gives a warning that it will lower performance because it scans everything twice. There doesn't seem to be a setting for just MAPI, unless it's a reg hack of some kind.

Either way, I've tried disabling my antivirus completely for the duration of my job and it had no affect on the Backup Exec performance.

Craig_Srednick
Level 3
Hello All:

I haven't posted in a while but I have read every post to date.

I made a change to the job setup which increased to rate to between 60 and 75mb, which for us was a major increase as we have been at between 20 - 30 mb.

All I did was uncheck the "Enable single instance backup for message attachments" knowing that the overall time and overall size of the backup would increase.

I did this because we had a problem restoring any email over 100kb in size to the users sent items folder for which they deleted by mistake.

This is the article in the knowledge base that refers to the issue..... http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/274720.htm


The job is still running, and we are at 66GBS and 16 hours....

I will report later on..
Take Care,

Craig

Phil_Seman
Level 3
I don't have that one enabled to start with. A good example of what I saw happen is one night the backup on the mailboxes went from 91.0 mb/min to 13.1 to 9.2. I reset the database maintenance to run just once a week instead of nightly now. For one server, this seemed to help, but for another it didn't. I restarted the services on the servers and hope to see if this resolves my issue.

Phil_Seman
Level 3
From what I can tell, is that if I restart the services for BackUp Exec, the slowness goes away. What causes this in the first place would be beneficial to know.