Reasonable Backup Window Time

[Egroeg1980]

I would like to qualify if my backup windows is running within a reasonable time period.

• Its taking approximately 70 hours to run a backup and verify of 2.8TB of standard file data (no exchange, no SQL etc).
• We're running the backup in FULL from disk to disk.
• The server is running 15K SAS drives on and the backup target is a USB attached NAS vault.
• The USB on the NAS is USB 3.0 and the USB on the Server is USB 2.0.

I am tempted to install a USB 3.0 PCI card into my server to speed up the backup window - but I am unsure if the time window I am currently achieving is correct for that volume of relatively stagnent file data. The job rate typically averages just over 1000MB/min

Is there a Symantec guideline for acceptable backup windows - obviously - how long is a peice of string????

Regards

[CraigV]

Hi George,

There wouldn't be, unfortunately. this would be due to the various combinations of hardware and software, and your "how long is a piece of string" issue :)

Your issue would be due to slow performance backing up 100000s or millions of files and not being able to stream data consistently enough.  Only way around this would be to consider deduplication using BackuP Exec 2010 R3, or changing the job to DIFF/INCR and making the backup period during the week shorter.

I don't think that USB 3.0 will offer a significant speed increase over USB 2.0, although you are sure to notice some increase.

Read Symantec's article below on why theoretical backup speeds aren't the same as actual backup speeds:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH8326

Thanks!

[harsi]

From our experience it depends on the files you try to backup.

Esp. many very small files can cause noticable dropdowns in speed.

It also depends if you backup a local machine or a remote machine via agent.

Backing up a a remote server via Gbit lan from 15k SAS here operates at about 3000 MB/Min if you have larger files, and on machines with many small files we see speeds around 1500 MB/Min.

HTH

[pkh]

Installing a USB 3.0 PCI card will definitely remove 1 bottleneck.

[Egroeg1980]

Thank you all - I may install a PCI USB 3.0 card and next time I am onsite I will see if it does actually make a significant difference. and record the before and after results.

Understood - there are so many variables of file type/size that we're backing up to cause it to have a delay.

Regards.

[Imran_Qureshi]

Hi George, was wondering if you were able to test with a USB 3.0 PCI Card ? We are looking in to a similar setup using USB 3.0 removable hd's.

[teiva-boy]

You should start with the BE2010 archiving option.  Remove all stale files not touched/modified in over 6 months or greater.

That should shrink what you need to backup on a weekly basis.  Backing up the archive only on a monthly basis or so.

From there, I would disable the verify on the backup job itself.  I would schedule the verify to happen after the backup job.  This way you know the data is protected and in a locked stated if you will.  The verification will happen afterwards as a seperate task and you can still maintain a "faster," backup window.

You may also want to run a defrag on the source volume too, to improve transfer rates.