Speed - or lack thereof

[Backup246525344]

I only get about 650megs per minute on my backup jobs using an LTO4 tape drive.  Simply copying files from the server that the backup exec software is installed on...from a remote server is 3 times faster than this.  This rules out hard disk speed on both the local and remote servers and network speed as issues.  The scsi card that connects the LTO4 drive to the server is capable of 40megs per second.  Whats the deal?  I'd think bare minimum I would AT LEAST achive 1 gig per minute.  The LTO4 drive can eat data for breakfast so i'm pretty sure the drive isn't the issue.  I'm not encrypting, I am compressing.  What in the world is the backup exec software doing that is so much slower than copying files? 

[MSSBG]

Don't have an answer for you, but wanted you to know you are not alone.

We installed BE 12.0 on a fresh install of Windows 2008. The exact same server hardware and tape library with two LTO2 drives running BE 9.1 was pulling about 1400MB/min give or take on two concurrent running jobs.

Our new install of BE 12 is pulling about 685MB/min. The frustrating thing is that the jobs start out at 1200MB+/min and then degrades over the course of the job. Doing a restore on the same server/tape library yields close to 1800MB/min. You would think the restores would be slower than the backups, but no....

I've even tried NIC teaming with a static link aggregation of 4GB and it makes absolutely no difference. It is not a network problem, it is a Backup Exec 12 problem.

So, we called Symantec support and after the initial BS troubleshooting, we were told we are running an "un-supported" configuration because our two tape drives are connected to RAID controllers (which is a horse**** answer). I've seen nothing in the documentation that indicates you can't connect a tape drive to a RAID controller.

If anyone has had the problem and knows of any suggestions, I would be most appreciative.

[drewm320]

Same issue here.  LTO2 backups average around 1800MB/s on all servers except one that tops out around 680MB/s.  I've tried the steps in this doc with no results:

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/290098.htm

The problem server was purchased recently and has far more horsepower than most of the other servers being backed up so I'm confident it's not a resource issue.  Here are some of the things that make my problem server different than the rest, maybe we have something in common:

It's the only one:

Running Windows 2003 R2 x64 
Running Exchange 2007  (and related apps:  powershell, messaging API)
With > 4GB RAM





Message Edited by drewm320 on 04-10-2008 08:02 AM

[drewm320]

I've been looking into this more and found that encryption on the backups is a key problem.  If I run backups with no encryption at all, the problem server gets throughput around 2200MB/min.  If I use either 128-bit or 256-bit encryption the throughput drops to 600MB/min.  I expect a bit of a performance decrease with encryption but a 70% hit is a bit ridiculous.  I've done the same testing on one of my well behaved servers and the throughput is 2200MB/min unencrypted and 1850MB/min with encryption. 

The problem server has 2 dual core Opterons (2212) and runs Windows 2003 R2 x64
The good server has 2 dual core Xeons (5160) and runs Windows 2003 R2 x32

The Xeon processors are definitely faster than the Opertons but I wouldn't expect that much of a difference.  It seems more likely that the 64-bit remote agent has problems encrypting data.  Anyone from Symantec care to comment?

[Hywel_Mallett]

It could be due to differences in the 32-bit and 64-bit agents I suppose, or maybe the Opterons simply don't perform well with the encryption code.

If you have an LTO4, then haven't you got tape-based encryption? If so, then turn off BE's encryption.

[Backup246525344]

I've increased my speed here is what I did:

• Upgrade to a newer SCSI card (Ultra 160)
• Move backup exec software off of a server and onto a workstation.  Its sole purpose is for backups.

This changed my average speed from the 600's to the 1.2gig per minute.  It also removed a cap of sorts on a server that has 15k sas drives in raid 10.  That server now backs up at 1.7 gigs per minute when previously it would only backup as fast as about 700 megs per minute.  Still 'slow' considering I can straight up copy files faster than that over the network but a huge improvement none the less.

I also turned on encryption.  This reduced speed somewhat but I didn't see the hit another user posted earlier. 

My only concern at this point is the workstation i'm using is an oldie....so it uses about 50% cpu during the backup process.  I'm on the fense about weather or not upgradeing the cpu would speed things up any.

[That_Admin_Guy]

We installed BE 12.0 on a fresh install of Windows 2008. The exact same server hardware and tape library with two LTO2 drives running BE 9.1 was pulling about 1400MB/min give or take on two concurrent running jobs.

Our new install of BE 12 is pulling about 685MB/min. The frustrating thing is that the jobs start out at 1200MB+/min and then degrades over the course of the job. Doing a restore on the same server/tape library yields close to 1800MB/min. You would think the restores would be slower than the backups, but no....

We upgraded our "BackupExec" server (runs virtually nothing besides BackupExec 12, connects directly to an LTO-3 library/drive using Ultra320-SCSI) from Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition x64 to Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition x64. Backup of this server now takes significantly longer than before: its "System State" backup takes up 7.5GB more compared to Server 2003, from 2GB to 9.5GB (probably due to the huge Windows\WinSxS folder which takes up 4.6 GB, with a total of 10GB for the \Windows folder ...). It used to take 5 minutes, now it takes 40 minutes. We do not use AOFA or encryption on any job.

Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition x64 with BackupExec 12:

Byte count             : 1,995,160,039 bytes
Rate                   : 354.00 MB/Min

Files                  : 0
Directories            : 1
Skipped files          : 0
Corrupt files          : 0
Files in use           : 0

Start time             : Friday, March 21, 2008 8:53:30 PM
End time               : Friday, March 21, 2008 8:58:52 PM

Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition x64 with BackupExec 12:

Byte count             : 9,438,542,260 bytes
Rate                   : 217.00 MB/Min

Files                  : 5,798
Directories            : 1
Skipped files          : 0
Corrupt files          : 0
Files in use           : 0

Start time             : Thursday, April 17, 2008 9:02:20 PM
End time               : Thursday, April 17, 2008 9:43:40 PM

Can anyone confirm this System State phenomenon with Windows Server 2008?
This noticeable increase in backup time is close to messing up the time window for the backup (there's another job running after it).

Performance of other backup jobs used to be a steady 600 MB/min (other servers are connected with a 100 mbps line). Now it varies between 400-ish to 600-ish (leaning more towards 400-ish).

Message Edited by That Admin Guy on 04-21-2008 01:59 PM