Very slow backup to disk and tape over network

[Michael_Ham]

Hello All.  I'll start this with ..I don't have HF14 installed.

Local backups to disk and tape run about 1300MB/sec.

Network file copy from a remote server runs about 1600MB/sec.

Backups of multiple servers to both tape and disk reach about 45MB/sec. They used to run about 1100-1300MB several weeks ago.  I'm can't think of any changes other than a server reboot and we replaced the superloader 3 with a identical unit.

I was only running HF27.  Today I ran live update and SP2 was installed.  11D build 6235 but the problem remains.

Any ideas on troubleshooting this problem will be appreciated. What should I look at to find the bottle neck/problem?

TIA

Michael Ham

Seattle, WA

[brehms]

I feel your pain. btw, I believe it's MB / minute.

A few things you can try.

1. Make sure your agents are up to date. I update them almost everytime I patch.

2. Turn off compression, and encryption. If you must use them, don't use both at the same time.

3. Look for bottlenecks in your data path. ie: HD's attached via SCSI U160, instead of U320, SAS, or SATA. a ethernet port set to 10 mb/s.

4. Backup the files using the agent, not the share.  

5. Speed can also depend on the agent type.

5. Slowness is a general problem with BE.

I was backing up a cluster server, that has 2 gb/s fiber attached storage. So I connected my Virtual library to fiber, thinking it'd be smoking fast. The fiber got completely flooded and I was getting 100 MB/min. So I routed the backup through the cluster servers ethernet NIC, and I got 1500 MB/min. Since I upgraded to 7170, it seems like it's about 300 MB/min on my weekday DIFF's, and 1000 MB/min on the weekend FULL.

My linux backups run consistantly at 250 MB/min.

All of my servers that I backup are connected to a cisco core switch, 6509, all gig connections, some teamed some not.

Of course, there is more things you can try, but this is what I thought of off hand.

Good luck.

[Michael_Ham]

Correct, that should be 45MB/minute. I re-installed the remote agents and didn't find any difference.  I just now remembered where I could get 7170 downloaded at so I'm going that route.  As a customer with a support contract why would I not recieve an email when a major update comes out?

I will post back the results

[Michael_Ham]

I upgraded to build 7170 with SP1 and pushed out agent updates but the problem remains the same.  I've rebooted the server several times and also the tape library.

I disabled compression on the job but there was no change in the behavior. I even totally uninstalled BE 11d. I kept the configuration and databases, I can't afford to replace those.

I guess I am stuck with calling tech support. There has to be some process with the communication over the network that is broken. 

[Michael_Ham]

Backup speeds increased for all but one server that is in my DMZ.  I reset my firewall/network devices to not use auto detect speed and duplex and the performance returned. Now all servers are backing up at an acceptable rate.