Enterprise Vault Backup cmdlets

[BigPhil]

Does anybody know what exactly the backup cmdlets are doing in the background besides setting the backup mode flag in the directory database? Are they doing anything else that would take a long time to complete? I have had an ongoing issue with this and its driving me crazy! My scripts simply take much to long to run to completion before my backup window closes. No I dont want to start the scripts sooner...I'm already giving it five minutes to set only 9 index locations and three vault stores into backup mode. It just seems silly that its taking so long (or never completing at all).  Index locations that are empty immediately enter/exit backup mode, but locations with data take much longer, so this makes me believe something else is happening behind the scenes. Any ideas?

[John_Chisari · Accepted solution]

Hi phil,

It is also stopping any index and storage processes associated with updating them, so for example storagefilewatch gets stopped, any indexserver processes currently updating indexes get stopped.  You can try dtracing IndexBroker and indexserver for the Index backupmode and storagemanagement, storagearchive, storagefilewatch for vault store backup mode to determine what is exactly taking so long.

[Rob_Wilcox1]

If I remember correctly, there are also some stored procedures which run (which might be the thing that takes a little while)

Which EV version and service pack are you talking about?

[BigPhil]

@John

I'll try dtracing those things and see if there is anything obvious as to why it is so slow.

@Rob

EV 10

While I look for the cause of the slowness, can I just stop the indexing/archiving tasks while the backup takes place or would I need to shut those services down. Do the old reg keys for backups still work?

[FreKac2]

I've also seen that after an upgrade I did recently that the setindexbackupmode takes a lot longer with EV10.

Didn't have the opportunity to investigate that further at the time.

It probably took 3-5 min after the upgrade where in EV9 it was 10-20 seconds.

I thought something hung but it just took a long time, not sure why though.

[Rob_Wilcox1]

BigPhil,

I think it wisest to talk to Support about it, and if it's taking significant time to switch backup mode "modes", then that is something that should be understood more fully, before making any changes.

One "problem" with just stopping the services you mentioned -> what about if a user deletes an item?

[Nathan_Clark_2]

Just a FYI in EV10 in will be slower as the new indexing engine has to set the backup mode on each individual collection.  If you don’t need indexing in backup mode you can stop the service if its encroaching on you backup window.  Include (EVIndexAdminService) in the Dtrace to confirm.

Thanks

Nathan