Speed up Backups using backup Exec

[Owen_Brown]

Hello,

What is the best way to speed up the backup process? i am using backup exec to back up the stores and it is taking about 3 days to back about 250Gb of information. i recently enabled the collections services for 10 days but it seems like it is still going through files by files. Do i need to wait 10 days for it CAB the files before i will see improvements?

[Sam_Wood]

Hi Owen.

Any number of things could be causing a slow backup. What sort of timeframe would you expect to see for backing up 250 GB of files from another server? How are other clients performing? Are you pulling data across a saturated link?

I'm more familiar with NetBackup. If you have multiple Vault Stores/Partitions you're backing up, you could try multiple streams. It really depends on where the bottleneck is.

Have you thought about closing off Vault Store Partitions at a smaller size to minimize your backup window? You wouldn't need to back up as much data in your normal cycle.

The collections are going to take some time to be built on an archive that's been going for awhile. Once it's caught up you will see improvements, but you'll still have 10 days worth of individual DVS files to back up.

[Owen_Brown]

thanks for the reply,
actually there are two stores: jounalling and archiving. I am using backup exec. the backup server and the vault servers are on 1GB link and the vault servers are VM servers on a SAN.

i recently enabled the clollection so maybe i just need to give it time to run and catch up. the problem is that if the full backup takes about three days to run then as soon as that finishes then the incremental kicks in, it may take a while for the collection to catch up because the servers goes into RO mode while backup runs


We are using Netbackup, but i havent been able to get the script to work to put the servers in RO mode while backup runs and RW when completes. If you have some pointers on that, then i will move it to the Ntbackup server and see if performance improves.

[Sam_Wood]

No problem Owen. It wouldn't necessarily be the move to NBU that would improve performance, it would be enabling multiple streams from the EV server (so you're backing up the mail and journal archives at the same time, instead of sequentially).

BackupExec should be able to do that as well.

Are you closing off partitions at all? That'd be a quick way to get the backup times down. Close a partition, back it up one last time, then exclude it from future backups. You'd have to trust the tape of course, and probably do a full backup including the closed partitions every few months just to be safe.

What's the problem you're getting with NetBackup and scripts?

[Sam_Wood]

Also, I've run into issues with VMWare ESX 2.5.x being unhappy with high I/O operations. ESX 3.x is much better.

What version are you using?

[Owen_Brown]

we are using ESX 3.x

the problem with netbackup is that maybe i dont have the script configured properly but it should put the servers in ro mode when the backup is running and rw once it is completed but it is not dong that.

[Sam_Wood]

ESX 3 handles EV pretty well. I'm working with it currently on a couple of client sites. VMotion (or however you spell it) is a very cool technology.

Could you paste in your bpstart_notify and bpend_notify scripts for the EV server? We might be able to spot something there.

[Owen_Brown]

bpstart_notify
echo off
C:\evtools\evbackup.vbs -ro vault1
C:\evtools\evbackup.vbs -ro vault2

bpend_notfy
echo off
C:\evtools\evbackup.vbs -rw vault1
C:\evtools\evbackup.vbs -rw vault2

this is what i use now with backup exec.
there is a registry key file that is locates in the evtools folder on the c drive. the script calls that file from the folder and put the servers in ro-rw.

i'm not able to make this script work with netbackup.

[Sam_Wood]

Have you tried not calling the VBS scripts and just building the commands directly into the bp*_notify.bat files on the client machines?

What path are the bp*_notify.bat files located in?

[Owen_Brown]

i put the scripts in the netbackup\bin directory on the master server and i renamed the scripts as bpstart_notify."policy".bat

[Sam_Wood]

NBU Admin Guide II indicates the scripts should be client-side(page 146). Shift them to the EV server NBU \bin folder and see if they fire then.

You could do a quick test to make sure the scripts are firing at all by editing them to pipe out a SUCCESS message to a text file.

If that works, I'd drop the vbs calls and just use net start/stop etc.

[Owen_Brown]

thanks, i'll give that a shot and see how it works out.

[ANDREY_FYODOROV · Accepted solution]

BPSTART and BPEND scripts should reside on the EV server that is being backed up, in the C:\Program Files\VERITAS\NetBackup\bin directory (where the NetBackup agent is installed)

Also the name of the BPSTART and BPEND file should include the name of the NBU policy that is configured to do the backup, for example we have a policy named "Shared_Enterprise_Vault_NearStore", so the BPSTART and BPEND files are named:

bpstart_notify.Shared_Enterprise_Vault_NearStore.bat
bpend_notify.Shared_Enterprise_Vault_NearStore.bat

I used the Out-of-the-box BPSTART and BPEND files and modified them by adding the following lines:

ECHO ***BPSTART***>C:\temp\LOCK.%1.%2.%3.%4.%5.%STREAM_NUMBER%-%STREAM_COUNT%
REM if %STREAM_NUMBER%==1 START /WAIT D:\Support\EVBACKUP\EV-ReadOnly.cmd
REM if %STREAM_NUMBER%==0 START /WAIT D:\Support\EVBACKUP\EV-ReadOnly.cmd
ECHO bpstart_notify.Shared_Enterprise_Vault_NearStore.bat RAN %DATE% %TIME% %1.%2.%3.%4.%5.%6.%STREAM_NUMBER%-%STREAM_COUNT%>>C:\start-Shared_Enterprise_Vault_NearStore.txt


And my EV-ReadOnly.cmd has this:

CSCRIPT D:\Support\EVBACKUP\EV-READONLY.vbs
EXIT