NetBackup Backup Speeds

[jmanini]

I have a new environment (6 months) and I'm still unable to get the speeds I believe I should be getting from Netbackup. It would be nice to hear what other folks are getting. I know there are lots of articles about performance tuning. I have read them all and still I chugging along at at a slow pace.  I also know there are tons of variables from client hardware to network speed etc... We backup mostly VM's hundreds of them. What kind of speeds are folks seeing out there? My fastest speeds are from Linux clients which can run as high as 50ish MB's per sec  where windows clients may get half or less of that. I have seen restores at 200 plus MB per sec. All of my backups are directly to tape no disk.  My environment is similar to the other folks. Things should be flying... There seems like there is a bottleneck but I cannot seem to find it. One day things are fast and the next slow..

I see lots of folks struggling like me....If I'm missing something please let me know and I'd like to hear from folks who may have similar issues and we can all work through :)

NetBackup 7.1.0

Master\Media Windows 2008R2 Dual 6 core Dell r710's with 98GB of Ram

4 gb Ethernet nics teamed

1 Dual port Qlogic2562 (8gb) going to redundant switches (4gb) I changed the cards to a static 4gb for now until we upgrade the switches.

Media Server (Same as above)

10 HP Ultrium LTO5 drives using shared storage (Load Balanced) 

I've tried all different settings and I'm so far not able to find the right mix...(maybe a secret) lol

C:\Program Files\Veritas\NetBackup

NET_BUFFER_SZ = 1050624

NET_BUFFER_SZ_REST = 1050624

C:\Program Files\Veritas\NetBackup\db\config

NUMBER_DATA_BUFFERS = 64

SIZE_DATA_BUFFERS = 262144

SIZE_DATA_BUFFERS_DISK = 1048576

NUMBER_DATA_BUFFERS_RESTORE = 32

NUMBER_DATA_BUFFERS_DISK = 32

I have the windows client buffers set to 256

Thank You

[errrlog]

Please confirm the below:

I guess you are have performance issues with Windows VM's while backing up?

Assuming that you backing up the VM's using Netbackup agent installed inside the VM. (traditional way)?

Are you backing up all the VM's running a single ESX server sequentially or concurrently?

For a start try the below to obtain the actual client backup speeds:

To determine the actual throughput you can expect from the client, run a bpbkar to null device test on the client.

bpbkar32 -nocont [file_path_to_test] 1> nul 2> nul

The following example would tell bpbkar32 to back up the F: drive to a null device.
bpbkar32 -nocont F:\ 1> nul 2> nul

ref: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH17541
 

[jmanini]

Yes Windows VM's are slow when backing up and yes we have agents on each VM. We have approximatley 80 ESX hosts and I'm backing up a few hundred servers across the different ESX hosts.

I will try the test you provided above and let you kno what I see.

Thank You

[Michael_G_Ander]

We have a problem with teaming on our backup server where 4 x 1 Gbit netcards teamed together could only do around 1.5 Gbit sustained because of the way the teaming between the server and switch works.

We have decided to go for a 10 Gbit card in the server and a 10 Gbit modul in the switch

[Mark_Solutions]

Hi

It may be worth trying a test if you remove the NET_BUFFER_SZ files and set the client buffer sizes to 16 - some times gets better results on Windows - a little data more often if you like!