NetBackup v6.5 / Exchange 2003 / Slow

[Squ1zZy]

Greetings,

I have a question about NetBackup v6.5:

We use NetBackup v6.5 in combination with Exchange 2003. The situation we have is that backing up exchange is extremely slow. The speed we're getting backing up exchange on brick level is 1MB/Sec max. When we backup a LUN on a filer that's attached with iSCSI it's going 32MB/Sec. When we backup windows server using a file system the speed goes up to 24MB/Sec. But for some reason exchange on brick level won't go higher than 1MB/Sec.

We did an update to 6.5.2 and it did go a little faster, but not much. We tested our network using an 100MB file sending between the machines and it did go up to the switch limit ( 100Mbit ).

More Info:

NetBackup Server: 6.5

NetBackup Client: 6.5

Exchange: 2003 Standard

Tape: LTO2

Tape Library: HP MSL2024

We need some advice about the slow backup performance of backing up exchange on brick level.

Thanks in advance!

Message Edited by Squ1zZy on 08-07-2008 01:10 AM

[DavidParker]

Squizzy,

From past experience doing Exchange brick level backups, this slowness is relatively normal.

Why not just backup the Information Store (much faster) instead?

[sdo]

Brick level mailbox backups also very slow for v5.1 MP6 with Exchange 2000.

Haven't tried v6.5.2A with Exchange 2007 yet - but I would expect it to also be slow.  The mail store backups of Exchange 2007 to v6.5.2A run quite nicely at 65 MB/s.  And restore to an RSG runs at about 50MB/s.

Message Edited by sdw303 on 08-11-2008 02:30 PM

[WelshPretender]

Hi,

I am not a backup expert but in my experience 60MB/min is pretty good for brick level backups of Exchange 2003.

You have to remember that it is doing MAPI on every mailbox which puts alot of overhead on the client. 

I have 2 backend exchange servers one is running with 4GB of RAM and 2 Processors and does bricklevel at about 40MB/min, the other has 4 CPU's and 8GB of RAM and does brick level at about 80MB/min. 

Both are HPDL570G2 servers so the CPU and mem is the only variable.

I have found this to be the case both with Netbackup 6.5.2 and Arcserve 11.5.

The recommendation I have had from backup specialists is to use Brick level only for critical mailboxes and to rely on infromation store level backups for the rest.

Hope this helps