Netback up running very slow

[kakaluru]

Hello

Netback up running is very slow. Server & Clients are Windows 2003.

I would know the reasons and solution as well. Please do the need full.

[RamNagalla]

More details please...

in netbackup what actaully running slow?

does server is responding slow?

 does backups are running slow?

please give us more details of the issue

what is the OS of master and media server

what is the netbackup verision?

what type of storage you are using?

any log info that you have.

etc..

[kakaluru]

Data writing into tapes are very slow. I iniatiated on 29 th for friday back up still has complted only 44%

Backup activity is running very slow

master and media servers are windows 2003

veritas netback up 5.1

[muhanad_daher]

Hello,

please try to copy file with ftp from client to master server, what the speed?

[kakaluru]

Hi Nagalla

Actually i am not familiar with this issue. Above points are i found it. Kindly guide me to rectify this issue.

[Nicolai]

Performance tuning questions are notorious difficult to answer because the relevant information is not available to the reader.

You should consult the backup planing and performance tuning guide to assist you:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC7449

Page 87 and forward.

[kakaluru]

Hello Nicolai

My server configured with Netback up 5.1

[Nicolai]

A lot of the performance tuning steps are the same regardsless of the Netbackup version.

You should consider to upgrade, Netbackup 5.1 has been out of support for yeras.

[kakaluru]

Hello Muhanad

I checked properties of that job its showing 2192 kb/sec

[revarooo]

UPGRADE and check your network outside of NetBackup!!

[RamNagalla]

what is the size of the data?

are you using the tape storage unit or disk? if tape what is the tape technology? LTO 1 ,2,3?

what is the speed you are seeing in activity moniter?

what is the OS of the client?

[kakaluru]

data size is 500GB

LTO3

2172kb/sec

windows server 2003

[Nicolai]

The message here is that you need to fix this yourself.

We can guide you regarding observation, but we can't tell you to push the red button in Netbackup so every backup will run 300% faster - it does not exist. You need to check WHY the infrastructure netbackup uses doesn't allow a faster data transfer.

One free trick is to check Netbackup NUMBER_DATA_BUFFERS and SIZE_DATA_BUFFERS. See Backup planing and performanxce tuning guide I linked to.

[kakaluru]

Thanks for valuable information Nicolai

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

As others have already explained: 

There is no 'magic fix' for slow performance.
You need to find the bottleneck.

The 1st step is to test read speed from client disk. If this is slow, there is nothing that can be done from NBU side to make it faster. Fragmentation on client disk is normally the biggest cause.
See http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH17541

Step 2 is to test network transfer rate.
TCP Chimney has been known for causing slow backup performance.
Switch this off on backup server and clients.
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH60844 

Step 3 is to test the media server's own ability to write to tape.
See http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH19206

Use this doc - although it says 6.5. The principals remain the same:

• TECH62317   NetBackup 6.5 Backup Planning and Performance Tuning Guide (updated March 12, 2010) 

Some more reading matter:

 Overview of NetBackup performance testing. http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH147296

About tuning Windows for NetBackup: http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO56210 

PLEASE do not ignore advice to upgrade. 
NBU 5.1 ran out of support many years ago, plus some 'bugs' and 'features' caused slow performance:
Unpatched version of 5.1 had a 'hanging bpfis' that caused long delay at start of backup.
'Client job tracker' was enabled by default, causing slow performance.