Backup exec 11d

[itgeek]

Hi we are running backup exec on a backup server. Each server backs up over the network to the backup server disc. The problem we are having is that is taking far too long to backup. For a full backup this takes over the weekend and is sometimes still running on Monday morning. The daily differential is run every night, this takes from 6-6 to complete. Can anyone think why this is so long?
50 hours for just under a terabyte, on the network
Thanks

[apearce]

It could be anything really. A few questions to help.

Do you back up the local server? Does it back up the local server at the same speed as network? - if yes and takes the same time to back up the local as the networks it could be the scsi cable.

Do you have 2 network cards in your back up server? Try running the back up off the second card - use it as a dedicated NIC

How old are your tapes?

Is the tape drive on it own scsi card.

Does anything else run on your network over teh weekend?

[steve]

Do you have on-demand anti-virus scanning on either the backup server or the server with the data on?

I noticed on 11d that anti-virus on demand scanning can more than double the backup time.

Also try the latest version of network card drivers on both servers.

If you have 2 network cards, can you team them?

Defraging both servers can help too.

[ashok]

Originally Posted by steve

Do you have on-demand anti-virus scanning on either the backup server or the server with the data on?

I noticed on 11d that anti-virus on demand scanning can more than double the backup time.

Also try the latest version of network card drivers on both servers.

If you have 2 network cards, can you team them?

Defraging both servers can help too.

Yeah i second that, AV on access scanning does slow it down and there are no reason to scan the files you can exclude the BKF, EDB files and sometimes backup-to-disk folder as well.

Also few things to check:

- What is trhe RAID setup on the backup server i.e. 1, 5, 0 etc
- what is the network connection link speed from the servers being backed up to the backup server i.e. 100mb/1Gb, Teamed, 10Gb ?
- What is the RAID setup on the servers that are being backed up?

Usually the slowness will be from the servers that is being backed up rather than the backup server. As Steve said its a good idea to defrag your backup server as well as the other servers, just schedule this so you don't have to remember. Also allow plenty of defrag window on backup server if you backup server has large amount of disk space.

As the usual small files will always take longer to backup than larger ones and there is no anything that can be done to speed this up.

HTH,

Ash.

[Gibbo]

I was talking to a consultant about this last week in preparation for our upgrade to V12 from V9 and backing up data from more than one server.

Although it's not stated anywhere, it's pretty much crucial that you have a gigabit connection between the servers you're backing up.