Backup Annoyance

[button_ripple]

We have 2 servers (smallish primary school) and make backups weekly on to tapes (4 for each server). Only problem is the entire network almost freezes whilst the servers are backing up. The servers are both brand new and we are using the built-in backup facility as we don't have any spare budget for software.

 

Both servers continue functioning and there is little activity during the time of the backups (this includes network activity) but everything just stops except the servers.

 

What is going on??

 

This does need to be fixed because every Friday the entire network stops for 3-5 hours!

[sharkster]

cant you set the backup automaticly and do it during the weekend whilst the school is empty?

[elsiegee40]

cant you set the backup automaticly and do it during the weekend whilst the school is empty?

 

Not that easy if you have to do tape changes.

 

I'd negotiate the price of a networkable hard-drive and schedule overnight or weekend backups to that. Our 2TB LaCie cost just over £500, I think

[witch]

I work in a middle/primary and we use the built-in backup facility on the server. But we have ours set to back up some drives once a week and others on alternate days. We have made sure that we are not backing up anything that is not really necessary and have got it down to one tape. So now the backup is scheduled for the evening when everyone has gone home

[GlennT]

Do you mean that the desktops cannot communicate with the servers whilst the servers are being backed up?

I have seen this happen before after a replacement server got installed. The nic was a gigabit card that did not seem compatible with the switch. Knocking it down to 100mb corrected the problem [however, depending on the switch, you may want to make the changes there].

[button_ripple]

Do you mean that the desktops cannot communicate with the servers whilst the servers are being backed up?

I have seen this happen before after a replacement server got installed. The nic was a gigabit card that did not seem compatible with the switch. Knocking it down to 100mb corrected the problem [however, depending on the switch, you may want to make the changes there].

 

 

The desktops and laptops can still access the server, but very slowly. It's like the servers are taking all the power for the backups - but are not reporting that they are using a lot of power.

 

The servers have been in about 2 months now and it has only started happening about 5 weeks ago. But no real changes have happened to the servers in that time

[dhicks]

It's like the servers are taking all the power for the backups - but are not reporting that they are using a lot of power.

 

How do you mean by "power"? A disk copy/backup operation shouldn't take much CPU time, it's more likly you're having trouble with the harddrive being overworked for some reason (spending too much time reading data for the backup device instead of doing what people want it to do?).

 

How are the harddrive and tape device attached to the motherboard - SATA, SCISI, what? Does the disk controller have any kind of cache on it, are you using a RAID device of some kind? Is the backup process set to "high priority"?

 

--

David Hicks

[elsiegee40]

Could this be due to the location of various things on the servers?

 

Is one server being hit very hard? Would taking a shadow copy to the other server and then backing up from the shadow help?

[Michael]

@button_ripple - When you say the built-in backup facility I presume you mean NT Backup? If that's the case there's no need to buy anything else. It's more than likely capable of everything you need to accomplish when it comes to backing up or restoring data.

 

One way you could halve the temporary slowness of the network is to insert Tape 1 for that particular day and schedule it to run at 10pm. When you get into work, you then insert Tape 2 so backup completes sometime in the morning.

 

Do you know what the specifications are for these servers, presumably running Server 2003? And are they based on SCSI or the very least SATA? If you look at Task Manager and choose the Performance tab, how much CPU usage and Memory are you using? The more info you can provide, the more we can help

[torledo]

We have 2 servers (smallish primary school) and make backups weekly on to tapes (4 for each server). Only problem is the entire network almost freezes whilst the servers are backing up. The servers are both brand new and we are using the built-in backup facility as we don't have any spare budget for software.

 

Both servers continue functioning and there is little activity during the time of the backups (this includes network activity) but everything just stops except the servers.

 

What is going on??

 

This does need to be fixed because every Friday the entire network stops for 3-5 hours!

 

I would repeat the questions asked by michael and dhicks, and add...

 

how long are the backups taking and how much are you backing up ?

 

was accessing the server from client machines a problem in the first 2 weeks of server operation ?

 

try and think of any applications that have been added or modified on the server that could have triggered the problems you're having...

 

most important of all, is the server running any network communications during the backup windows other than authenticating users and other routine file serving tasks ?