backup exec and exchange 2010

[RabbieBurns]

How long should a full backup of an exchange database of about 150GB take?

 

Ive just migrated the mailboxes from an old fragmented 2007 database, where a full backups were taking up to 14 hours.

 

Now on this new server, which has fast SAS drives, 2gig ethernet, lots of ram and processing.

 

And its still taking over 12 hours for a full backup, and backup exec shows it running at 200MB/min

 

Where is the bottleneck? Is it the backup exec server thats slow processing the database?

[RabbieBurns]

Also, in Backup exec, the GRT is set to use C:\temp of the backup exec server.

 

Does that mean the backup data goes from the Exchange box -> Backup exec server -> Backup disk server ?

[RabbieBurns]

anyone?

 

sorry to tag you again @sukh but you've helped me a lot in the past are you able to advise here please ?

[RabbieBurns]

Also it seems we are getting "Server is busy" errors from the OWA while the backups are running, what is causing this, what should I be checking?

[DMcCoy]

Turn off GRT backup, it's rubbish. You can still use BE to backup the exchange store rather than doing the whole thing twice (store + GRT version as it is now).

 

Any exchange AV running? I expect the errors are due to the load caused by GRT.

[RabbieBurns]

Do i not need GRT to restore an individual email? No AV on the exchange server.

 

the granular backup wasnt causing OWA errors on the previous 2007 install on a lesser server.

 

Edit: where can I check what the 'load' is? resource monitor shows minimal network and minimal disk usage on the exchange 2010 box

Edited April 30, 2012 by RabbieBurns

[Norphy]

Is it the brick level backup that's taking all this time? If so, I'm pretty sure that's normal. Our last full brick level mailbox backup took a full 24 hours. It backed up 4128 mailboxes and about 182GB of data. Even our incrementals take anywhere from one to four hours depending on how much traffic there's been that day. There won't be much you can do to speed it up sadly.

 

It's a pain but we do still occasionally get the odd person who comes along and demands an email that they deleted back. We can't do a full store restore just for that!

[DMcCoy]

Do i not need GRT to restore an individual email? No AV on the exchange server.

 

 

Yes, although you can minimise the times you may need to restore things in the usual exchange manner if you have longer retention periods on deleted mailboxes and items.

 

The choice is slow backup or no individual item restore from BE.

[RabbieBurns]

@Norphy what speed does backup exec show when it is doing that? Ive only got about 400 mailboxes and 180gb of data is going at 180MB/min according to bexec..

[Norphy]

We're not using BackupExec, we use Commvault Galaxy. All of my backups are done at night so unless I'm testing it, I rarely see what the live throughputs are. However, the reports that I get put the speeds at between 5-10GB/hr.

[piyushagrawal]

The time duration is proportional not to the size but to the kind of content.

[sukh]

The time duration is proportional not to the size but to the kind of content.

 

What's the size of your edb file?

 

Do you need brick levels backups or not?

[RabbieBurns]

What's the size of your edb file?

 

Do you need brick levels backups or not?

 

Ideally I need to be able to restore an individual email. I had just assumed that going from an old slow server with a raid5 to a server with dual 10ge network cards back to the network, FC San SAS R10 storage for the database, etc, would have improved perfomance of the backups. But its as slow as the previous mailserver. 150GB edb file

[pantscat]

Those transfer rates do seem rather slow. What are you backing up on to? (HDD, Tape?)

 

I've split my Exchange data stores, so I'm backing up 10GB, 30GB and 50GB databases, and I'm averaging about 1000MB/min for GRT.

 

Those figures are from a SATA based SAN (with lots of spindles though) to an LTO4 autoloader.

[DMcCoy]

Ideally I need to be able to restore an individual email. I had just assumed that going from an old slow server with a raid5 to a server with dual 10ge network cards back to the network, FC San SAS R10 storage for the database, etc, would have improved perfomance of the backups. But its as slow as the previous mailserver. 150GB edb file

 

AV for Exchange?

[RabbieBurns]

No antivirus running on the exchange box. @pantscat its backing up to a SMB share on a Dell Server with a SAS Dell Storage Array 15 spindles Raid 10.

 

Copying files manually it flies.

[pantscat]

Is the SMB share local to the Backup Exec server?

[RabbieBurns]

nope backup exec runs on a seperate box

[pantscat]

Ok - I'd try and eliminate that as the point of bottleneck... can you try a backup to storage that's local to the B-Exec server?

[RabbieBurns]

not really dont have 180GB spare on the backup exec server. I guess I could plug in a USB HDD onto it and try to there?

[pantscat]

I think the USB hard disk would probably create a similar bottleneck...

 

How about putting BackupExec on the server with the Storage Array (just for testing...)?

[sukh]

How many DB do you have?

Can you split the DB and move mailboxes across to them and try a backup?

[RabbieBurns]

only 1 database, and 400 mailboxes.

 

When i first installed exchange 2010 I moved only my own mailbox to begin with (3gb) and backups would run about 500-600MB/min (about 6 times faster)

[sukh]

Can you create additional DB and spread the mbx across and test or is that too much?