Speed up backup exec jobs?

[ihaveaproblem]

Is there any setting in backup exec 12.5 which would cause jobs to be sloooow?

Have a back up job running at 189 kilobytes / min

It's backing up files from a server to a hard disk that's connected to the backup server.

 

Backup server NIC is running at 1Gbps ( Which is strange because it has two NIC's teamed so should be running at 2Gbps). Would it help if I added more NIC's to the team? Or do I need to increase the bandwidth on the servers it's backing up as well?

[twin--turbo]

How is the HDD connected? I would rule that out before looking at the network.

 

At 189KB/m you have a serious problem

 

We throw all our backups over a 1Gbps 5 mile wan link site a-b and vice versa and don't ever have performance problems on the network ... If we were running at that speed we would never get a backup.

 

Rob

[ihaveaproblem]

It's one of these servers

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12477_na/12477_na.html

 

hard disks connect by scsi and server is using a HP smart array P800 controller.

The disk is sata and in raid 5.

[twin--turbo]

is the backup disk the same as the system disk?

 

Rob

[ihaveaproblem]

Nope different, and nothing else uses this disk but the backup

[Arthur]

Do you have any anti-virus software installed on that server? If so, is it scanning every single file before they get backed up by BackupExec?

[ihaveaproblem]

Do you have any anti-virus software installed on that server? If so, is it scanning every single file before they get backed up by BackupExec?

 

Have symantec end point protection installed. No scans are running as I did think of that, not sure if a setting to scan every file is set. Will check, not even sure if there is a setting for that on it.

[ihaveaproblem]

Was an option ticked to scan files when backup.

I've unticked that and disabled the AV... don't see any speed increase yet.

[twin--turbo]

Disable SEP entirely during the backup.

 

We had an issue on DPM with SEP killing a backup.

 

Rob

[ihaveaproblem]

Disable SEP entirely during the backup.

 

We had an issue on DPM with SEP killing a backup.

 

Rob

 

I right clicked and disabled SEP, is this what you mean?

It didn't appear to make any difference in the speed of the backup.

[kmount]

Rule out back up exec, if you log onto the back up server and copy a large file(s) across the network from the server you are trying to back up does it go quicker?

[ihaveaproblem]

Rule out back up exec, if you log onto the back up server and copy a large file(s) across the network from the server you are trying to back up does it go quicker?

 

I copied a 26gb folder across and it averaged around 100MB/sec

Isn't that still a bit slow though? faster than backup exec at least..

[kmount]

100MByte/s or 100Mbit/s ?

 

Either is much higher than back up exec for sure though.

 

So, how is the data being pulled from the remote host with BE, cifs directly or via a BE agent? (or sql/exch?)

[ihaveaproblem]

100MByte, well at least the windows box shows a upper case B so presume it's that.

I'm using the backup exec agent. That I pushed out from the backup server, and it was backing up file data ( Word docs, powerpoint, images video etc - common files found on file servers )

When the job is running I can see on the backup exec agent what it's backing up and it is very slow at changing files, e.g the agent shows its backing up a .ppx file and stays on it for 5-10 secs. Surly should be near instant.

[kmount]

Cool, thanks for that.

 

I'd try having it back up the same 26GB you transferred just to rule out the smaller files as a cause.

[ihaveaproblem]

Cool, thanks for that.

 

I'd try having it back up the same 26GB you transferred just to rule out the smaller files as a cause.

 

I'll give it a go.

Not sure if I'm confusing my self.

Running a job now and it says the job rate is 2,669.00 MB/Min

So what speed is this running at /sec? Cant think bits/bytes and all that always confuses me..

[kmount]

2,669MB/min on BE is fairly reasonable all in.

 

I tend to measure a point to point (2 systems) 1Gbit/s network as 'around' 60MBytes/s to be fair to it so that's just over 3,600MB/min flat out.

 

I think I'd just leave it be

 

Typically it'll go faster with multiple hosts, faster bus speeds, disks etc.

 

Cracking article if you want a read - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gigabit-ethernet-bandwidth,2321-3.html

Edited August 25, 2012 by kmount

[ihaveaproblem]

2,669MB/min on BE is fairly reasonable all in.

 

I tend to measure a 1Gbit/s network as 'around' 60MBytes/s to be fair to it so that's just over 3,600MB/min flat out.

 

I think I'd just leave it be

 

Ah ok.

The network is 1gbit speed though. backup server has teamed network cards running at 2Gb/s ( Fixed the team issue earlier which seems to of speeded it up some) and file server is running at 1Gb/s and is a virtual machine - links to switches all 1Gb.

I'll have read of the article thanks

 

edit

 

guess this first part on your link explains it. I thought was 1Gb was faster, silly me =]

 

How fast is a gigabit? If you hear the prefix "giga" and assume 1,000 megabytes, you might also figure that a gigabit network should deliver 1,000 megabytes per second. If this sounds like a reasonable assumption to you, you’re not alone. But unfortunately, you’re going to be fairly disappointed.

 

So what is a gigabit? It is 1,000 megabits, not 1,000 megabytes. There are eight bits in a single byte, so let’s do the math: 1,000,000,000 bits divided by 8 bits = 125,000,000 bytes. There are about a million bytes in a megabyte, therefore a gigabit network should be capable of delivering a theoretical maximum transfer of about 125 MB/s.

Edited August 25, 2012 by ihaveaproblem

[kmount]

Depends how the team is created, if it's LACP it doesn't mean you'll get 2Gb/s between two points because of how it works.

 

You would find that if you were backing up multiple hosts from one back up server you will use more than the single 1Gb/s link because streams between A-B may go down nic1, but streams for A-C may be down nic2.

 

All depends what the teaming is really.

 

But I wouldn't be disappointed with the throughput you're getting especially from a VM if it's sharing resources with other stuff.

 

Though if it's a VM you may improve performance by talking to the hypervisor instead of the guest, depending on what hypervisor it is.

[kmount]

Ah no worries

[ihaveaproblem]

It's Vmware esx 4.0

esx hosts connect to a hp MSA2312fc where all the file storage is kept.

On the backup exec selection all I've done is find the file server, and selected the d: drive to be backed up ( D: is all the file storage on the msa ) Is that the correct way to be backing up for my setup?

[kmount]

There's a few ways to do it.

 

You could continue doing it this way where you're talking to the guest and using the BE Remote Agent; or the other way is licensing BE for VMware and talking to the vcenter (or) hypervisor(s) and back up the whole VM from that way so you can restore a full VM.

[ihaveaproblem]

There's a few ways to do it.

 

You could continue doing it this way where you're talking to the guest and using the BE Remote Agent; or the other way is licensing BE for VMware and talking to the vcenter (or) hypervisor(s) and back up the whole VM from that way so you can restore a full VM.

 

I do have that license, but if I do it that way on the file server can I still select individual files to restore like the same as when backing up by talking to the guest?

[kmount]

AFAIK yeah, I think that's the functionality they refer to as GRT (Granular Recovery Technology).

[ihaveaproblem]

Do you happen to know how to link backup jobs together ?

I understand you can create policy's, but it seems like a policy has to use the same selection list.

What I want is the 1st job that's using selection list A to finish running, then job 2 using selection list B starts.

 

I've read this guide but don't really understand it

 

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH160031