BACKUP VARIES from 1/2 hour to 5 hours

[wnterhawk]

Can anyone shed any light on this issue:
Using Arcserve 2000 on with NWAgent Novell 4.11 our backups take 1/2 hour one night and then 5 hours the next. There is nothing changing from the one time to the next. But the longer backup time throws off other scheduled events.

thanks

 

[TheLad]

What OS is Arcserve 2000 running on? I take it you are backing up one server from another using the NetWare Agent for NT or something like that?

This sort of inconsistency can be caused by something like LAN traffic, busyness of either source or target server, files being backed up??? -----------------------------------------------------
"It's true, its damn true!"
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[wnterhawk]

Sorry for not being clear... it
s from NT 4 to novel 4.11. We have checked the traffic situation. All back ups are done over night when no one (essentially) is using the system. we have checked with our programmers to see if they are "testing" anything and they have said nothing. The only thing we are coming up with is maybe the drive is going bad. Tonight we will be running it to another drive and have rebooted the server to see if that makes a difference.
thanks

 

[Guest_imported]

Sounds like a possible problem with the nick? Try the backup in half duplex (slow but steady).... Apparently your netowkr may be getting to the point where a full duplex backup may be becoming unstable. Let me know if the throughput improves for the five hour backup time and if the times to backup are mor estable and constant. No doubt it'll be slower than a full duplex, but if this solves the problem then you'll have to troubleshoot your netowrk to try to find the cause of the instability in the full duplex trasmission. Is it IP or IPX?

guru - brightstor@hotmail.com

 

[TheLad]

There are known issues with backing up remote servers with different transmission configurations (ie. half-duplex to full-duplex etc..)

Check out Section 'F) COMMUNICATIONS' in the TID below:

http://support.ca.com/techbases/as61/10015.html

-----------------------------------------------------
"It's true, its damn true!"
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[PezZ]

I had last night same problem. Win2k server, C: (system) drive, used to take 18min, now suddenly took 5h. Havent yet restested if boot helped. All other drives were normal.

And overall I have noticed that arcserve has speed problems with system drives, all others are pretty fast but C: is usually way slower, but not on all clients. It might be becuse of BOFA doing hard work on system files but gotta test it some more.

 

[Guest_imported]

Let us know the results of your testing. If the open file agent is enabled, by defualt it waits until a file is in a state where it is capable of backup. this does force the backup to take longer on system files as theya re always open. Also, try using the option "Use lock mode if deny write fail" in the backup job options tab.

G Luck

guru - brightstor@hotmail.com

 

[Guest_imported]

Hang on... what service pack is this? If it isn't three then you must apply this patch for throughput.

Damn, they have discontinued it due to service pack 3.... Have you applied sp3 yet? If not then I would recommend it as they have incorporated a patch they use to have which solved slow bacukups of system files/registry etc...

guru - brightstor@hotmail.com

 

[PezZ]

I use SP3 of everything.

About system drive throughput ... last night I updated one DellPE6400 win2k/notes servers Notes agent to the latest patch QO07148, that patch includes updated OFA driver too (dated 29.11.2001, newer than any OFA patches). And backup of 1.5G of data fom system drive went from 1:26 to 8 min! Amazing. Today i'm gonna update some other servers OFA with the "notes" patch & test it more.

 

[PezZ]

sorry, I'm lying, the OFA dll has been released ... I had missed one OFA update QO06336 as description of the fix was smth I had not experienced I had not applied it.