Exchange Agent 9.0 Speed Poll

[BillDaly]

What rate of throughput is average for a brick-level backup?

My file system backups get about 700MB-1200MB/Min. My Exchange 2000 Information Store backups get about 500MB/Min. My brick-level backups start out at about 150MB/Min and steadily drop to about 38MB/Min.

This seems slow to me.

I have all the latest patches for E2K, W2K, Arcserve 9, and the Exchange agent. I have the latest firmware for servers, RAID, SCSI, etc. I put a second gigabit NIC in my dual P4 2.4GHz Exchange server and run backups through a dedicated gigabit network segment to a dedicated P4 2.8GHz backup server with gigabit NIC backing up to SDLT320.

CA simply says "Brick level backups are slower". Should they really be 95% slower? What transfer rates are normal?

 

[BillDaly]

FYI, I just called CA to see what they felt "normal" speed was for a brick level backup. They feel that anything over 5MB/min (no, that's not a typo, he said five) is very good.

When I pointed out that 5MB/Min is only slightly faster than copying to a floppy disk, they suggested that I may be able to upgrade my hardware.

 

[ajtmcse]

When it comes to backup speed, there are several variables to take into account:

1. Hardware
2. SCSI Bus compliance (Cable lengths, termination, different scsi levels on the same channel)
3. Drivers (latest revs, WHQL versions, functionality)
4. Tape drive speed, buffering, compression
5. Network settings (Auto detect vs. hard coded settings on servers and switches/hubs)
6. Firmware/BIOS levels on all devices.
7. Is all of the backup hardware certified by the s/w manufacturer?

I know that probably doesn't help, but expecting the s/w vendor to be able to ballpark your ideal speed(s) over the phone isn't realistic either.

 

[BillDaly]

"expecting the s/w vendor to be able to ballpark your ideal speed(s) over the phone isn't realistic either."

In principle, I agree with you.

However, if I do a file-system backup (same servers, same network topology, same backup hardware, same backup software, same everything except for the Exchange agent), should I really get an increase of 3,000%?

I understand that messaging agents are, by their nature, slower than file system agents, and I could understand a backup running at half the speed, but 1/30 the speed makes me think that it isn't the hardware.

 

[natashiakk]

In v9 Exchange Configuration, there is a "Number of Block in each Data Transfer". By default it is 1. For our case, the max it can go is 5 - about a maximum increase of 100% from 20+ to 300 MB/min, once reaching 5, there are no increase in speed. Not sure if it can help U, but no harm trying.