Extremely slow backups 1

[NickS]

Hello All, I've got BE 8.6 running on NT Server 4.0 SP6a.
I've got Exchange Admin and Outlook 2000 installed also.
My problem is that my backups take way to much time, i'm averaging 2G/hour. So for me a full backup (approx 300G)takes about 6 days...crazy huh!
I don't have remote agent installed on my servers..(but i will), but even without it...darn.

Extra info: LTO drives, SCSI Ultra 160, server has 512M Ram

Any help appreciated.
Thanks
Nick

 

[bobafet]

Do you have antivirus running at the time of the backup?
Is your infomation store maintenance running at the time of the backup?
If you are backing up remote servers, make sure the remote agent is installed.
Is it just the mailbox backups that are causing to the system to go slow?

 

[Arqana]

I have BE 8.5 running on a NT Server 4.0 SP6. I am having the same problem. I am backing up 13GB and it takes about 3 days at 500mb/hour, while all my other servers are backing up quickly. I have the remote agent installed on the Exchange Server, but that doesn't seem to make a difference.

Does anybody have any clue?

Thanks

 

[Palindrome]

I'm going through some of the same problems you are having. Mine is a long story as I am in the process of rebuilding my main backup server while using a secondary backup server. I'm using NT 4.0 with SP6a. A few things I would suggest is make sure you load the accelerator agent that comes with 8.6 on your servers . We upgraded to 8.6 but did not upgrade the accelerator agent and it took a 140 GB server 50 hours to backup. Once we loaded the new agent it took 17.5 hours. We still have servers like you that are giving us 3 GB per hour. We are still investigating them. Check out Veritas web site knowledge base and type in either performance or Windows NT in the search field. There were some good backup server performance tweeking.

 

[NickS]

Yes Bobafet, antivirus is running, but a test was done without it and it wasn't any better. And no its not just the mailboxes, it hasn't even reached there yet. Its weird, because it seems that even with no one on the network i'm getting the same throughput.

 

[jmanning]

Try increasing the receive buffers on your NIC card to 225.
Also backups can run slow if the partition BE is installed on is fragmented, running a defrag should help too.

 

[2ffat]

Also, are you using software or hardware compression? Software compress will slow things down, too.
James P. Cottingham

I am the Unknown lead by the Unknowing.
I have done so much with so little
for so long that I am now qualified
to do anything with nothing.

 

[NickS]

2ffat, i am using hardware compression. But thanks i didn't know that.
I've also been reading and noticed that quite a few others are having the same problem. Can this be a Varitas issue?
On average how much throughput should i be expecting, i figure about 150Mb/min. Right now i'm pulling anywhere between 2.1M and 41M...depending on the server. And than there is one SQL server that i'm getting 160Mb/min.
I can't figure it out.

Nick

 

[bobafet]

Make sure you have the remote agent installed.

Having said you have Exchange Admin, I am assuming you have Exchange 5.5 - Check edbbcli.dll and mapi32.dll on the Backup Exec server match the Exchange server.

Is the backup of the file system slow too or is it just Exchange backups. Also note that backing up agents on remote servers require the Remote Agent to be installed and running.

What is the throughput of the Backup Server?

You could try NTBackup to determine if there is an issue with Backup Exec.

 

[Arqana]

Hey NickS,

I finally got it to work. The problem was that the NIC's of the exchange server & the BE server were on Full Duplex and the ports on my 5509 switch, where the two boxes are connected are at half duplex. I changed the configuration on the switch two Full and now I am backing up at 298MB/min as opposed to 4MB/min.

I hope this helps.

 

[jamkey]

Arqana's solution brings the most important question to bear... Always test the basics first. Try copying a large number of files across the wire; do you get expected throughput? Try NT backup (this will require stopping just BE services on NT 4 but for Win2k will require NOT using the Veritas tape drivers), as this will be the only way to benchmark your tape drive performance.