Ultrium Drive - Backup Slooooooow 1

[dmen]

Before I begin describing my problem, here are the specs of my setup.
Server: IBM xSeries 232
Processor: Pentium III 1.2GHz
RAM: 1 GB
Tape Drive: IBM Ultrium LTO 2 3580
SCSI Adapter: Adaptec AIC-7892 Ultra 160
Hard Drive Config: C:- Mirrored E:- RAID 5
OS: Windows 2000 Server SP4
Tape Backup Software: Backup Exec 9 Rev 4454
Anti-Virus: McAfee 4.5 (running)
NIC speed: 100Mb/s

The server described above (Server2) is teh backup server. 90% of the files I need to backup is from another server (server1). Both have 100Mb/s connection speeds. I begin my full backups at 9:00pm on Friday night. By the time the verify completes, its about 2:00pm Saturday afternoon. The total amount backed up is around 130GB.

It used to take longer before but after I got the latest tape drive firmware, tape driver, backup exec update, etc. it improved. I still think this is too slow. Most of the files I backup on Server1 has a rate of around 200MB/min. My older DLT drive had a much better rate. I was told by the IBM tech support that if I have a lot of small files (i.e. MS Word, Excel, etc.) that are less than 1MB, it will be slow. I've seen in another thread an explanation of why that happens. There's got to be a way to speed things up more on this. What else can I do?

Thanks,
DMen

 

[comtec17]

Turn off your Anti-Virus while the backups are running. You AV will scan each file coming into the server before it is brought onto tape.

Also, check to make sure that your NICs are set for 100Mb/Full Duplex as well as the switch port, do not use Auto-Negotiation.

On a 100Mb/s Lan, you should at least see 7 to 8Mb/s on a very clean network, and 5 - 6Mb/s average.

Be sure that you have defragged your disks as well.

 

[dmen]

I turned off my McAfee antivirus and also set my NIC and switch ports to 100Mb/s Full Duplex. Did a test backup of around 15GB and compared it to my regular backups but no difference in speed. I'll let my full backup run without the antivirus and see what happens.

DMen

 

[RicardoPereira]

Why dont you try to change the blocksize to 512 ?

 

[dmen]

Turning off the Anti-Virus did help. I've cut 2 hours from the overall job even though I'm backing up way more than I did before. Thanks Comtec17 for the advice. Now I have to look at RicardoPereira's post on the block size.

DMen

 

[dubya02]

Check which driver the LTO is using. Try using the Veritas driver for the tape drive. We have seen this before and are using an X235 with a LTO2. If this works, you have to remember not to update the LTO driver when using update xpress or you wind up replacing the Veritas driver every time. It is easy to install the Veritas driver from the program.

 

[dmen]

I did further cut my backup time and here is what I had found. My Ultrium drive sits on Server2. Most of my files that I was backing up was on Server1. My antivirus was scanning outgoing files on Server1 AND also scanning incoming files on Server2. This double-scan was taking up a lot of time. I still start my backup job at 9:00pm on Friday night but the entire job (including verify) is now over by 8:00am the following morning. Thanks to all for your advice.

DMen