Backing up 700GB file server with BackupExec 12 takes 27 hours
Nothing else running on this Windows 2003 Server. It is a file server for our company and has approximately 700GB of files on it. NIC is at 1GB, as is the NIC on the dedicated BackupExec server, both plugged into the same switch. Backups are going to SCSI disk. The BackupExec server will backup other servers plugged into the same switch with the same NIC at 1800MB/min., however when it backs up the file server, it takes 27 hours at about 350MB/min. on average./ Why the difference in speed and what can I do to increase the backup speed of this server???? Thanks.
ASKER
Connections are full duplex on both machines.
Compression, just for testing purposes, should it be on or off, hardware or software (if On)?
I do run Symantec Anti-Virus on that machine, but am not comfortable turning it off because that server is heavily used. How to disable or stop scanning when backing up?
Compression, just for testing purposes, should it be on or off, hardware or software (if On)?
I do run Symantec Anti-Virus on that machine, but am not comfortable turning it off because that server is heavily used. How to disable or stop scanning when backing up?
How many files are on this system? What is the distribution of file sizes? How deep are the directories?
Small files will kill Windows backup performance -- I've seen fast servers with great drive arrays only be able to read at 10MB/sec because there were so many small files. If that's your problem -- not uncommon with a file server -- your only option might be to create an image backup, which will read the disk as sequential blocks, not as a series of files.
Software compression will also put a significant load on your system and slow down backups, so it should be turned off. Your target hard drive probably does not have native hardware compression, so that should also be set to 'off'.
Worst case, you're compressing in SW and encrypting in SW. If you can, turn encryption off, or go to a target with native HW encryption (such as LTO-4 or DAT320 tape) and use that.
Take a look at PerfMon to see where your bottleneck is. Are you RAM, Processor, or Disk constrained?
Small files will kill Windows backup performance -- I've seen fast servers with great drive arrays only be able to read at 10MB/sec because there were so many small files. If that's your problem -- not uncommon with a file server -- your only option might be to create an image backup, which will read the disk as sequential blocks, not as a series of files.
Software compression will also put a significant load on your system and slow down backups, so it should be turned off. Your target hard drive probably does not have native hardware compression, so that should also be set to 'off'.
Worst case, you're compressing in SW and encrypting in SW. If you can, turn encryption off, or go to a target with native HW encryption (such as LTO-4 or DAT320 tape) and use that.
Take a look at PerfMon to see where your bottleneck is. Are you RAM, Processor, or Disk constrained?
ASKER
How many files? I'd say in the hundreds of thousands. File sizes are from about 2kb all the way up to .pst files that are upwards of 4GB in size.
RAM, processor and Disk all appear to be fine when checking Task Manager throughout the day.
RAM, processor and Disk all appear to be fine when checking Task Manager throughout the day.
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Make sure your network connections are Full duplex.