Maritimed
asked on
Extremely slow SBS 2003 trying to restore from LTO Tape
The situation is as follows:
The SBS 2003 Server in question (HP DL380, MSA30 SCSI RAID, LTO SCSI Backup) has suffered a power glitch that trashed the RAID configuration of the MSA30, which had a single logical drive.
I've recreated the drive by deleting the configuration information in the SCSI controller, formatted it, given it the same drive letter as before, etc.
My NTBACKUP completed successfully just before the event, and all of the data is reported to be on the tape, looking at both the NTBACKUP Restore Wizard, and according to the SBSBACKUPLOG01.LOG file.
The drive that failed had the SBS Exchange data on it, so obviously the email system is not working anymore - a major point of concern for the enterprise!
When I try to restore (the LTO drive and tape appear to be seen by NTBACKUP), the restore process appears to hang at the "Mounting the media..." stage, after hours waiting for it to progress. Also, all operations on the server are EXTREMELY slow, i.e. opening explorer or menus, etc.
I'm hoping somebody can offer me some guidance to get through this:
Will the tape eventually mount? There is no dialog anywhere telling me to do anything, the tape in the drive is the one that shows in the log to be successful, etc.
It seems possible to me that the slow mounting of the media may be related to the fact that the whole server is challenged by the loss of the drive holding the Exchange data. Is there a "minimum" set of services to keep going, to speed things up?
Other thoughts? Questions?
Thanks!
The SBS 2003 Server in question (HP DL380, MSA30 SCSI RAID, LTO SCSI Backup) has suffered a power glitch that trashed the RAID configuration of the MSA30, which had a single logical drive.
I've recreated the drive by deleting the configuration information in the SCSI controller, formatted it, given it the same drive letter as before, etc.
My NTBACKUP completed successfully just before the event, and all of the data is reported to be on the tape, looking at both the NTBACKUP Restore Wizard, and according to the SBSBACKUPLOG01.LOG file.
The drive that failed had the SBS Exchange data on it, so obviously the email system is not working anymore - a major point of concern for the enterprise!
When I try to restore (the LTO drive and tape appear to be seen by NTBACKUP), the restore process appears to hang at the "Mounting the media..." stage, after hours waiting for it to progress. Also, all operations on the server are EXTREMELY slow, i.e. opening explorer or menus, etc.
I'm hoping somebody can offer me some guidance to get through this:
Will the tape eventually mount? There is no dialog anywhere telling me to do anything, the tape in the drive is the one that shows in the log to be successful, etc.
It seems possible to me that the slow mounting of the media may be related to the fact that the whole server is challenged by the loss of the drive holding the Exchange data. Is there a "minimum" set of services to keep going, to speed things up?
Other thoughts? Questions?
Thanks!
Are the RAID array and tape on separate controllers? Otherwise that could be slowing things down.
Is it a fresh install of SBS? If so, doublecheck to make sure all the memory/processors is being recognized by the server.
Is it a fresh install of SBS? If so, doublecheck to make sure all the memory/processors is being recognized by the server.
I sure hope you have write protected that tape!
Does the RAID manager software report that the array is healthy?
Have you run the Task Manager to see what's hogging resources?
I would run a tape diagnostic on another tape and see what happens if I copied a folder to the array. If that ran extremely slow, I'd be very suspicious as to the health of the RAID.
Does the RAID manager software report that the array is healthy?
Have you run the Task Manager to see what's hogging resources?
I would run a tape diagnostic on another tape and see what happens if I copied a folder to the array. If that ran extremely slow, I'd be very suspicious as to the health of the RAID.
For that matter, for comparison purposes, has anyone ever run a restore from tape on that server before? How was the performance then?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Yes, please start a new question for the next problem. Besides keeping the toipcs separate for future searches, it will also give you a chance to put your new question in different categories so the right experts will see it.
ASKER
Anti-virus software was the culprit, something other advisers could not be aware of.
Looking at task manager what CPU/memory usageis being reported?
Exchange database backup is done outside the filesystem.
Does the below link core your exchange backup setup?
http://www.petri.co.il/backup_exchange_2000_2003_with_ntbackup.htm