The default performance settings set during the installation of BESR are recommended. In situations where the user's backup window must be highly optimized and to facilitate performance tuning in limited situations, the PerformanceRegFiles_125631.zip file attached to this technote contains a set of registry (.reg) files that modify the default performance settings. In some cases the alternate settings may improve performance. Alternate performance settings generally have the most impact when the recovery point (V2i file) is being saved to a network share. When the recovery point is being saved to a second internal hard drive or to an external USB or Firewire hard drive, the default settings will generally provide the best results.

 

BESR backup performance across a network is affected by both the configuration of the machine running the backup and the network share where the backup is being created. The optimal settings for machine A backing up to network share N may not be the optimal settings when A backs up to network share M . If machine B is configured identically to machine A (same motherboard, NIC, OS version and patches), the settings that are optimal for A will generally also be optimal for B. However, if B is different than A, the optimal settings for A to network share N may be actually behave poorly for machine B to this same destination.

BESR performance is also affected by the compression level that is selected. The optimal performance settings may be different for different compression levels. On most systems with optimal performance settings, medium compression will provide the fastest performance, but it is generally very close in time to Standard compression.

The easiest way to test performance is to create a BESR job that creates standalone, independent full recovery points. Run this job once to find out how long a backup takes with the default settings. After the backup completes, delete the backup file so that the next backup can be saved to the same location. Next, double click on one of the performance .reg files to load that file's settings. Run the backup job again to see if there are any differences. Jobs can show slight variations so performance differences of less than 10% or less than 1 minute likely aren't meaningful. Typically, the best settings will be 2-3 times as fast as other settings. On many systems, multiple .reg files will provide essentially the same performance.