Backup Performance Observations & Questions
Updated: 22 May 2010 | 1 comment
Our environment:
--Backup Exec 10.1 on Windows 2003 R2 Standard IBM server.
--Backup device: Certance (trademark now owned by Quantum) LTO 2 3200 Autoloader (8 slots, single drive). Tapes hold 200GB native, and we are getting about 300GB hardwarecompressed.
--Library connected to BE server via SCSI LVD cable. BE server SCSI card is ADAPTED 29160.
--Approx. 9 servers plus backup server most with RAID 5 getting backed up. Total 10 servers. Most servers are Windows defragged nightly.
--Total nightly getting backed up about 505GB using full backup (but not backing up every single thing).
Hours to completion including verify: about 20.
Hours to completion including verify: about 20.
--Total weekend getting backed up about 702GB using full backup (backing up EVERY single thing).
Hours to completion including verify: about 27.
Hours to completion including verify: about 27.
The problem:
Our data has increased to a point where backing up on a nightly basis is taking way too long. So we have to make some decisions.
For some reason we are not getting near full performance on our backups. For example, the drive is rated "Native Sustained Transfer Rate" : 34MB/s.
We really want to try to avoid differentials and certainly incrementals for various reasons.
Here are my tests & observations:
--Backing up 11.5GB from Backup server to tape without verify took 10m12s = 20MB/s
(not horrible, but still far from 34MB/s)
(not horrible, but still far from 34MB/s)
--Backing up same 11.5GB from another server across 1Gb Ethernet through 1Gb switch without verify took 21m 24s = 9.7MB/s
(HORRIBLE).
(HORRIBLE).
1Gb/s is 125MB/s so I don't see how the bottle neck can be with the network. And no we don't have a ton of bandwidth usage across our network in general (other than backups), to my knowledge.
Questions:
1. What could the problem be here?
2. Although not my preferred solution:
Can a single instance of BE 10.1 run 2 drives backing up data concurrently?
Can a single instance of BE 10.1 run 2 drives backing up data concurrently?
3. Again, not my preferred solution, but:
Can BE 10.1 backup data via a SCSI connection to another server? In other words, keep the SCSI cable intact between the current BU server and the tape library, but then daisy-chain another SCSI cable to another server and backup through that interface?
THANK YOU.
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