Question : Problem: Backup Speeds and Potential Solutions

We are running a Backup Exec nightly full backup, using Backup Exec 12 for Windows Servers.. We are backing up 12 IBM Servers.

4 x3650's, Raid 5 Array, running 2003 Server R2 32 Bit
2 x3550's Raid 5 Array, running 2003 Server R2 32 bit
1 x3250 Raid 1 Array, running Debian Ubuntu
1 x305 Raid 1 Array, running Fedora Core 5
2 x206m's, Raid 5 Array, running Windows Server 2003 32 bit
2 x206's, Raid 5 Array, running Windows Server 2003 32 Bit.

This combination of servers produces about 550Gig's of backup data nightly. We are using a TS3200 Tape library using 1 Ultrium 3 tape each night to backup the data. The Ts3200 is connected to our Media server which is an x206, through a Fiber Channel HBA... All other servers get their data backed up through  a gigabit ethernet shared infrastructure... of the 550 gigs, about 520 are network data.

We are experiencing an issue where our backups are taking approxmiately 17 hours to run a full backup, and about 23 hours when using the Advanced open file options (This is what we'd like to use at the end of the day).

I've been having a bit've difficulty trying to track down the bottleneck.. Does anyone have any opinions on what I could do to increase performance? We've been looking in to potentially configuring a private Fiber Fabric switch environment for the backup solution, segregated from our LAN... But this is an expensive cost to incur if it doesn't decrease backup times..

Answer : Problem: Backup Speeds and Potential Solutions

Without putting a scanner on your network or a lot more detail it will be difficult to determine this. Hiring someone from Backup Exec to tune your config may be helpful. They should be able to optimize and suggest where to make improvements.

1.) If the the servers are attached to a common switch, a new switch with more back plane couldl help.

2.) If the servers have multiple NICs "link aggregation" will increase throughput to the network. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation

3.) If you a 100% switched network configuring "Full-Duplex" everywhere will.

4.) Is a complete nightly backup necessary? Full + Incremental or Full + Differential is common and only requires a large full backup once a week for us which we do over the weekend. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup

5.) Disk to Disk to Tape is also a potential solution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D2D2T . Your nightly backup would be pushed to a large network drive and then your tape backup would run from the large drive (ideally your your tape drive would be attached to the large disk solution. Backup Exec supports this solution)

Hope this helps