ARCserve 11.1 Exchange agent frustration

[HockeyStatMan]

Hi Folks,
I recently upgraded two of our Exchange 5.5 servers from ARCserve 6.5 to ARCserve 11.1. One has few users so I haven't noticed anything being slow on there, but the other one is a major server for us. In the past when we had ARCserve 6.5 on it nightly full backups would average a little over two hours. I did a full brick-level backup on Friday and it took over 33 hours. Obviously something is wrong here!

I did some research, and I saw something about using named pipes. Is this the same when I'm using ARCserve 11.1 build 3100 and the backup drive, ARCserve 11.1, and the information store being backed up all reside on the same system? If so where am I missing it? I can see where I can put in Agent information under the Security and Agent screen. When I click the Agent button a screen comes up with all but the Use Agent box greyed out. When I click on it I get prompted for a username and password to \\dbaxchg2\ADMIN$, and I have no such system on my network. As such I can't get the agent to work.

It's pretty frustrating right now because it seems like it should be working fine, but 33 hours to back up something that previously took a little over 2 hours seems a bit crazy to me.

Help!
- Dave

 

[vschumpy]

This is correct - add the agent under Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 systems and back it up from there.

To be honest the 6.5 version of the exchange agent wasn't great, the fact that it backed up in 2hrs before may not mean anything - in fact it may not have backed up half the information you think it did. A lot has changed between 6.5 and 11.1.

brick level backup is slow period. Were you actually backing up brick level in 6.5 ? Remember you need the IS and DS in a Disaster recovery situation, brick level is supplemental to this and allows individual mailbox restores, you cannot recover your server in a DR sitation with only brick level backup.

 

[HockeyStatMan]

Okay, DS? You lost me there.

I know that 6.5 was working fine because prior to going to 11.1 we had the drives in the server that this was on fill up. We ended up pulling those drives, replacing them with larger drives, rebuilding the array, restoring from backup, and it worked fine.

With 6.5 we were only doing a database backup, not a brick level.

I just got off the phone with CA - only two hours on hold - and for all of that they gave me a registry value to change:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ComputerAssociates\BrightStor ARCserve Backup\DSAgent\dbaexch\UseTCP

Changed it from 1 to 0.

They had me run a test backup of a few mailboxes both before and after that change, and I'm not seeing any difference in performance. (around 70 MB/minute)

I tried telling the guy I spoke to that I'd also tried a backup of just the information store instead of a Brick Level, and it failed at a random point. I can run the same job multiple times and it fails in different places every time, but it does consistently fail. Might back up 25 GB, might back up 110 GB, but it's never completed. His response ? "We can't work on multiple issues on the same ticket. You'll have to call back and open another ticket." Well let me just block out my entire afternoon tomorrow so that I can sit on hold and be ignored for a few hours...

As sad as this may be to hear if anyone from CA is listening, I did have much better luck with 6.5 than I am having with 11.1.

 

[vschumpy]

Ok, the dbaexchg2 entry you're seeing relates to brick or mailbox level backup, if you weren't using it in 6.5 de-select it in 11.1 This is probably what is eating your window if you have it selected.

IS = Information Store DS = Directory Store, Exchange terms.

If you have Exchange 5.5 you should see an entry for Exchange Information Store, Exchange Directory, and Exchange Mailbox/Brick Level in addition to your normal drives. Just select the first two.

The advice you were given changes the agent protocol for TCP to named pipes, which if anything is usually much slower.

I'm kinda presuming that you are backing up exchange remotely (ie the Exchange server is remote to the ARCserve host server where you have your tape drive attached). If so, you need to make sure the agents installed on that machine are r11.1 too.

Don't browse the network section to backup the machine, add it in Windows NT/2000/2003/XP systems section manually - For whatever reason there seems to be a few funnies if you do it through network. Remember to add using the hostname and check the box for 'Use ComputerName Resolution'. From your first update it seems like you are browsing the network section.

Personally I would change that usetcp setting back to 1, but you can try tests both with or without it - I believe this can be toggled in the ARCserve Manager GUI when you are looking in the backup manager called agent protocol or something like that I think.

Is the slow performance only for exchange, or is it for regular filesystem backups too ? If so, can you detail what drive you are using to backup too ?