Long back ups 1

[roadiebob]

Hi,
I am real novice on Backup exec. I inherited the backup system when my boss was dismissed. I have no training so please forgive any newbie questions.
What I am finding is that my backups are running 18-20 hours for 100-120 gb of data. This seems really excessive to me. This is done in a shop were most users have left the building by 9 pm. The backup is scheduled to start at 11pm so I dont think its server load or network load. The back up is to disk via firewire ports. The problem I run into is
that I work till 5pm, but these run till up to 730pm. Then because no one is here to swap drives, it overites the the data it just spent 20 backup again at 11pm. Is there
1. A way to find out why it takes so long to do the backp and ....
2. connect 2 back up drives and direct the backups to the correct drive so the swap will not be neccesary till the next day.
the servers are Windows 2003, the drives are firewire 300gb drives. thanks everyone

Bob

 

[roadiebob]

I want to add that this is a Veritas 91. system

 

[SQLBill]

You can right click on the completed backup and one of the options should be to see the job history. Take a look at that and see if it indicates what the problem might be.

Some thoughts.....check your throughput as reported by the job history. Check your network connections.

-SQLBill

Posting advice: FAQ481-4875

 

[roadiebob]

Thanks Bill,
I checked the logs, there is an error where it cant backp the sql server do to no agent running on it, also it wants to backup every deleted email account. I also notice it trys to backup the exchange acccounts during the day when there all in use. I suspect that might slow it down quite a bit.
Just a general question though, is 20 hours for 110 gigs of data normal, or excessive?

thanks
Bob

 

[LawnBoy]

Excessive.
I've got BE 9.1 for Netware, Adaptec 39160 running a Quantum SDLT 600 deck. Backing up > 130GB, total job time 4 hrs 15 min including the Verify.

 

[pgaliardo]

Agree with LawnBoy - excessive. We back up over 250GB to LTO drive in about 7 hours.

 

[roadiebob]

Thanks Guys, I was pretty sure it was way outside of the norm, but did not have anything to base it on.

Now I just have to figure out why its taking so long :-(

 

[SQLBill]

Very excessive.......my 290+ GB database takes 9 1/2 hours to back up.

Of course, one thing to consider....verifying the backup takes just as long as the backup. (I don't verify).

Backup Exec does require an Agent for SQL Server if you are going to backup the databases. However, I highly suggest you don't do that. Have your SQL Server DBA do backups to hard drive and then use BE to copy the backup files to tape.

-SQLBill

Posting advice: FAQ481-4875

 

[LawnBoy]

In the job logs you can see the data transfer rates for each volume in the set. Check to see if some volumes are drastically slower than others. 3 to 1 it's your Exchange backups that are eating so much time.

 

[pgaliardo]

SQL Bill, why do you suggest not using the SQL Agent? I only ask because we purchased the agent, but can't get it to work on a SQL 2005 Cluster with 64 bit O/S. No help from Veritas yet either. Just as you suggest, we are doing regular SQL backups to disk, then just backing up the files to tape. I wasn't sure this was the best way to do it, but you seem to think it is.
Thanks.

 

[SQLBill]

I have had severe issues with the agent. Let's say MS upgrades or makes a change to SQL Server and how it does back ups. Veritas can't make that change magically, you have to wait for a patch to come out. Does MS tell you that their change/update/whatever affects how backups are done? NO. So, you are happily doing backups via BE and never know that none of your backups are working because Veritas doesn't have a patch available. Some software companies can take upto 18 months to develop a patch for situations like this. Can you wait 18 months? But a SQL Server backup will always be restorable.

Go back in time........I have a brand new copy of Backup Exec 8.6. The latest thing....the reseller knew our setup and what we would use it for. Happily doing backups using the agent. We don't have a test bed or extra equipment so we couldn't test any restores. But what the heck....we are using the agent for SQL Server. Long story short...we had a crash and couldn't restore the data from tape. Turned out 8.6 wasn't compatible with our setup unless we had a specific hotfix (which had been out for a while). Why did neither Veritas or the reseller provide the latest version? Who knows, but they didn't. SO we had to send our tapes to Veritas for recovery (the reseller paid for it since it was their fault), but it took 2 months for us to get our data back. I learned my lesson about third-party tools and will only do SQL Server backups using SQL Server commands.

-SQLBill

Posting advice: FAQ481-4875

 

[pgaliardo]

SQLBill,

Very informative. Thanks for that. I think I will continue to do regular SQL backups to disk as you said.

Thanks.

 

[roadiebob]

Thanks everyone for your input. This helps me out alot. You were right about the exchange backups taking the longest. Speed is down to 81mb a min, along with webhost at about 90mb a min. Some directorys are in the 1500mb a min range.

also thanks for the sql agent advice.

 

[billy8774]

Hi I have the Exact same Problem but with files that are stored on the same server as BE is running from. The funny thing is that If I use a lto1 it runs faster than lto2. The other suggestion is not to do a brick level BU for exchange 2k3 that should speed things up. Since Ecchange has its own recovery system. I have never had to restore a single folder or mailbox it is usally the whole server.