Backup Copy - Transfer Slow and by "Bursts"

[Paulo Balau]

Hi,

I found a strange behaviour when performing a backup copy to a USB Disk mounted on a NAS (QNAP).
This copy contained several VMs that finished normally.
But last one was taking so long that I tried to restart the job by altering the backup window and resume the job.
At start it was good but after a while, the behaviour is this:

1. It takes several minutes (~3/5 minutes) transfering nothing
2. After this veeam transfers a bunch of data at a very regular pace during a few minutes
3. Seems to stop the transfer: Goto 2

At the Trougthput window all you are spikes
Should not this be a smooth copy? Why this "bursting"?

All the best!
Paulo

[PTide]

Hi,

What are the bottleneck stats?

Thanks!

[Paulo Balau]

It's always the source. But bare in mind this backup copy was the only job running at the time.
I scheduled jobs to avoid overlapping.

All the Best!

[Paulo Balau]

To mention this backup copy job includes several other VM's. Some big, some smaller (SQL, DC, App Server, Terminal Server, Exchange, FileServer).
All other VM's included in backup copy seem to work fine (including the Exchange one having around ~1,2TB) and rather smoothly without this "highs and lows".
For this machines it lasts ~8/9hrs to copy, which already includes some File Server content.
Of course, since the FileServer (~2TB) is bigger it sould last longuer to copy the remaining contents.
But never expected 10hrs more and with this strange trougthput behaviour.
Ah! Specially because it has 4 disks and this behaviour seems to happen only for the last disk (the bigger I should say).

See... source is always the bottleneck for all job but if it works fine for the first machines, it should work for the remaining. I say

Best Regards,
Paulo Balau

[wishr]

Hi Paul,

Are your backups stored on the same NAS that has the USB drive attached, or what's the design?

Thanks

[Paulo Balau]

Indeed they are... External USB's for the Backup Copies are attached to the NAS QNAP acting as the Backup Repository.
When copying a backup to the USB drives information must be retrieved from the backup repository QNAP NAS.
They are all mounted as CIFS on the Backup Server/Proxy.

[wishr]

Hi Paulo,

Thank you. A couple of additional questions to get a full picture:

1. What type of NAS it is? I assume it's also CIFS? Just to confirm.
2. Where is the Gateway server installed then?

Thanks in advance

[Paulo Balau]

Its a QNAP (CIFS) with USB for backup copies attached to it (also CIFS)
I only have one all purpose backup server. So it should be the veeam backup server as well.
If talking about the backups we can set the proxies to be onhost or not but this regards to the backup copies so the copy is direct from host (the QNAP) to the USB...

Thanks for your Help
Balau

[wishr]

Hi Paulo,

Have you tried attaching your USB drive to the B&R server itself? I suppose the performance is dropping due to the data transmission loop, but not completely sure that's the case.

Thanks

[foggy]

What OS Veeam B&R server is running?

[Paulo Balau]

veeam is installed on a Windows 2016 Server VM.

[agrob]

I had no good performance result with copy job to a disk attached to a usb drive on a nas. performance was very bad and this was because veeam does not just copy the data like a file copy. i did end up with schedule a copy job with the native application on the qnap nas which copies the whole folder with veeam files to the usb disk. performance there is about 90MB/s. downside, veeam is not aware of this data but because it is only for offloading data, it is not that big deal. if you need to restore data from this usb disk, just attach it to a windows server or share the usb disk over the nas.

veeam-backup-replication-f2/backup-copy ... 51229.html

[Paulo Balau]

Hum!... I understand that (BC) backup copy it's like "yet another" backup from the veeam backup files.
Nevertheless I was not expecting to take 4x more time to perform. See… That way is preferable to have a second backup normal job to the USB
Eg Regarding Exchange, my Backup Job to NAS is about 5hrs, Backup Copy is taking 18hrs!!!

Now…
a) This BC comprises several VMs backups on the very same Job. I'm now testing individual BCs for each VM. Until now, the performance gets a little better.
Its seems to me that this BCs behave better with "individual" BCs.

b) This BC also uses the "Extreme" for Storage. Next I'll try the "Auto" (maintains compression rations) and I'll compare the results.

Thanks!

[Paulo Balau]

"a) This BC comprises several VMs backups on the very same Job. I'm now testing individual BCs for each VM. Until now, the performance gets a little better.
Its seems to me that this BCs behave better with "individual" BCs."
- Individually it took only 6,5hrs to complete the full backup copy (11,5 hrs less!!!), only +1hr more than the full backup

[PTide]

Paulo,

Have you tried connecting the usb device to VBR instead of NAS as Fedor's suggested?

Thanks

[foggy]

Also, I'd lower compression level, Extreme provides little extra savings over High at the cost of double CPU resources and High itself is just ~10% of space savings over Optimal at the cost of ~10x higher CPU usage.

[Paulo Balau]

Indeed, I did not also because the VBR is a virtual machine.

[Paulo Balau]

"a) This BC comprises several VMs backups on the very same Job. I'm now testing individual BCs for each VM. Until now, the performance gets a little better.
Its seems to me that this BCs behave better with "individual" BCs."
- Individually it took only 6,5hrs to complete the full backup copy (11,5 hrs less!!!), only +1hr more than the full backup

b) This BC also uses the "Extreme" for Storage. Next I'll try the "Auto" (maintains compression rations) and I'll compare the results.
- This one took about 12hrs, before it was 22hrs!!! (less 11hrs!!!)

Conclusion:
- Avoid including several VMs (specially if big ones) on very same BC copy and/or extreme compressions for backup copy