Slow Backups - Reversed Incremental

[Vmagic]

Hi All,

Have had this issue for a long time now and I can also see that it is fairly common amongst other users. Since our environment has been constantly growing and the backup infrastructure, basically consisting of two synology nas´s of the more expensive kind with large drives, 12-24 2TB+ SATA drives in each NAS, was designed for a 3 esxi host solution. Now the esxi servers are 5, 6th on the way and RAM has pretty much doubled leading to higher host per vm ratio, which in turn of course results in more vms being backed up. BAckup performance is very slow, 2-10MB/s is not uncommon, and veeam nearly always says that the target (synology) is the bottleneck, often with a value of 99%.

Im not willing to change the backup method as I like reversed incremental, and I know that the new method in v8 that just got released will be more efficient, and also that deploying backup proxies close to the source and also the target could help a bit right? but besides this, is there another way to speed up backup times? Can fill a synology with SSDs in the main data center for example? and then use backup copy jobs to move the files to synologys in our DR site? How would I then calculate the amount of SSD disk space that I would need? Any other design scenarios with SSDS that would be helpful to speed up backup times?
(By the way, is veeam availability suite v8 completely different from veeam backup and replication v8? We currently have veeam backup and replication licenses, am I entitled to veeam availability suite v8 without any extra costs?)

Thankful for any help and ideas!

[dellock6]

Hi,
before spending money for additional components like SSDs or other solution, while you are under maintenance you can upgrade to Veeam Backup & Replication v8 with no additional costs (the availability suite v8 is the combination of VBR and Veeam One). With it you can switch to the new forward forever incremental that has the same space benefits of reversed incremental with lower load on the storage.
Only if after this test is not enough for you, then I would consider other actions.

[Vmagic]

Hi,
Sorry that I havent responded to this thread earlier but thought that I might ask some extra questions since Im still having this issue. I have just upgraded to v8 and regarding the new forward forever incremental backup method, I havent tried it yet, but I have one question though: I really like that I dont have a dependency between full backups and incrementals when using reversed incremental compared to the forward incremental; Will I still have this dependency with the new forward forever incremental backup method ? i.e will the mess up the "backup chain" if one(1) incremental gets, let say, corrupted?

I have read the great post by Gostev (http://forums.veeam.com/veeam-backup-re ... 21304.html) which has been helpful and Ill probably go for something like this. Regarding storage spaces. Has anyone tried this with Write-Back-Cache? and how are the results? The WBC can also be increased (1GB is default), has anyone tried this and how are the results?
Thanks!

[veremin]

i.e will the mess up the "backup chain" if one(1) incremental gets, let say, corrupted?

Not the whole chain, but rather subsequent increments that are dependent on the corrupted one. That's also the case with reversed incremental mode. If, say, one increment gets corrupted, the dependent increments will be affected, as well. Thanks.

[Vmagic]

Ah ok, then I understand, Thanks.

What about experiences with Storage Spaces, and in particular with Write Back Cache. Any numbers that the group wants to share?

Thanks.

[veremin]

I haven't tested this feature myself, so you'd better wait til other users chime in. But, based on the general knowledge that I have regarding the technology, usage of it should result in increased target performance. Thanks.