Antivirus and slow backup speeds?

[ipadl]

Hey guys,

I've been using Veeam Backup 3.0 for the last month or so and have run across a problem with my antivirus software (Kaspersky 6.0). Whenever Kaspersky is active on my backup server, I'm seeing backup throughputs around 6-8 MBps. With Kaspersky inactive on the server, I'm seeing ~25MBps. Anybody else have similar issues and/or have any ideas for a fix? I've tried adding all file extensions to the exclusions list, but this hasn't gotten me anywhere. I've also tried to have the program ignore all activity from the Veeam Backup 3.0 application. Still no dice. Any suggestions?

Seth

[Gostev]

Hello Seth, actually I used to work on a product that performed real-time file system i/o auditing. These kind of applications, including antiviruses with real-time processing typically install a file-system filter driver that makes all file system i/o to go through it, thus reducing all file system operations performance pretty significantly. In fact, even on my desktop you can usually clearly observe file operations slow down from enabling real-time antivirus monitoring.

The thing is that with such applications, setting the application to ignore some activity merely disables application's business logic based on thу provided filter, but it does not disable actual file system driver and ALL I/O still travels through it. Every single operation is still being processed in order to apply the required filter, thus the performance is still being affected even with the filter in place.

[ipadl]

Thanks Gostev,

Do you have any recommendations for filters that do not create the same sort of a performance hit? this is completely inline with what we've seen in our lab.

Seth

[Gostev]

Seth, to my understanding no filter will be able to fully remove performance hit since all I/O would still be piped through AV file system filter driver.

If you use VCB, then adding some folders to AV exceptions might improve the situation because this would make antivirus not to parse the actual data. To do that, please open the Veeam Backup logs and look for vcbmounter.exe command line. Then, add the path you see there (with GUID) to AV exclusions (but don't include the actual GUID-named folder - it is generated automatically each session - add the parent folder to exclusions instead). As for how to setup the exclusion in Kaspersky, please refer to their documentation (I am not using Kaspersky so not sure).

Cannot guarantee that this would help much with performance, but it certainly worths trying!

Thanks!