Can you run multiple simultaneous backup jobs?

[foggy]

What processes take most of the memory and how much memory does the backup server have? How many tasks are processed at that moment? I also recommend opening a ticket with support regarding that.

[zak2011]

The memory of the backup server is 12GB. Two backup copy jobs run during this time.

[foggy]

Have you contacted support regarding that?

[TedLaurent]

I currently have the following installation:
1 virtual Windows Server with Veeam Backup and Replication.
- 32 vCPU
- 64 GB RAM
- 7 TB disk (local)

Both local repository and proxy are set to 16 concurrent jobs.
I'm backing up 11 VMs with 2 disks each

The backup only runs 4 backups simultaneously.
The Veeam server is not experiencing any contention for CPU/Memory.

Shouldn't the number of concurrent backups be greater?

[Gostev]

There are other "hidden" limits in play too, for example max open VM snapshots per datastore.

[TedLaurent]

Gostev - thank you for your response. I'm assuming that that limit is 4 when using VMware snapshots. Is there anything that can be done on the vSphere side to increase that limit?

[veremin]

Try to increase the value, using the following registry key:

Code: Select all

MaxSnapshotsPerDatastore

Thanks!

[Gostev]

But be careful: too many open snapshots can overfill the remaining free space on the datastore quickly, and also affect performance for all VMs running on the same datastore due to snapshots adding a significant amount of SCSI reservations.

More importantly, increasing this number will likely reduce your backup performance, as opposed to increasing it. Because the more VMs you backup concurrently from the same datastore, the slower each VM will be backed up, for the reason of limited storage throughput. As a result, each VM's snapshot will remain open for a longer time, and accordingly will take longer to consolidate - which puts further load on the same datastore and results in a snowball effect. So, there's a good reason why the default is no more than 4.

[TedLaurent]

Understood. Would there be circumstances were it would be safe to increase that to say 6? I'm backing up about 11 VMs that reside in a SimplivITy cluster. My storage consumption is about 50%. I know SimplivITy has some native backup capabilities but the nodes are extra small so I need to be careful about retention ( I do keep 1 backup that is retained for 4 hours. I plan on using Veeam for longer term backups.

The VMs are your typical Windows variety ... file server, exchange, web, sharepoint and SQL. They don't appear to be highly utilized.