I have a question regarding high CPU utilization during backup jobs. We have been using Veeam since v.4.1 and each time Veeam has released a new version, we upgraded to that version. Currently we are running v.5.0.2.230 + vSphere 5 patch (with the latest agent that addressed high CPU). Our Veeam server is virtual with 4 vCPU and 8 GB RAM running Windows Server 2008 R2. The ESX host (running vSphere 4.1) on which Veeam server is located has 2x Intel Xeon X5550 and we have 2 Dell MD1200 (SCSI DAS) connected to the ESX host. We use those 2 MD1200's as backup storage only. We have spanned all MD1200 drives (due to vmdk limitations - max 2 TB) in Veeam server so it provides us an R:\ drive with 29TB. All production VM's that we backup reside on Equallogic iSCSI SAN (PS6000 and PS4100).
Our issue is that we have had high CPU utilization when running backup jobs for quite a while. I am not sure at what exact version this started but I think it was once we moved from v.4.12 to v.5.0.0.179. Prior to this, one backup job would take somewhere about 50% of CPU meaning that we could run 2 simultaneous jobs which would make CPU to utilize almost 100%. But after one of the Veeam upgrades, one jobs takes almost all CPU (runs between 85-99%) so running 2 simultaneous jobs is no longer an option since both jobs would take longer time to perform due to the heavy load on CPU.
I have been following posts on this forum regarding other peoples CPU experiences but nobody seems to have this issue. A 4vCPU server according to other posts takes app. 50% CPU. And therefor I decide to finally post my CPU issue to see if there is something that I have missed.
Below is a print screen when I run 1 backup job and as you can see, VeeamAgent.exe is utilizing almost all CPU. All our jobs are configured to run with Optimal compression and Incremental job with "Enable synthetic fulls" + "Transform previous full backup chains into rollbacks". Storage optimize is set to Local Target, we are using CBT and we have enabled Automatic backup integrity checks. The high CPU utilization occurs only during the actual backup (creation of the .VIB file). Transforming of chain does not put a load on CPU.
We have this CPU behaviour on all our backup jobs so it’s not specific to this job.
