Slow Backup Speed

[bcraley]

I have two identical installations of EXSi in two different locations. Same server hardware, gigabit switch, same network services provided by 2008R2 and identical NAS.

I run VEEAM nightly to backup the domain controller in each location to a NAS. At site #1 all is going great with an approximate processing rate of 400 MB/s.

However, at site #2 things are very slow. I'm getting approximatly 15 MB/s. I've looked at the VM's and ESXi hosts and can't find anything different in any of the performance monitors from Site#1 to Site#2.

Can anyone give me an idea of what to look for to solve the slow backup speed at Site#2.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Brad,

Welcome to Veeam Community forums!

I run VEEAM nightly to backup the domain controller in each location to a NAS. At site #1 all is going great with an approximate processing rate of 400 MB/s.

However, at site #2 things are very slow. I'm getting approximatly 15 MB/s. I've looked at the VM's and ESXi hosts and can't find anything different in any of the performance monitors from Site#1 to Site#2.

Sounds like you are not using CBT on the second site. Could you please clarify if you're using the same backup job mode on both sites? In addition, could you please share your Veeam backup server configuration?

Thanks!

[joergr]

Hi,

Vitaliy is right, there HAS to be any difference in the general setup, otherwise the speeds would not vary THAT much. Please check very carefully every little setting and compare again, there HAS to be some different setting. Please also check the backup logs. Maybe the job on site b HAS CBT turned on but the log shows that there was a problem when trying to copy with CBT and thus is falling back to normal mode.

best regards,
Joerg

[bcraley]

I'm embarrased to ask what CBT is. I've gone through my setups and don't see CBT mentioned any where. How do I confirm that it's turned on?

As for my backup server detail:

It's a VM on the same host as the Domain Controller being backed up.

Windows Server 2008 R2
2 vCPU
Memory: 4096 MB
Memory Overhead: 139 MB


Consumed Host CPU: 2680 MHz
Consumed Host Memory: 4159 MB
(Both consumed host CPU and Consumed Host Memory are very high compared to what I'm seeing on other installs, though I have no idea why??)

I have two data stores, one that is the local host datastore and the other is the NAS Datastore.

I have a share on my NAS that I map to the V: drive that is the target location for the Veeam Backup.

One other piece of info: It seems that throughput on this EXSi host is crawling. When I try to download the vSphere Client from the hosts website it takes about 100x's longer than it should (again compaired to other installs). Browsing network shares on the DC seems to work fine. I'm new to the VM/Veeam world... any troubleshooting advice you can give would be helpful... I feel like I'm at a dead-end right now.

Thanks!!

Brad

[bcraley]

OK... so I really am an idiot. CBT (Change Block Tracking). I made changes to the VM so that CBT is now enabled. Running a Full backup, so I'll find out tomorrow if I have increased speed since turning on CBT.

Thanks!

[Vitaliy S.]

One other piece of info: It seems that throughput on this EXSi host is crawling. When I try to download the vSphere Client from the hosts website it takes about 100x's longer than it should (again compaired to other installs). Browsing network shares on the DC seems to work fine. I'm new to the VM/Veeam world... any troubleshooting advice you can give would be helpful... I feel like I'm at a dead-end right now.

Not sure it would help, but try restarting management network on your second ESXi host. On top of that, you can install Veeam Monitor (free or trial) to see I/O rates on your datastores for both ESXi hosts.

Running a Full backup, so I'll find out tomorrow if I have increased speed since turning on CBT.

You should definitely see the change on incremental job run. Looking forward to hearing good news from you!