Veeam backup bottleneck = Source

[rpmahony]

The answer to this question may be a very broad one, but I'm going to ask it anyway: Why is Veeam Backup & Replication 6.5 only getting a processing rate of 24MB/s? Bottleneck: Source.

I'm backing up 6 VMs on an ESX 3.51 server. Five of those VMs share 2x Gbps NICs with the console port, with the file server dedicated to 1x Gbps in the HP Proliant DL385 G7. Disk, CPU, Memory usage on the ESX showing nominal levels. I'm backing up to a Promise NS4600 connected as an iSCSI target on a Windows 7 workstation, both with GB connectivity. (Was backing up to Seagate Black Armor via share with even lower rate of 18MB/s).

How accurate is the Bottleneck info? The ESX server doesn't seem to be very busy - far from it actually.

Thanks in advance for any and all input. I realize there's likely a bunch of factors I'm not including or overlooking, so feel free to grill me for additional details.

[foggy]

What transport mode is being used to retrieve VMs data from the datastore? You can check this by opening the job session log, selecting the particular VM to the left, and locating the transport mode tag ([san], [hotadd], or [nbd]) next to the name of the proxy server assigned for the processing.

[rpmahony]

Looks like [nbd].

[dellock6]

If you are using a local datastore on that ESXi server, and the disk subsystem is not that fast, surely source can be a bottleneck. That is also the reason that all other parameters are not high and the ESXi does not seems under stress at all.
NBD is not the best method for a performance backup, but nonetheless it can go up to 40-50 Mbs usually, so probably it's not the bottleneck.

Hae a look at storage latency for example on the VMware console while you run the backups, chances are you are going to see an increased value; this can be the symptom the local datastore is the bottleneck.

Luca.

[foggy]

Also you can try to deploy a virtual proxy server on the source host, then it would be able to use hotadd mode, which is typically provides much better data retrieval performance.

[rpmahony]

Also you can try to deploy a virtual proxy server on the source host, then it would be able to use hotadd mode, which is typically provides much better data retrieval performance.

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to this one. I finally installed a proxy on one of my VMs and am seeing a big boost in backup performance on all but my Exchange server VM. When that one runs, there's a message stating, "Hot add is not supported for this disk, failing over to network mode…" The other 5 VMs run hotadd just fine and are getting between 48 and 120MB/s.

Thanks for the tip with the virtual proxy. Anyone know what would cause the above error?

[foggy]

Glad you were able to improve performance.

Please check this KB article outlining limitations of using hotadd mode. Probably some of them apply to your case.