Veeam Backup Performance

[dominic1134]

Hello!

We are currently evaluating Veem Backup and Replication in our ESX Server Environment and trying to optimize the backup performance.
We have 2 ESX Hosts running 7 Virtual Machines. The load of both ESX Servers is around 20-30% average, the RAM usage is around 40% on both hosts.

We want to perform a full backup of all virtual machines every Night with a capacity of 1,44TB on a NAS Storage.
The Backup should be performend via LAN/NBD directly from the ESX Hosts to the NAS Storage via Gigabit Ethernet.
There is almost no load on the Switch in the night, except the backup process.


ESX Host 01/02 --------------- NBD -----------> Backup Server ------------------> NAS Storage



Our hardware setup is the following:

ESX Servers:
#ESX01 | HP Proliant DL385 G6 (AMD Opteron 6 x 2,4Ghz / 32GB RAM) | connected with 3 x GigaBit Ethernet
#ESX02 | HP Proliant DL385 G6 (AMD Opteron 6 x 2,4Ghz / 32GB RAM) | connected with 3 x GigaBit Ethernet
#VMFS_Store | HP StorageWorks MSA2024 2.5" | connected via 2x extern mSAS to each server

Backup Server:
#Backup01 | HP Proliant DL380 G4 (Intel Xenon 2x 3,4 GHz / 3,5GB RAM) | connected via 2x Gigabit Ethernet

Backup Storage:
#Backup_Store01 | Western Digital my world edition II with 4TB | Western Digital Caviar Green HDD with troughut of ~100MB/s | connected with Gigabit Ethernet

Network:
HP ProCurve 2510-48G with GigaBit Ethernet


The current backup-speed average is at 44MB/s but we should have atleast 60 MB/s to process the backup in the given time.









Are there any common ways how we could tweak or backup performance to the maximum?

Thanks in Advance,
DS

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Dominic,

First of all could you tell me what version of ESX host are you running? Also because of Veeam uses synthetic way of backup (reversed incremental), the output file (VBK) always represents full backup file of the latest state. So there is no need in doing complete full backups daily, unless you have to follow your corporate policies etc. That will allow you to fit in your backup window.

Thank you!

[tsightler]

Using Network Backup mode is almost always the slowest possible option. Why are you using this mode instead of vStorage API? You'll be lucky to see speeds in the 40MB/sec range with any backup that has to go through the ESX console, especially with ESX 4 (I don't think you mentioned your version). Admittedly, with vStorage API, if you have to use NBD mode, it might be slower for full backups, but Veeam does "forever incremental" using changed block tracking on ESX4 and higher so incremental runs (which build a virtual full backup) will still be much faster than network mode. Network mode backups have to read the entire backup image every time via the service console, (or, even worse, agentless mode if you haven't provided console passwords), so they are not very fast.

[dominic1134]

Hello,
thanks so far.

We are running 2x ESX 4.0.0 build-261974 with vCenter 4.1.0 Build 259021.
I have now changed the Backup mode to VM Storage API.

I noticed that i had added the vCenter server in veeam instead of the esx hosts directly,
could this may be a problem?


Regards,
Dominic

[Gostev]

Adding vCenter server is the recommended approach. You should be getting much faster (up to 10x) incremental backups now, after the first incremental pass (which will take about same time as usual, as the use of changed block tracking will be first enabled during this pass on all processed VMs).