Chet,
From my experience it sounds like your Exchange is being backed up in network copy mode (or whatever the actual term is) and the speed you are reporting is about right for a 230GiB store and 850GiB drive. 4MiB/s is about what I
was getting with my Exchange backups. My store isn't nearly as large as yours, only 70GiB store and 200GiB drive.
A couple of weeks ago, I was having problems with one of the controllers on my SAN and my Exchange backup speed was very similar to yours:
Code: Select all
6 of 6 files processed
Total VM size: 200.02 GB
Processed size: 200.02 GB
Processing rate: 6 MB/s
Backup mode: SAN/NBD with changed block tracking
Start time: 12/22/2009 5:11:22 PM
End time: 12/23/2009 3:26:41 AM
Duration: 10:15:18
Backing up file "[VMFS-iSCSI02_Delta] vanc-exch01/vanc-exch01-flat.vmdk"
Unable to establish direct connection to the shared storage (SAN).
Please ensure that:
- HBA is properly installed in the Veeam Backup server computer, or software iSCSI initiator is configured correctly.
- SAN volume can be seen by operating system in the Windows Disk Management snap-in on the Veeam Backup server.
- Read access is allowed for the Veeam Backup server computer on the corresponding LUN (refer to your SAN documentation).
Direct SAN connection is not available, failing over to network mode...
But with SAN mode working my speeds are:
Code: Select all
6 of 6 files processed
Total VM size: 200.02 GB
Processed size: 200.02 GB
Processing rate: 19 MB/s
Backup mode: SAN/NBD with changed block tracking
Start time: 12/28/2009 10:09:54 PM
End time: 12/29/2009 1:05:00 AM
Duration: 2:55:05
Then I started playing with Virtual Appliance mode and HOTADD and my speeds are now:
Code: Select all
6 of 6 files processed
Total VM size: 200.02 GB
Processed size: 200.02 GB
Processing rate: 51 MB/s
Backup mode: HOTADD with changed block tracking
Start time: 12/31/2009 10:00:53 PM
End time: 12/31/2009 11:07:46 PM
Duration: 1:06:52
I would take a look at how your Veeam Backup server is accessing your ESX(i) infrastructure. If your Veeam server is physical, make sure you have your iSCSI SAN connected to your Veeam server, or a Fibre Channel HBA on the box. Make sure your backup jobs are set to use SAN/NAS mode.
If your Veeam server is virtual (like mine - and required for Virtual Appliance/HOTADD mode) then I'm not sure how your ESX(i) DataStores should be connected to the Veeam server (or even if they need to). You should be using Virtual Appliance/HOTADD mode for the backup jobs.
My DataStores are all iSCSI so I have them connected to my virtual Veeam server anyway since it's so easy to connect iSCSI. I hope this helps at least explain why you're seeing the speeds you're getting.
Also, have faith in the Veeam support, they've been great to work with. I have been using Veeam for only a few months and called in to support a couple of times gettings things set up properly. I got frustrated with their support, but it was mostly my impatience

I also did have a tech that I was having trouble working with, I asked for an escalation to a supervisor and once the supervisor got involved (and I kept working with the same tech) things improved greatly. If anyone asks me for a reference on Veeam, the product gets A+, the support gets B+/A- and that's because of the afore mentioned single incident.
h
For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert - Arthur C Clarke's Fourth Law