Back Up Best Practices?

I'm sorry I can't answer your question because I have the same issue myself. (although I'm using Networker 7.3 for back-ups)

Problem is for me is the back-ups of the extended volume are EXTREMELY slow.

Also, when you back up files on the extended drive, (if they are already archived), woudnt' this just pull the full file off the Centerra if the stubs were set for "direct read".

Make sure the 3rd party backup mode for managed files is set to "Fast". You can find this option by right clicking on the Extended Drive, selecting Properties and then going to the Options tab. The option is the first one in the list.

If this option is set to "Full", your backup application will attempt to fetch all purged files when backing them up, thus significantly slowing down the backup process.

Thanks for your reply. This option was already set for "Fast". I thought for sure that was going to fix my problem.
Matt

I have a support ticket open with tech support...This seemed to improve speed slightly, but still unacceptable.

THis may help you though....

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Support Note 62304

Support Note Information

Subject: NetWorker Backup is timing out on a DiskXtender Extended drive


Note: Fact: DiskXtender 2000
Fact: Special Application Filtering
Fact: NetWorker Client for Windows/NT
Symptom: NetWorker executables that run during a backup of a DiskXtender server
Symptom: NetWorker backup is failing on a DiskXtender Extended drive
Symptom: DiskXtender is fetching all file when a NetWorker Backup is running on an Extended Drive
Symptom: NetWorker Backups are timing out while trying to back up a DiskXtender Extended drive
Symptom: Error: 'Inactivity timeout'
Symptom: Error: 'nsrexec: attempting to kill'
Fix: The Executables for a NetWorker Client may need to be added to the DiskXtender Special Application Filtering list for the Backup to run correctly.

The NetWorker 6.x executables that may need to be added are as follows.

nsrexecd.exe
save.exe
savefs.exe
nsrpm.exe
nsrexecd.exe
nsrexec.exe
uasm.exe


To modify the Special Application Filtering list, From the 'Service' dropdown select 'Properties'on the 'Options' tab scroll down the list to 'Use Special Application Filtering' it should be enabled. Select the 'Edit List' button, then 'Add' each of the binaries listed above with 'Special Action' set to 'No Recall'

With regards to the BackupExec issues, be sure that your AntiVirus is not performing "Real-time Scans". This will significantly increase the amount of time needed to perform a backup.

Reason being, you are adding another filter driver to the file system layer, that file read calls have to pass through. Change your AntiVirus to scan on in-bound only and see if that helps.

With regards to the NetWorker issue, what version of DiskXtender are you running?

Starting with DiskXtender 6.0, a change has been made to make Networker backups perform better on a DiskXtender extended drive. Basically, the Networker backup-reads will be treated as "unfiltered", significantly reducing the amount of work DX does during a Networker backup.

Normal operation:
Full Backup = we recall purged files and let the backup application read all data in a migrated file
Fast Backup = we do not recall purged files and backup applications read migrated files as 0 byte stubs

New code:
Networker backups will get an image of the drive as-is. Purged files will not be recalled and migrated files will appear with all their data as it is on the hard drive. This is regardless of whether you have "Fast Backup" or "Full Backup" set.

This is the new default behavior.

If you are already running a DiskXtender 6.x version, then you may also want to check your AV settings, and ensure that real-time scanning is disabled, at the very least for the DiskXtender Extended Drive.

If you do end up making a change to your AV application to disable real-time scanning, be sure to reboot the server before testing your next backup, as AV filter drivers load on boot, so you won't see any effect from changes made until after the next reboot.

Hope this helps.

Hi Michael,
can you point me in a direction where this change is documented. I've looked at the V6.1 docs and haven't found this detail anywhere.

Thanks,

Vincent

Vincent,

It was an internal interoperability change between DiskXtender and NetWorker. It was not documented in any release notes or admin guides.

Thanks,

-Mike

Hi Mike,
we have 1.5TB of data that is on the extended drive and has already been moved to tape. This data is being used quite a lot day to day and is not being purged until it reaches a high watermark.

Before the DX 6.1 upgrade when we backed up it only copied out the file stubs for the managed files.

Total Data backed up 1.1 million files 10GB

After the V6.1 upgrade it backs up the data exactly as it sees it on disk.

Total Data backed up 1.1 million files 1.5TB

I may have misinterpreted your previous note but this looks like the new default for V6.1

Thanks,

Vincent

Vincent,

Your customer should not be seeing an increase in the amount of time it takes to perform a backup with NetWorker, due to this change. It should actually be just the opposite.

If you're seeing slow backup times, you should start a Service Request with both the DiskXtender and NetWorker teams, so that more information can be gathered.

I'd recommend (if you haven't already) downloading FileMon from www.sysinternals.com and running it against the Extended Drive, to see what processes are accessing the data while a backup is running.

Make sure that there's no other processes running on the Extended Drive during backups. Make sure that AV real-time scanning isn't attempting to read each file getting backed up, thus increasing backup times, etc...

Thanks,

-Mike

Hi Mike,
I can see reasons for changing the backup behaviour in V6.1. However it would have been nice to have this functionality change documented. My customers backup has gone from 6 hours to 28 hours following this change. I have had to go back to the customer and say that this is by design. Of course their next question is why weren't we told about this in advance.

As someone who actually reads the release notes and installation guide prior to any upgrade this is most disappointing.

I am not targeting this at you directly but changes of this nature should be highlighted in the future because of the obvious effect.

Best Regards,

Vincent

You know what, you're absolutely right, if you have a large amount of fetched files, this could prove problematic. There's a registry change to turn this off, let me dig it up and get it to you. Stay tuned...

-Mike

Hi Mike,
thanks very much for that detail. Last question is do I need to reboot the server
to bring this change into effect ?


Thanks again,

Vincent

Thanks Mike,
I'd happily assign points but I don't seem to have an option. Possibly because I'm not the original author ot this thread.

Vincent

That's okay. I'd rather see a reply saying that it worked.

-Mike

Yes, because you are changing functionality of the DiskXtender Filter Driver, which loads on boot.

Please be sure to export a copy of your registry prior to making any changes to it.

Thanks!

-Mike