Problematic Backup Rate for Exchange 2007


We are currently only getting about 45 MB/min backup speed to disk
using Backup Exec 11d to backup our Exchange 2007 mailbox- and
multi-role servers. Can someone relate what speeds they are getting?

I am including details below regarding our setup in the hopes someone
might help troubleshoot this serious performance issue. Two servers in
the domain are affected - the one that is out of our domain (and gets
its Active Directory information from an EdgeSync subscription) is so
far unaffected.

We have three Exchange 2007 servers:

SDSEDGE01 Edge-role
SDSMULT01 HT- and CAS-role
SDSMAIL01 Mailbox-role

SDSEDGE01 is in a DMZ with an EdgeSync subscription. The other two
servers are in a single forest domain.

Our backup software is Backup Exec 11d Build 7170 with SP1. We also
have Backup Exec 11d Continuous Protection Server Build 7170 installed
along with Backup Exec on the same server with a locally-attached
external storage array. We have backup-to-disk devices on that array
as backup destinations for each Exchange-related backup job.

We have Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edtion 10.1.6.6000 x64 installed
on each server and the appropriate exclusions manually setup for
Exchange.

I have configured a server backup job for each server. The mailbox
server job has the directories for the mailboxes and transaction logs
excluded and does not use the Exchange agent.

I have 10 storage groups, each with a single database to support
approximately 50 heavy-mail users.

These servers are not yet in production.

I stress-tested the system using the Microsoft Load Generator utility.
First I heavily stressed it by checking the "stress" box in the
utility. When the utility locked up, I later ran another test without
the box checked and the results were successful.

There are no visible errors in the event logs and Dell Server
Assistant shows "all green" as far as hardware.

Prior to September 9, backups were very fast. Speeds for the backups
without the information store were around 600 MB/min to disk. CPS
jobs, jobs to create recovery points in Exchange, showed similar
speed.

On September 9th, at 8:02 pm, the remote agent failed on SDSMAIL01
with a .Net 2.0 runtime error:

Source: .NET Runtime 2.0 Error
Event ID: 1000
Description:
Faulting application beremote.exe, version 11.0.7170.11, stamp
4682c7fb, faulting module kernel32.dll, version 5.2.3790.4062, stamp
462643a7, debug? 0, fault address 0x000000000000d10.

Two CPS jobs were running at that time, one for the public storage
folder.

This part Saturday, the remote agent on SDSMAIL01 failed again with
the same error, this time at 8:02 am. Three CPS jobs were running at
that time.

When I restarted the remote agent Monday morning, all Backup Exec jobs
would fail with a JET error indicating compressed databases could not
be backed up. The databases are not compressed but the backup
destination folders were and had never been a problem before. In
fact, we have another media server that has backed up to compressed
folders for 1 1/2 years without a problem. I had to recreate the
backup-to-disk folders on a non-compressed drive and now the jobs
again run.

The problem is now the speed is extremely slow on SDSMAIL01 and
SDSMULTI01, the two servers in the domain. The backup of SDSEDGE01 is
still very fast. The problem backups range in speed from 12-45
MB/min.

I can select any other servers on the network and they backup up very
fast, 600-900 MB/min.

The CPU utilization of beremote.exe on SDSEDGE01 has ben observed as
high as 17 percent. On the other two servers that backup slowly the
CPU utilization is usually seen as 0 percent and, at times, 1 percent.

The network is not saturated.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled the remote agent, rebuilt .NET 2.0,
and even uninstalled and reinstalled .NET 2.0 on SDSMAIL01 and the
performance is still slow.

I can use ntbackup to backup one of the slow servers and I get a speed
of 1.5 GB/min.

Does anyone have any idea why these servers suddenly became
problematic as far as backup speed? Could the Exchange Load Generator
utility have damaged them somehow?

Could a problem in Active Directory somehow be interfering with the
proper functioning of the remote agent for Backup Exec?

Alan Dougherty
.

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