Internet connection speed is a very important factor in determining how quickly your backups will run. There is a detailed analysis of expected time for the actual data transfer portion of the backup process on our site.
But connection speed is not the only factor. Here are some additional tips to help minimize the time required for online backups.
1. Check on the hardware specification of the machines which performs backup. If your CPU usage is high, say 40% or more, adding RAM and increasing processor speed will likely help. You can view the CPU usage with the Windows Task Manager.
2. Disk specification of the backup machine; check on the local disk I/O utilization of the client machine. You can view the I/O utilization with Microsoft’s Windows Performance Monitor. If the I/O utilization of the disk in concern is high during the backup, consider performing the backup job at an alternate time.
3. The location of the backup data being on a local drive or a network drive can have a big impact. If the backup source of the backup job is set over a network, the backup speed will be impacted by network performance as well as network traffic. If possible, you should run the backup from a machine to which the data is local.
4. Location of the temporary directory: If the temporary directory specified for the backup set is not located locally, the backup speed will likely be decreased. This is especially true in the case of Exchange Server and SQL Server. If possible, you should use a temporary directory on the machine to which the data is local.
5. How many files are selected for backup? If the backup source contains a large number of files you may need to increase the amount of RAM memory.
6. Versioning: How many prior versions of files are being retained? The speed of a backup job can be affected if the number to delta files (versions) to be generated is large, or if the delta files to be generated are, themselves, large files. Carefully consider your retention policies. To see detailed notes about efficient retention, please review our retention policy guidelines.
7. Check on encryption key length configured for the backup set. If you are using 256 bit encryption, switching to 128 bit encryption can, depending on machine performance, boost performance.
8. If the Local Copy option is enabled for the backup set this may also slow down the backup operation depending on machine performance. You can create a separate backup set to perform local copies less frequently and not simultaneously with your online backup. Also, if the Local Copy destination is over a network consider making the copy to a local drive.
on Nov 5th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
In a country where bandwidth is limited, I always suggest to people that they start by backing up essential files, such as financial documents, resume, etc. Then, once these have finished, backup the non-essentials such as media files.