SQL Server Forums
Profile | Register | Active Topics | Members | Search | Forum FAQ
 
Register Now and get your question answered!
Username:
 Password:
Save Password
Forgot your Password?

 All Forums
 General SQL Server Forums
 New to SQL Server Administration
 back up taking WAY too long.		  New Topic  Reply to Topic
 Printer Friendly
Author Previous Topic Topic Next Topic  

10Dawg
Starting Member

USA
41 Posts
Posted - 07/02/2012 :  16:12:21  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
I'm have 151GB of data that needs to be backed up everyday. My plan starts at 1 am and doesn't finish until 3-4 pm. Should 151 GB take that long? Is it possible to split the databases up into several backups going at one time? What other strategies are there for speeding things up?

10Dawg

10Dawg
Starting Member

USA
41 Posts
Posted - 07/02/2012 :  16:18:36  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Sorry! I'm using the backup in the maintenance plan that comes with SSMS. We are using sql 2008 and backup plan is set to full. (Boss wants point-in-time recovery).

10Dawg
Go to Top of Page

tkizer
Almighty SQL Goddess

USA
35007 Posts
Posted - 07/02/2012 :  16:30:17  Show Profile  Visit tkizer's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Use backup compression. A database that size should backup pretty quickly, definitely under an hour.

You could try some of the performance parameters of the backup command, but I would suggest looking at the speed of your disks first.

Tara Kizer
Microsoft MVP for Windows Server System - SQL Server
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/tarad/

Subscribe to my blog
Go to Top of Page

tkizer
Almighty SQL Goddess

USA
35007 Posts
Posted - 07/02/2012 :  16:36:14  Show Profile  Visit tkizer's Homepage  Reply with Quote
To give you an idea, we are backing up a 600GB database in about an hour and are not using any of the performance parameters. We are using backup compression though.

For another system where we are using the performance parameters, we are backing up a 10TB database in about 5 hours. Using backup compression here too, everywhere actually.

Tara Kizer
Microsoft MVP for Windows Server System - SQL Server
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/tarad/

Subscribe to my blog
Go to Top of Page

robvolk
Most Valuable Yak

USA
15559 Posts
Posted - 07/02/2012 :  16:39:59  Show Profile  Visit robvolk's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Are you backing up to a local disk? To tape? To a network device?
quote:
We are using sql 2008 and backup plan is set to full. (Boss wants point-in-time recovery)
Unless you're also backing up the transaction log, you can't do point-in-time recovery.
Go to Top of Page

tkizer
Almighty SQL Goddess

USA
35007 Posts
Posted - 07/02/2012 :  16:51:09  Show Profile  Visit tkizer's Homepage  Reply with Quote
The three performance parameters I'm referring to are BLOCKSIZE, BUFFERCOUNT, and MAXTRANSFERSIZE. There are specific values you should be using according to the CAT team, what values to use depends on your backup destination.

Here's some articles:
http://sqlcat.com/sqlcat/b/technicalnotes/archive/2008/04/21/tuning-the-performance-of-backup-compression-in-sql-server-2008.aspx
http://sqlcat.com/whitepapers/archive/2009/08/13/a-technical-case-study-fast-and-reliable-backup-and-restore-of-a-vldb-over-the-network.aspx

We are using these for the 10TB database to a NAS: BUFFERCOUNT = 512, MAXTRANSFERSIZE = 2097152, BLOCKSIZE = 8192
For disk-based backups, we are using 65535 for BLOCKSIZE.

Tara Kizer
Microsoft MVP for Windows Server System - SQL Server
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/tarad/

Subscribe to my blog
Go to Top of Page

Michael Valentine Jones
Yak DBA Kernel (pronounced Colonel)

USA
6997 Posts
Posted - 07/02/2012 :  23:59:13  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Make sure you are using backup compression. Also, make sure you have backup verification turned off in the maintenance plan.

You might consider doing a "copy only" backup to the NUL device as a test to see how much the slowness is due to slow IO reading the database and how much is due to slow IO on the output backup file.

The time to run the "copy only" backup to the NUL device will represent the absolute minimum run-time for the backup without moving the database to faster disk.
backup database [MyDatabase] to disk = 'NUL:' with stats = 5 , copy_only




CODO ERGO SUM
Edited by - Michael Valentine Jones on 07/03/2012 00:12:45
Go to Top of Page

tkizer
Almighty SQL Goddess

USA
35007 Posts
Posted - 07/03/2012 :  01:06:57  Show Profile  Visit tkizer's Homepage  Reply with Quote
I only learned of the NUL device a few weeks ago when we were seeing if we could speed up the 10TB database's backup. We are at maximum speed!

Tara Kizer
Microsoft MVP for Windows Server System - SQL Server
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/tarad/

Subscribe to my blog
Go to Top of Page

10Dawg
Starting Member

USA
41 Posts
Posted - 07/11/2012 :  14:44:30  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
thanks for all the tips.

10Dawg
Go to Top of Page
  Previous Topic Topic Next Topic  
 New Topic  Reply to Topic
 Printer Friendly
Jump To:
SQL Server Forums © 2000-2009 SQLTeam Publishing, LLC Go To Top Of Page
This page was generated in 0.09 seconds. Powered By: Snitz Forums 2000