Performance tuning

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Many factors can affect the backup and restore performance of your Exchange Server.

Some of these factors, such as hardware configuration, network type, and capacity, are not within the scope of Data Protection for Exchange Server. Some options that are related to Data Protection for Exchange Server can be tuned for optimum performance. In addition, the following issues affect performance:
  • Database backups to local shadow volumes eliminates the transfer of data to the IBM Storage Protect™ server.
  • During VSS backup processing, the consistency of the database backup is verified. Therefore, backup processing time can be significant. You can improve backup processing performance when you specify the /SKIPINTEGRITYCHECK options with the backup command to bypass integrity checking.
    Restriction: If you bypass integrity checking, the backup that is stored on IBM Storage Protect server might not be valid and data loss can occur, unless the database that you are backing up is in a Database Availability Group (DAG) environment and has at least two valid copies (one active and one passive copy).
  • The time that is required to complete a snapshot, ranges from seconds to minutes, depending on the type of VSS provider used. Depending on the size of the database and log files, integrity checking can delay the completion of the backup.
  • Backup-archive client settings can affect performance when you back up data to the IBM Storage Protect server.
  • Performing Data Protection for Exchange Server VSS backups from an Exchange Server DAG passive copy can offload I/O and possibly processor resources from the production server.

If the update for IBM Storage Protect server APAR IC86558 is not applied, apply the update.

For VSS backups, the RESOURCEUTILIZATION client option is also important. This option increases or decreases the capacity of the client to create multiple sessions. The higher the value, the more sessions the client can start. The range for the option is from 1 to 10.

Other factors to consider are as follows:
  • An Exchange backup contains an EDB file and multiple log files. Each session can transfer one single file.
  • Resource utilization is not a 1-to-1 with the number of sessions the client opens.
  • For more information about resource utilization, see Optimizing the number of multiple sessions.

If you run multiple backups in parallel, stagger the backup times by several minutes. The staggered backup times ensure that the snapshots are not created at the same time. When you use VSS, only one snapshot set can be created at a time.