ESXi 4.1 Slow backup issue

[ainsworth001]

Hi All,

We recently upgraded our 3 hosts from ESX 3.5 U5 to ESXi 4.1 boot from SAN. All guest machines are now running new VM tools and

hardware version 7.

We expected ESXi 4.1 will improve our backup throughput. However, there is one thing that we could not explain that after upgrading to ESXi4.1, our backup job took 5 more hours to complete 6.4TB.

Our storage is EVA 6100, all lun are presented to all host same as 3.5. Networking configuration and backup network structure is configured same as

3.5.

Throughput report from backup software (ArcServe) shows throughput is reduced on almost all guest servers. We are using traditional backup approach,

not using VCB or VDDK backup.

Tried to change network adaptor from E1000 to VMXNET3 but no luck.

Tried to copy 4.75GB (10.648 Files, 489 Folders) from SAN to backup server via VLAN/ No vlan, throughput is from 19 to 50 MB/s
Tried to copy 1 iso file 1.7GB from SAN to backup server via VLAN/No Vlan, throughput is from 99 to 117 MB/s

Our backup server has 4 NICs, 3 of them are configured with 3 separate VLAN to 3 host to backup most heavily file servers. Nic 4 without VLAN backup all other servers

Can anyone guess what could reduce backup throughput in ESXi 4.1? does boot from SAN have any effect on guest throughput? Does 120 ports in Vswitch affect compare to 8 ports

Thank you.

[idle-jam]

can you look into the performance tab in vcenter? especially during the backup period for the CPU,Memory, Network and Disk. Hopefully we could see something from there.

[ainsworth001]

Hi Idle-jam,

Thank you for your quick comment.

Host resources used during backup time is normal.

Average values as following:

Host 1:

     - CPU: 40.39%

     - Read latency: 4.357 ms

     - Disk: 34.5 MB/s

     - Menory (active/Granted): 12.3%

     - Network: 33.2 MB/s.

Host 2:

     - CPU: 42.43%

     - Read latency: 4.575 ms

     - Disk: 51.5 MB/s

     - Memory (active/Granted): 14.9%

     - Network: 42.6 MB/s.

Host 3:

     - CPU: 27.2%

     - Disk: 36.5 MB/s

     - Memory (active/Granted): 12.5%

     - Network: 33 MB/s.

That's why we have no idea where to looking to.

Thanks

[ainsworth001]

Thank you everyone.

I finally found McAfee is the reason. McAfee setting has been change accidently right after upgrade VM. throughput is good now.