How to setup simultaneous multiple backups for Windows host ?

You can create multiple instances of the Client and run multiple backups. Only problem with that approach is that you cannot run 2 backups from the same client at a time. You can try to increase the no. of sessions in more options and see if that helps.

separate windows drives/mount points ?   Yes, there is a way to setup and run backups on multiple drives at the same time. Talk to support and they will give you the procedure. I had a Windows 2k8 R2 cluster with 8 drives, each drive was 10TB so you can imagine running one backup would not cut it. Support gave me the procedure that allowed me to run 8 backup simultaneously. You do have to be careful with CPU/Memory/Disk I/O  utilization when you do that. Mine was running on pretty beefy Cisco UCS blade so it was fine.

Hi dynamox....

I checked with EMC Support and was told that it's not possible on Windows systems. Hence, posted the query on community. Can you send me the steps to make this happen ?

it's absolutely possible,  whoever has your ticket ask them to escalate it.  You will need to get the procedure from support, i can't share it here.

You may want to check if you AV scanner or something is interfering, a 1.3T file system with a 100% change rate shouldn't take that long to backup.

No problem. I have already followed up extensively with EMC on this. So, I will wait for someone else to share the information.

i am not sure you are talking to the right people or they understand what you are trying to do. Level 2 support had the procedure. The procedure basically involves setting up multiple avamar services running on the same Windows host, each service will be using a different port, appear as different avamar client and require special dataset for each drive letter you want to backup.

Slow backup performance is most often caused by some factor other than lack of parallelism. Implementing and managing parallelism has a number of caveats and challenges, especially for methods like running multiple avtars in parallel. The reason people are insisting you work with support is that support can help you analyze your environment and determine if there is some other factor that needs to be addressed before opening the parallelism can of worms. There are also several different ways to implement parallelism and if parallelism is actually needed, they can point you toward the appropriate type to use.

Shooting in the dark is not going to help you. Please work with support on this. You will likely need to work with L2 support.

FYI, setting --parallel for Data Domain integrated backups is known to cause issues and is not supported.

None of the reply has been helpful as yet. I have tried my options with EMC support but they have refused stating this is not possible. Does anyone want to provide me the answer ?

Ask the SR owner to transfer your case to an L2.

Hi Suhas - I see that you've opened an SR with support.  A colleague of mine has taken ownership of it and I'll be working with him to get a better understanding of the situation.

In order to facilitate this you will be asked to provide a full set of information as described in the following article

• KB 303720 - Information required by Support when investigating Avamar client backup performance issues

Please provide this information as soon as you can and in its entirety so we have the best opportunity to be effective.

Note that there are many many possible causes of backups not completing within the available backup window and we'll be using the following article as a general troubleshooting template. I recommend reviewing it to understand more about these types of challenges and the things we will look for

• KB 335029 - How to understand Avamar Client backup performance and identify performance bottlenecks

In some cases a client might be backing up with a high rate of performance, but the amount of data to be handled means that there simply isn't enough time within the available window.  If that's the case, there may be a need for some careful optimisation.

Finally, I should add that if this client has never previously backed up successfully within the backup window, then we will need to engage the Professional Services team to work directly on it with you as a client implementation.  In that case, Support will collaborate with the Professional Services delivery person.

Thanks,

Nick

Just to wrap this one up...

The main reason the client was experiencing slow backup performance was due to file cache misses. 

2016-05-15 07:24:31 avtar Warning <5650>: CAPACITY WARNING: The file cache is full; filecachemax=511MB, should be at least 2817MB

Due to the large size of the dataset and the client having a 32 bit architecture it wasn't possible to size the monolithic cache large enough to accommodate entries for all files that were being backed up.

The Operational Best Practices Guide documents a suggestion for this type of scenario "using cacheprefix"

Also refer to

• KB 317443 - How to correctly set the size of the Avamar client caches to avoid cache overflows and backup performance problems