Avamar: Information required to investigate slow restore performance

If Avamar restore performance is poor, gather the information below.

About the backup:
1) Gather the full log for the backup being restored and attach it to the Support case.

• See Avamar: How to gather log files for troubleshooting Avamar client backup and restore issues.

2) Gather the full log for the restore job and attach it to the service request.


3) What is the maximum amount of time which the user is willing to allow for the restore job?

4) Describe the nature of the concern.
   a) Restore performance is poor relative to another Avamar client.
   b) The restore job takes longer than it used to for this client.
   c) The restore does not complete quickly enough to meet business objectives. Explain and provide details of any Recovery Time Objective (RTO).
  d) The restore is not as quick as expected (if so, state the expectation).
   f) Other (explain fully).

Note: If backup performance is being compared with a previous job, attach the old log which had acceptable performance to the service request for comparative analysis. 

5) Is the data being restored to the original client or a different client?
 
1) What type of network exists between the client and the server (LAN or WAN)?

2) Check the round-trip latency and throughput between the Avamar client and the Avamar server while no restore is in progress. 1) What is the hostname of the target Avamar client?
2) How much RAM is installed on the client?
3) Is the client built on physical hardware or a virtual machine?
4) What other tasks does the client perform during restore? What are its regular duties?
5) Provide as much information as possible about the disk subsystem which hosts the backup data such as:- 6) Is any archiving software in use such as Enterprise Vault that might be introducing latency during the restore job?

7) How busy are the client's resources (CPU, memory, I/O) during the time the restore runs?  

• For network latency, use ping.
• To check throughput, see Avamar - How to run iperf between two Avamar systems to test network throughput performance.
• Type of storage (single disk or RAID configuration?).
• Local or remote disks.
• Is it a SAN exposed LUN or otherwise.
• For Windows: See Avamar - Using Microsoft Windows perfmon for performance monitoring of Avamar clients.
• For Linux: Use commands such as top and iostat -x.

8) Is anti-virus software being used on the client?

• What type of anti-virus software is installed?
• Is it configured with 'on access' scanning, where it intercepts files when those files are requested or written by other programs? 

9) What type of file system is on the disk where the restore is being written to?

10) Windows clients only:
Check if the target file system has 8.3 file names enabled.
From a Windows command prompt, with elevated privileges, run the following command where C: is the volume name that is the destination for the restored data.
 

c:\>fsutil.exe 8dot3name query c:
The volume state is: 0 (8dot3 name creation is enabled).
The registry state is: 2 (Per volume setting - the default).
Based on the above two settings, 8dot3 name creation is enabled on c: