Avamar: Information to gather when investigating client slow backup performance issues

This article describes what information is needed to fully investigate an Avamar backup performance issue.

Use this information with the following article which explains how to identify the cause of slower than expected backup performance: Avamar: Troubleshooting slow backup performance  


Gather information about the backup:

1. Gather the full backup logs and attach it to the Support Case. See Avamar: How to gather logs to troubleshoot backup and restore issues

2. Confirm if any other backups are present on the server for this client for the same dataset.

mccli backup show --name=/domain/client --verbose=true | less

3. What is the maximum permissible time that can be allowed for the backup to run?

4. Define the issue.

Common possibilities are:

• The backup performance seems poor relative to another Avamar client.
• The backup is running more slowly than it used to.
• This backup used to complete within the daily backup window but now no longer does.
• The backup is not as quick as expected (if so, what is the performance expectation?).
• Avamar's backup performance is poor relative to another backup product.
• Other (explain fully).

Gather information about the data being backed up:

1. Does the backup contain file system or a database data?

• For file system backups, what is the total number of files in the dataset?
• For database backups, what is the total size and type of the database?

This information is available in a complete backup log.

2. Is any of the data being backed up present on CIFS or NFS shares which are mapped from a remote device?

Backing up data from CIFS and NFS shares is only supported when using an NDMP accelerator.


Gather information about the network:

1. Describe the type of network between the client and the server (for example, LAN or WAN and expected bandwidth)

2. Check the round-trip latency and throughput between the Avamar client and server while no backup is in progress.

• For network latency, use ping
• To check throughput see Avamar - How to run iperf between two Avamar systems to test network throughput performance

Gather information about the Avamar Server:

Provide the following output from the Avamar Utility Node command-line interface:

Gather information about the Avamar Client:

1. What is the hostname of the affected Avamar client?

2. Amount of RAM is installed on the client?

3. Is the client built on physical hardware or a virtual machine?

4. Apart from Avamar backups, what other typical tasks does the client performing during the backup window? What are its regular duties?

5. Is there any archiving software in use, such as Enterprise Vault, that might be introducing latency while Avamar retrieves the files from a remote archiving device.

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

• For Windows: Use perfmon
• For Linux: Use performance testing commands like top and iostat -x.

7. Is anti-virus software in use on the client?

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

8. Does the client belong to a cluster? (If yes, provide details).


Gather information about the Storage Device where the target data is stored:

Provide as much information as possible about the disk subsystem which hosts the data being backed up.