Snapshot Performance

[kboyer]

Using Retrospect v5.6 with a Windows 2000 network client, daily incremental backups with typically 300MB of data would take 2.5 hours to finish with 2.25 hours of that time to just make the snapshot. The file system contained 17GB with 130,000 files. Network is 100Mb ethernet.

 

 

 

Is this expected performance level on the snapshot process? If this is expected, why? And are there development plans to improve this process?

 

 

 

Is this any better in v6.x?

 

 

 

If this is not expected performance level, what if any settings may be altered to improve performance of the snapshot creation?

[AmyJ]

A Retrospect Snapshot is created during a backup operation to depict a volume's state (that is, all its files and the folder paths to them). With 130,000 files - especially many small files and a deep file structure - it takes time to create the picture of the drive. Retrospect is designed to restore a machine back to the state at any given backup. If one file changed, or all files, the complete snapshot is required to 'remember' the state of the system.

 

 

 

The snapshot creation can be sped up in the Options by electing not to backup security information from workstations (or servers, if this is a server). Backing up NTFS permissions can take up a considerable amount of time - however, turning off the backup NTFS permissions on a server can create a lot of work on restore, depending on the security structure in your environment.

[kboyer]

Since my prior version was deleted in order to do a fresh install of v6 I'm not certain if the workstation security information was being backed up. My sense is that it was because the same snapshot took minutes to create in a test today.

 

 

 

I noticed that this option is off by default in v6. Was it possibly on by deafult in prior versions? Thanks for the advice Amy, I only wish I had known about this long ago. My bad for not using your forums sooner.