Backup Exec 23 Administrator's Guide
- Introducing Backup Exec
- Installation
- Methods for installing the Agent for Windows
- Using a command prompt to install the Agent for Windows on a remote computer
- Using a command script to install the Agent for Windows
- Installing the Remote Administrator
- Installing Backup Exec using the command line (silent mode)
- About updates to Backup Exec using Veritas Update
- Backup Exec license contract information
- About upgrading to Backup Exec
- Getting Started
- Configuring the Home tab
- Backups
- Recommendations for when to use virtual-based backup and agent-based backup
- Backing up data
- Restores
- How Backup Exec catalogs work
- Job management and monitoring
- About the Job Monitor
- About the Job History
- Viewing the job log
- Error-handling rules for failed or canceled jobs
- Alerts and notifications
- Enabling active alerts and alert history to display on the Home tab
- Adding a recipient group for alert notifications
- Sending a notification when a job completes
- SNMP traps for Backup Exec alerts
- Disk-based and network-based storage
- Configuring disk storage
- Configuring disk cartridge storage
- Backup sets
- Cloud-based storage devices
- Amazon S3 cloud-based storage
- Google cloud-based storage
- Microsoft Azure cloud-based storage
- Private cloud-based storage
- About S3-Compatible Cloud Storage
- Cloud deduplication storage device
- Requirements for configuring a cloud deduplication storage device
- About the Backup Exec™ CloudConnect Optimizer
- Generic S3 Configurator
- OpenStorage devices
- Microsoft 365
- OneDrive plugin: Performance and throttling configuration
- Exchange plugin: Performance and throttling configuration
- SharePoint plugin: Performance and throttling configuration
- Teams plugin: Performance and throttling configuration
- Tape storage
- Robotic libraries in Backup Exec
- Creating robotic library partitions
- Managing tapes
- Creating media sets for tapes
- Labeling tape media
- Default media vaults
- Storage device pools
- Storage operations
- Conversion to virtual machines
- Configuration and settings
- Configuring role-based access settings
- Configuring parallel streams and job settings for Microsoft 365
- Changing network and security options for Backup Exec
- Using Backup Exec with firewalls
- Deleting DBA-initiated job templates
- Backup Exec logon accounts
- Reports
- Creating a custom report
- List of Backup Exec standard reports
- Instant Cloud Recovery
- Preconfigurations to be completed in the Azure portal
- GDPR Guard
- Troubleshooting Backup Exec
- Troubleshooting failed components in the SAN
- Generating a diagnostic file for troubleshooting Backup Exec
- Simplified Disaster Recovery
- Setting or changing the alternate location for the disaster recovery information file
- Creating a Simplified Disaster Recovery disk image
- Preparing to recover from a disaster by using Simplified Disaster Recovery
- Recovering a computer with Simplified Disaster Recovery
- Performing manual disaster recovery
- Forever Incremental Backup
- Appendix A. Backup Exec Agent for Windows
- About the Backup Exec Agent Utility for Windows
- Appendix B. Backup Exec Deduplication Feature
- Creating or importing deduplication disk storage
- Selecting storage devices for direct access sharing
- Appendix C. Backup Exec Agent for VMware
- About establishing trust for a vCenter/ESX(i) server
- Backing up VMware virtual machines
- About instant recovery of a VMware virtual machine
- About Recovery Ready for VMware virtual machines
- Appendix D. Backup Exec Agent for Microsoft Hyper-V
- Backing up Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines
- About instant recovery of a Hyper-V virtual machine
- About Recovery Ready for Hyper-V virtual machines
- Appendix E. Backup Exec Agent for Microsoft SQL Server
- Backing up SQL databases and transaction logs
- Restoring SQL databases and transaction logs
- Disaster recovery of a SQL Server
- About SQL Server Always On availability groups
- Appendix F. Backup Exec Agent for Microsoft Exchange Server
- Backing up Exchange data
- Appendix G. Backup Exec Agent for Microsoft SharePoint
- Backing up Microsoft SharePoint data
- Appendix H. Backup Exec Agent for Oracle on Windows or Linux Servers
- Configuring the Oracle Agent on Windows computers and Linux servers
- Configuring an Oracle instance on Windows computers
- Viewing an Oracle instance on Windows computers
- About authentication credentials on the Backup Exec server
- About backing up Oracle databases
- About restoring Oracle resources
- Appendix I. Backup Exec Agent for Enterprise Vault
- About backup methods for Enterprise Vault backup jobs
- Restoring Enterprise Vault
- About the Backup Exec Migrator for Enterprise Vault
- Configuring the Backup Exec Migrator
- About retrieving migrated Enterprise Vault data
- About the Partition Recovery Utility
- Appendix J. Backup Exec Agent for Microsoft Active Directory
- Appendix K. Backup Exec Central Admin Server Feature
- About installing the Central Admin Server feature
- What happens when CAS communication thresholds are reached
- About job delegation in CAS
- How to use Backup Exec server pools in CAS
- How centralized restore works in CAS
- Appendix L. Backup Exec Advanced Disk-based Backup Feature
- Appendix M. Backup Exec NDMP Feature
- About restoring and redirecting restore data for NDMP servers
- Viewing the properties of an NDMP server
- Viewing storage properties for an NDMP server
- Appendix N. Backup Exec File Servers
- Appendix O. Backup Exec Agent for Linux and Unix
- About installing the Agent for Linux and Unix
- About establishing trust for a remote Linux and Unix computer in the Backup Exec list of servers
- Editing configuration options for Linux and Unix computers
- About backing up a Linux and Unix computer by using the Agent for Linux and Unix
- About restoring data to Linux and Unix computers
- Editing the default backup job options for Linux and Unix computers
- Uninstalling the Agent for Linux and Unix
About preferred number of streams to use for backup
Performance of the jobs that back up cloud resources depends on factors such as, external network bandwidth between the Backup Exec server and the data center, Microsoft 365 API throttling policies and so on.
Microsoft enforces throttling to limit the number of concurrent calls to a service. When a throttling threshold is exceeded, Microsoft limits any further requests from that client for some time. Throttling helps maintain optimal performance and reliability of the Microsoft services if there are many requests. Microsoft APIs have different throttling limits and behavior.
Backup Exec attempts to get the optimum performance considering all the factors and has some in-built mitigation strategies:
Utilize available network bandwidth effectively.
Microsoft 365 jobs have multi-stream enabled by default. Backup data is downloaded in parallel streams.
Retry logic in case of failures is driven by network or throttling issues.
Automatically reduce the requests to avoid failures due to throttling.
Data is queried in batches.
A backup job can be configured to run using parallel streams. It helps to increase the speed of the backups by downloading the data in parallel. The data backed up over the internet from a SaaS service.
Microsoft 365 entities like Exchange mailbox, OneDrive volume, SharePoint sites, Teams channel, and so on selected in a job are divided among parallel streams. Each stream protects items from their set of entities and parallely creates a backup set on the target device. Each stream creates one backup set. The combined view of all the backup sets created by a single backup job is displayed as one point-in-time in the restore browse view of Backup Exec.
To optimize internet bandwidth utilization in a Backup Exec Microsoft 365 job, you can change number of streams used and monitor the impact on the next run of the job. The stream count can be changed using
.The following table recommends the stream count that you can use.
Table:
Available Internet bandwidth | Stream count |
---|---|
Below 50 Mbps | 2 |
50 Mbps | 3 to 4 |
100 Mbps | 5 to 7 |
150 Mbps | 8 to 10 |
For higher bandwidth, the count depends upon the Backup Exec server hardware and the environment. You need to test different values to check what works for your environment. Refer to the Backup Exec software compatibility list for more information.
The value specified in the
option is used from the concurrency specified for the target deduplication storage device. The additional number of streams specified in the option after reducing the minimum number of streams is programmatically handled by Backup Exec.For example, the
is set to and is set to and the concurrency setting on the deduplication storage is set to .If the job has as multiple entities selected, to use the preferred streams count of 10, the job uses 1 stream from the concurrency configured on the deduplication storage device and 9 streams are handled programmatically. The remaining concurrency on the deduplication storage (3) is now available for other jobs targeted to deduplication storage device.
The backup job log indicates the number of streams used by the backup job.