Monday, 10 December 2012

Improving ArcServe AWS S3 backup speeds

I'm using ArcServe r16 to backup a lot of data (0.5TB) every weekend, and using Amazon's AWS S3 service as offsite storage.

While the backup to a dedupe device seems to proceed very quickly, the migration of the files seem to max out at 10Mbps - despite a dedicated 30Mbps line.

As this was going across the Internet I assumed it was just an issue with the it's inherent unreliability, howevcer I did a bit of searching and found that users of other backup systems were talking about tweaking the number of streams to improve upload speeds.

One call the CA later, and I had my answer. By default AS has been set up to use 4 streams. I increased the number to 8 and saw a doubling in upload speeds!
Here's how you do it:

Open up Regedit:

Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\ComputerAssociates\CA ARCServe Backup\Base\TapeEngine\

Find the group associated with the cloud device you have created (in this case CLDMAIL)


The default entry for CLOUD_THREADS is 4, which gets you 10Mbps, and each increment of 4 get's you another 10Mbps.

You'll need to restart all the ArcServe services via CSTOP and CSTART (found in C:\Program Files (x86)\CA\ARCserve Backup)

And there you have it - much faster upload speeds.

I hope this tip helps you out, please click on an Ad to show your appreciation.