I know that this is old problem, but maybe somebody found the solution I have a fresh installation of windows 2003/exchange 2003. It is on HP DL380 with LTO3 tape drive. I’m using arcserve 11.5 with SP4. When backup up file it give more than 1,024MB/min, but when backing up the brick level just 100mb/min. The database is new and don’t have any fragmentation. There is no anti-virus on the server. I just replicated some public folders (around 16gb) Any idea?

Brick Level Backups are slow by definition and really, you do not need to do them.Deleted Item recovery and the recovery storage group eliminate the need for them.Note that brick level backups are supported by the vendor not by Microsoft.

Hi,Also disable AV if you have it running this will speed the process up a little.Regards,Johanblog: www.johanveldhuis.nl

Like I told "There is no anti-virus on the server", and like I told this a old problem. Thanks all , I will try a little bit more. If somebody has any other suggestion let me know.

When you do brick level backups, you are asking the ESE store to access and open every email, message, attachment in the store. This is VERY disk intensive as Exchange 2003 databases write randomly. I understand the new DB might not make this the issue, however, you didn't post about the disk configuration, speeds, or the connectivity of the drive (I assume UltraSCSI) Are your log files on the same disks as your database?Have you tried looking at your disk read queue while the streaming backup runs versus during the brick level backups?

Disk are SAS 15k, on HP DL cage. Logs are on separeted disks. The are connected on HP P400 controller. This machine is new, it just have 2 mailbox (small) and replica public folder (around 12GB).I made the following test:Backup of public folder store and got 12.084,00 MB written to media, elapsed time 3m2s, average throuput 3.983,73 MB/minAt brick level I got aroud same size, but elapsed time 1h30m, average throuput 160.98 MB/minit's to much diference. I was looking at the backup software and didn't find any special needs, but I remember when I was installing another product (BES), it request CDO. Does it make sense the arcserve also need it?

In Exch 2003, you typically install Exchange 2003 ESM on the backup server at the same SP and hotfix level as the server.That doesnt change the fact that brick level backups are slow and not needed.

Hi,Brick-level backup is not a Microsoft recommended method. The main problems of using this type of backup include:1, The wrong type of interface. Brick-level backup uses the MAPI interface, which was designed to transfer mail and not to perform backup operations.2, Increased size. In the IS (information store), Exchange uses Single Instance Storage to save space. Messages that are sent to multiple recipients are stored only once. The brick-level backup will store a separate copy for each recipient. This increases the time and space used for the backup. When you do a restore from the brick level backup, the messages that were backed-up as many duplicates get restored as many duplicates. The IS that fit nicely on your hard drive before may have problems now due to size bloat.3, Increased time. When backing-up the IS, the IS is opened once and the entire contents are streamed to the backup device. Brick-level has to open and close each mail item individually. This overhead can be enormous, multiplying the backup time many times. Also, restoring from a brick-level backup is slow.ThanksAllen

Ok. All this is on the WEB. But 3.5Gb on IS backup X 140Mb on brick level? It's to much for me. All others point is not important to me at this time.