Backup for Exchange Traffic

[NWSB]

We are new to exchange and have been running our backups for about 4 months. Our backups are working but when we monitor our network (we are using netscout) during the period of time (approximately 3 AM to 5AM) that the full backups are running, traffic to and from our 3 exchange servers peaks. Traffic is showing that servers and workstations all are sending and receiving. We only operate during the day shift and this traffic far exceeds anything else generated during the day. Viewing the app. event log shows that the traffic starts and stops exactly when "execution of schedule "exchange" starts and stops". The source is adsmclientservice and event id is 4097.

Our dsm.opt is:


NODename EXCH01TDP
CLUSTERnode no
COMPRESSIon Off
PASSWORDAccess Generate

COMMMethod TCPip
TCPPort 1500
TCPServeraddress 172.16.100.91
TCPWindowsize 63
TCPBuffSize 32

SCHEDMODE Polling
*SCHEDLOGRetention 14
*SCHEDMODE Prompted
*TCPCLIENTADDRESS yy.yy.yy.yy
*TCPCLIENTPORT 1502

MANAGEDSERVICES WEBCLIEN

I have captured data during a full backup and will continue to sort through it, but does anyone know what is causing the traffic?

Thank you,

 

[rore]

Hi,
I understand that your TDP backup is done through the network. But by the same segment/subnet/VLAN/etc as PROD traffic??

Is your Exchange doing the maintenance job at that time?

What is running on your workstations that sends/receive traffic? I imagine Outlook?

Rudy

 

[mallirajan]

hi,

I believe that the backup and client's are accessing the same network. Is that NIC is 100MBs. Try to make it to 1GBS or assign another 1 NIC card to prevent the network choking in future in working time.

 

[NWSB]

Thank you,

This is the same prod network - covering numerous segments/subnets/vlans. Exchange maintenance may be running during this time. We are running outlook 2007 on the workstations - no one would be working at that time in the morning but may leave Outlook open - workstations remain on all night until employees arrive in the morning and they are supposed to reboot them at that time. And the servers would not have outlook installed on them but they are "talking" to the exchange servers too. Netscout shows all host conversations, the IP (who sends/receives) and size of traffic.

The cards are 1 Gb/s.

Thanks again.

 

[mallirajan]

Hi,

check the NIC is full Duplex. Recommend the network team to check the loop back is disabled and broadcast settings. As the loopback's are not stopped the message may circulate in the network again and again as you see at night time there is a communication b/n client and exchange server.

Preferred suggestion is to add a new network which is different for the backup environment all together to prevent such kind of issues.

 

[NWSB]

We changed our schedmode in dsm.opt from polling to prompt and it eliminated the majority of the traffic.

Thanks for your help.