Here are some things to bare in mind when setting up Windows for a backup. I read these tips here and always feel re-reading these notes every now and again improves your ability as an administrator.

NT/Windows 2000 Client

• tcpwindowsize 63
• tcpbufsize 32
• largecommbuffers no
• txnbytelimit 25600

Keep in mind that using NTFS on the TSM client does cause a performance degradation for small file workloads relative to FAT, because of the need to check security information during backup, and the impact of the NTFS filesystem recovery capability during restore.

NTFS file compression should not be used on disk volumes that are used by the TSM server, because of the potential for performance degradation.

For optimal TSM backup and restore performance when using a local client, use the namedpipes communication method.

For optimal TSM backup and restore performance with a large number of clients, consider using TSM client compression. Compressing the data on the client reduces demand on the network and on the TSM server. The reduced amount of data on the server continues to provide performance benefits whenever this data is moved, such as for storage pool migration and storage pool backup. However, client compression will significantly reduce the performance of each individual client, and the reduction will be more pronounced on the slowest client systems.

Anti-virus software can negatively impact backup performance

Cheers
Ryan Partington