How to Identify a Bottleneck

Product version: 10.3

Last modified: 18 May 2021

Problem

NAKIVO Backup & Replication jobs are slow.

Solution

If you experience slowness with NAKIVO Backup & Replication jobs, you can localize the problem and identify its cause by taking the following steps:

Note
You can enable the Bottleneck detection option on the Options page of the following jobs:

  • VMware, Amazon EC2, Microsoft Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV, and physical machine backup jobs

  • Backup copy jobs (only when destination is set to Disk)

  • VMware, Amazon EC2, and Microsoft Hyper-V replication jobs

  • VMware, Amazon EC2, and Microsoft Hyper-V failback jobs

When enabled, additional information is collected and recorded in NAKIVO Backup & Replication logs in the course of data transfer for the purpose of bottleneck detection.

  1. Identify the route that your data takes to get transferred from the source to the destination. Define the source Transporter, the target Transporter, and any other intermediate components such as source disk, target disk, LAN or WAN.
  2. Install a profiler, which is a special component developed by NAKIVO for the Transporters involved in the data transfer route. You can download the profiler by following one of the links from the bh column in the table below: 

    Important
    NAKIVO Backup & Replication automatically creates four folders instead of one to store the original bh file. This is done due to different versions of VDDK used to access VMware virtual disk storage. When performing VMware activities, the product Transporter refers to the folder containing the bh file that corresponds with the version of VDDK:

    • VDDK60 ESXi for v5.5 or earlier

    • VDDK67 ESXi for v6.0-7.0

    • VDDK ESXi for v7.0 or later

    Therefore, you need to download and install all profilers. 

    Platform  bh vddk60/bh vddk67/bh vddk/bh

    Ubuntu

    https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/Ubuntu/bh https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/Ubuntu/vddk60/bh https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/Ubuntu/vddk67/bh https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/Ubuntu/vddk/bh
    SLES https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/SLES/bh https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/SLES/vddk60/bh https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/SLES/vddk67/bh https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/SLES/vddk/bh
    RHEL https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/RHEL/bh  https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/RHEL/vddk60/bh  https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/RHEL/vddk67/bh  https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/RHEL/vddk/bh
    Windows https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/Windows/bh.exe https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/Windows/vddk60/bh.exe https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/Windows/vddk67/bh.exe https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/Windows/vddk/bh.exe
    NAS https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/NAS/bh https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/NAS/vddk60/bh https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/NAS/vddk67/bh https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/NAS/vddk/bh

    NAS (ARMv7)

    https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/NAS_armv7/bh n/a n/a n/a
    NAS (ARMv8) https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/NAS_armv8/bh n/a n/a n/a
    FreeNAS https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/FreeNAS/bh n/a n/a n/a
    Physical: Ubuntu https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/Physical/Ubuntu/bh n/a n/a n/a
    Physical: SLES https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/Physical/SLES/bh n/a n/a n/a
    Physical: RHEL https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/Physical/RHEL/bh n/a n/a n/a
    Physical: Windows https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/Physical/Windows/bh.exe n/a n/a n/a
    Amazon EC2 https://d96i82q710b04.cloudfront.net/res/product/Profile/AWS/bh n/a n/a n/a
  3. Stop all Transporters involved in your data transfer route. Make sure that these Transporters are not busy with jobs, and there are no repositories attached to them. Refer to Starting and Stopping Product Services for details.

  4. Locate the original bh or bh.exe (for Windows machines) file for your platform. The default file locations are:

    Linux

    • /opt/nakivo/transporter/bh

    • /opt/nakivo/transporter/vddk/bh 

    • /opt/nakivo/transporter/vddk60/bh 

    • /opt/nakivo/transporter/vddk67/bh

    Windows

    • C:\Program Files\NAKIVO Backup & Replication\transporter\bh.exe

    • C:\Program Files\NAKIVO Backup & Replication\transporter\vddk\bh.exe

    • C:\Program Files\NAKIVO Backup & Replication\transporter\vddk60\bh.exe

    • C:\Program Files\NAKIVO Backup & Replication\transporter\vddk67\bh.exe

    QNAP NAS

    • /share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/NBR-Transporter/bh

    • /share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/NBR-Transporter/vddk/bh

    • /share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/NBR-Transporter/vddk60/bh

    • /share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/NBR-Transporter/vddk67/bh

    Synology

    • /volume1/@appstore/NBR/transporter/bh

    • /volume1/@appstore/NBR/transporter/vddk/bh

    • /volume1/@appstore/NBR/transporter/vddk60/bh

    • /volume1/@appstore/NBR/transporter/vddk67/bh

    If you fail to locate the profiler in the default location(s) on Linux and NAS devices, use the following search command:

    find / -name "bh" | grep transporter

  5. Move the original bh/bh.exe file to a safe location, or rename it and move the previously downloaded bh/bh.exe file to the original location. 

    Note

    • If you have a VMware ESXi host in the inventory, the original bh/bh.exe file needs to be moved from all three default locations, and the corresponding bh/bh.exe files that were previously downloaded need to be located there instead.  

    • If you use SAN transport mode, replace bh-san executable instead of bh.

  6. For Linux, change permissions for the new bh file by running the following commands:

    chmod +x bh

    chown bhsvc:bhsvc bh

  7. When ready, start the Transporter service for all previously stopped nodes.

  8. Run your backup or replication job. 

  9. When the job is complete, create a support bundle and send it to NAKIVO Technical Support. It will take some time to analyze your support bundle and provide you with a technical support summary. Based on the provided technical support summary, you will be able to identify and fix any bottlenecks in your virtual infrastructure.

  10. Finally, revert to the previously applied changes. To do this, follow the procedure below:

    1. Stop Transporter services.

    2. Replace the profiler bh/bh.exe file(s) with the original bh/bh.exe file(s).

    3. Start the services.