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geri-from-mainz

Q: My backup to a NAS system in a separated Ethernet environment takes about 30 Hours for 222GB

Hi,

 

has anyone an idea how to spee up the backup process. Most of time the transfer load is not in mb/s but in kb/s,

The NAS System is capable of transferring 50 mb/s over a paired ethernet port.

But time machine is a pain. Has anyone a better solution

OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Mar 13, 2016 1:52 AM

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Q: My backup to a NAS system in a separated Ethernet environment takes about 30 Hours for 222GB

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  • by Luis Sequeira1,

    Luis Sequeira1 Luis Sequeira1 Mar 13, 2016 3:46 AM in response to geri-from-mainz
    Level 6 (11,889 points)
    Mar 13, 2016 3:46 AM in response to geri-from-mainz

    THat is about normal for a networked backup. If you can do the first backup with a dirdct connection then incremental backups over the network should not be much of a problem

  • by Barney-15E,Helpful

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Mar 13, 2016 8:36 AM in response to geri-from-mainz
    Level 8 (49,752 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 13, 2016 8:36 AM in response to geri-from-mainz

    Not really the question, but a NAS is a horrible storage choice for Time Machine. You will likely see Time Machine periodically have to restart the backup due to corruption, and restoring may not work. If you must use a NAS, I would use some other backup software.

  • by geri-from-mainz,

    geri-from-mainz geri-from-mainz Mar 13, 2016 8:38 AM in response to Barney-15E
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 13, 2016 8:38 AM in response to Barney-15E

    This NAS has a time machine service. But a simple copy to a smb share runs with 40 to 50 mb/s.

  • by Barney-15E,

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Mar 13, 2016 9:27 AM in response to geri-from-mainz
    Level 8 (49,752 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 13, 2016 9:27 AM in response to geri-from-mainz

    geri-from-mainz wrote:

     

    This NAS has a time machine service. But a simple copy to a smb share runs with 40 to 50 mb/s.

    Yes, they do claim it works, but will they guarantee you'll be able to restore your data when it fails, as it will?

     

    The NAS doesn't use AFP, but a flakey substitute called Netatalk.

     

    Your our slowness is likely the result of using Netatalk instead of true AFP causing errors in the transmission.

  • by John Lockwood,

    John Lockwood John Lockwood Mar 14, 2016 4:28 AM in response to Barney-15E
    Level 6 (9,240 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Mar 14, 2016 4:28 AM in response to Barney-15E

    Barney-15E wrote:

     

    geri-from-mainz wrote:

     

    This NAS has a time machine service. But a simple copy to a smb share runs with 40 to 50 mb/s.

    Yes, they do claim it works, but will they guarantee you'll be able to restore your data when it fails, as it will?

     

    The NAS doesn't use AFP, but a flakey substitute called Netatalk.

     

    Your our slowness is likely the result of using Netatalk instead of true AFP causing errors in the transmission.

    Apple don't really provide any guarantees regarding Time Machine restores for their own Time Capsule either. Also at least at one point in time Time Capsules were notorious for having their internal drives fail and remember a Time Capsule does not include RAID.

     

    To the original poster, while a 'normal' network transfer might indeed should be a lot faster you are not taking in to account that a lot more processing has to happen when doing a network backup compared to a file transfer, furthermore it is likely that Apple deliberately give Time Machine backups less priority than normal network transfers. Other than the initial first time Time Machine backup further incremental backups are a lot less data and you would not want such activity slowing up your normal work every hour that Time Machine runs.

     

    Unfortunately and I would feel these days illogically despite the fact that Apple themselves say SMB3 is faster than their own AFP server and despite the fact that OS X now defaults to using SMB3 rather than AFP it is the case the Time Machine network backups will only use AFP.

  • by geri-from-mainz,

    geri-from-mainz geri-from-mainz Mar 14, 2016 8:07 AM in response to John Lockwood
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 14, 2016 8:07 AM in response to John Lockwood

    So what is the solution for a small network with 5 Macs if time machine does not work?

  • by John Lockwood,

    John Lockwood John Lockwood Mar 14, 2016 9:00 AM in response to geri-from-mainz
    Level 6 (9,240 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Mar 14, 2016 9:00 AM in response to geri-from-mainz

    geri-from-mainz wrote:

     

    So what is the solution for a small network with 5 Macs if time machine does not work?

    The speed of Time Machine is an inherent limitation and there is nothing you can do about this, as mentioned once the first big backup is completed it is really not an issue. If your paranoid over the reliability of NAS based Time Machine servers then you will either have to use a Time Capsule from Apple or a Mac running Server.app and sharing a disk as a Time Machine destination.

     

    The other option is to not use Time Machine at all and to use something else - generally this means paying for a commercial i.e. 'professional' backup solution such as one of the following.

     

    http://www.archiware.com/p5-backup2go.305.1.html

    http://www.retrospect.com/uk/products/mac/desktop

    http://www.tolisgroup.com/

    http://www.code42.com/crashplan/

    https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup.html

     

    I personally do not regard Internet based backup solutions as suitable for 'disaster recovery' situations i.e. where your computer is lost or the drive completely dies. They are fine for undeleting files or reverting to previous versions of files. This is due to the speed of your Internet connection. Yes some offer to post a hard disk back to you but that is not always available especially if your not based in the USA, even then that could cause an unacceptable delay.

     

    As you only mention 5 Macs it maybe that an Internet based solution like CrashPlan and BackBlaze might be suitable, it will probably depend on the amount of data each user generates.

  • by Barney-15E,

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Mar 14, 2016 9:35 AM in response to geri-from-mainz
    Level 8 (49,752 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 14, 2016 9:35 AM in response to geri-from-mainz

    geri-from-mainz wrote:

     

    So what is the solution for a small network with 5 Macs if time machine does not work?

    Share the backup drives from one of the macs.  That is supported by Apple and it has worked well for me. directly attached hard drives are supported for network backup using Time Machine. The Server app is not required unless you have more than 10 "client" connections.

     

    Or use some other backup software with your NAS.