Administering the Backup Server › Configure Arcserve Backup Engines › Tape Engine Configuration › Increase Virtual Memory Allocation to Improve Tape Engine Performance

Increase Virtual Memory Allocation to Improve Tape Engine Performance

The Tape Engine is an Arcserve Backup component that controls all jobs that involve backing up, restoring, and recovering data. In large backup environments, the following conditions can have adverse affects on Tape Engine performance:

• High quantities of backup jobs running simultaneously.
• High quantities of backup jobs that use deduplication, that may or may not run simultaneously.
• Multistreaming jobs, multiplexing jobs, or both with a high number of streams specified running simultaneously.

Diminished Tape Engine performance can occur due to the amount of virtual memory that is allocated to applications by the operating system. By default, Windows 32-bit operating systems allocate 2 GB of virtual memory for applications. The default allocation on 32-bit operating systems can prevent computers that contain 3 or more GB RAM from utilizing all of the RAM that is installed on the computer.

Note: Windows 64-bit operating systems can allocate up to 4 GB of virtual memory.

Windows operating systems let you increase the amount of virtual memory allocated for applications. If your backup server demonstrates slow performance in a large backup environment, you can increase the amount of virtual memory available to applications to improve the performance of the Tape Engine.

Note: You should increase virtual memory only of your backup server contains a Windows 32-bit operating system with at least 2.5 GB RAM.

The following sections describe how to increase virtual memory allocation on computers running 32-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.

To increase virtual memory allocation on 32-bit Windows Server 2003 systems

1. From the desktop, right-click My Computer and select Properties on the pop-up menu.

   The System Properties dialog opens.

2. On the System Properties dialog, click the Advanced tab.

   The Advanced properties appear.

3. In the Startup and Recovery area, click Settings.

   The Startup and Recovery dialog opens.

4. In the System startup area on the Startup and Recovery dialog, click Edit

   The Windows boot.ini file opens in Notepad.

5. Add /3GB to the end of the startup string below [Operating Systems], as illustrated by the following:

   [operating systems]
   multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows Server 2003, Enterprise" /noexecute=optout /fastdetect switch: /3GB
   

6. Close Notepad.

   When Notepad prompts you to save your changes, click Yes.

7. Close all open dialogs and then restart the computer.

To increase virtual memory allocation on 32-bit Windows Server 2008 systems

1. Open a Command Line window.
2. From the Command Line, execute the following command:

   BCDEDIT /Set IncreaseUserVa 3072
   

3. After the command executes, restart the computer.