Backup Accelerator for faster backups in Backup Manager
The Backup Accelerator is a feature in the Backup Manager that speeds up backups and increases RPO.
Enabling the Backup Accelerator
You can enable and disable the feature on devices through product settings. It is enabled by default in the "All-In" product.
Supported data sources
The Backup Accelerator works for files of all types and sizes belonging to the following data sources:
- Files and Folders
- System State
- Hyper-V
- Microsoft Exchange
- Microsoft SQL
- Microsoft SharePoint
The remaining data sources (
Requirements
Supported operating systems
The Backup Accelerator is a Windows-only feature. We support the following Windows versions:
- Windows 8 / 8.1
- Windows 10
- Windows 11
- Windows Server 2012 / 2012 R2 (limited)
- Windows Server 2016 (limited)
- Windows Server 2019 (limited)
- Windows Server 2022 (limited)
See the below links to additional required updates:
- Learn more about the 3033929 update (Technet article)
- Download the SHA-2 update
Hardware requirements
- The Backup Accelerator processes all local volumes (both basic and dynamic) that have backup selections. Network volumes (including Cluster Shared Volumes) are not supported.
- Supported file systems: NTFS, ReFS and FAT32.
Limitations / Known issues
The Backup Accelerator does not track the following:
- Disk formatting
- VSS snapshot reverts
- Rolled back NTFS transactions
- Some memory-mapped files (delayed change detection may occur)
Also when a session is powered by the Backup Accelerator, existing backup quotas may be occasionally exceeded.
The Backup Accelerator is a kernel mode driver (a file system filter that monitors all file modification operations on selected volumes).
The Backup Manager uses information collected by the driver to increase backup performance by avoiding unnecessary scanning of the file system tree and reading the entire content of changed files. Instead, only files reported by the driver are processed and only modified file data is read from disks during backups.
Changes collected by the driver are reset if:
- The system is rebooted
- The backup selection is modified
- Backup filters are modified
- A backup session fails
- The Backup Service Controller is restarted
- The Backup Accelerator encounters an internal error and needs to be restarted
- An inconsistency in backup data is detected
In cases like these, the next backup session does not benefit from the Backup Accelerator technology and a full scanning is performed. When that full session is completed, the Backup Accelerator is re-activated.