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 (VMware, Network Shares, Oracle and MySQL) are backed up without the involvement of the Backup Accelerator.

Requirements

Supported operating systems

The Backup Accelerator is a Windows-only feature. We support the following Windows versions:

See the below links to additional required updates:

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.