Improving Time to perform a Vault Server Backup

There have been reports that automatic Vault Server backups (Windows Scheduled Tasks) are taking several hours longer after moving Vault Server to a Windows Server 2008 operating system. However the performance when backing up through the ADMS console is much better!

Background: In Windows Server 2008 Microsoft has changed the behaviour of tasks and there is also a change of the priority of each process. In Windows Server 2003 a scheduled Windows task is created with Priority "Normal". However in Windows Server 2008 the priority of the tasks is "7" which is below "Normal" Priority.

The solution is to make sure that the scheduled Windows task is running with a higher Priority.

The Priority can not be set on a task directly but there is a workaround:

• Go to Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Task Scheduler
• Find the task which is executing the Vault Server backup
• On Action Menu go to Export... > Save the file as *.xml
• Open the .xml file in Notepad
• Find the line <Priority>7</Priority>
• Change the value of the Priority from 7 to a higher value like 4 or 5
• Save the .xml file
• Delete the Scheduled Task for the Vault Server Backup
• In the Actions Menu go to Import Task and choose your modified .xml File

Your task will now run with a higher Priority and speed up the Vault Server backup time.

This is an extract from the Cracking the Vault, Manufacturing Community Blog