How to fix BACKUPBUFFER Wait Types?

Today I was working on an issue in which backup job was showing in executing state since last 2 days.Initially my observation was either it was hung in middle of its process or it was processing very slow. Later, i decided to see the wait types for this process. When i was gathering this info, i saw the wait type backupbuffer for this transaction.

What is BACKUPBUFFER Wait Type

This wait type Occurs when a backup task is waiting for data, or is waiting for a buffer in which to store data. This type is not typical, except when a task is waiting for a tape mount. This wait stats will occur when you are taking the backup on the tape or any other extremely slow backup system.This wait type can be seen with one more wait type i.e. ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION.
These both wait types indicate that the issue is with storage/disk subsystem. Solution is to either ask your storage team to look in this or change your disk/storage subsystem and run your backup on a healthy and fast storage subsystem. There are other options as well where you should focus if your storage subsystem is ok. Below is the list of options you should look into to overcome from this wait type.
  • Add additional IO bandwidth to accommodate the load.
  • Balancing IO across other drives. If you are running your backups on same drive in which you have placed your database files. Make sure to keep separate drive for data, log and backups.
  • Reducing Disk IO pressure with appropriate indexing. This can cause major performance issue if you don’t have proper indexes.
  • Check for bad query plans that are consuming most of resources.
  • Check memory pressure if your server has enough memory to run resource extensive operations.
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Manvendra Deo Singh
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1 Response

  1. Anonymous says:

    thank you for the info.

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