HIGH server load during backup normal?

Hello. I am a hosting reseller, and I have a question about server loads. All in all I am very happy with the people who I have my reseller account with. They are normally very responsive and have been helpful at times with various issues. The one thing I have been somewhat frustrated by, however, is the terribly high loads that server experiences during its nightly backup.

Tonight, for instance, I finally managed to get my WHM server status page to load, and it reported a load of 26.42. The result, of course, is that sites load very slowly, if at all, while this backup process is occurring. Sites that are database driven seem to especially have a difficult time during the backup. And the backup lasts quite some time, it appears. It begins at midnight each night, but tonight it appears to have just finished at 12:53 as the loads have finally returned to more reasonable levels. That's almost an hour of either very slow page loads or pages not coming up at all.

I have spoken to my provider about this, and they claim it is simply an I/O slowdown due to the backup. This is no doubt true, but I find it hard to believe that ALL servers almost go down for an hour to backup their files each night. Especially troublesome to me is the fact that my provider seems a bit nonchalant about this. But 12ET here on the East Coast is just 9PM out on the west coast, and I have had users who have been very frustrated by this slowdown period each day/night.

I don't post this to belittle or complain about my server provider. I am just wondering if they are doing something wrong or if there is a better way to accomplish the nightly backup without bringing the system to a complete halt. Surely this cannot be normal! If anyone had some suggestions, I could offer those to my provider and hopefully rectify this situation. So, I would appreciate any idea anyone might have to offer. If you need me to get you the server specs, I can give you whatever WHM reports, but that is about all as I am just a reseller at this point and don't have root access.

Thanks very much!

 

 

 

 

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