High CPU usage during backup

[chcpnf]

So, here I am again, with some logs. I have plotted some performance indicators vs time. The backup started on 8/12 at 21.00h. Sorry for the German labels.

[chcpnf]

And some more...

[jsf]

In the Task Manager process list, check which process uses most of the memory. If it's System, then the memory leak happens in some driver (is a Silicon Image controller involved?); see the FAQ link in my previous post on how to troubleshoot it. If it's some other user mode process, then you can simply disable it.

[chcpnf]

I had a screenshot of the process list as well, but didn't save it. Bottom line, there was no process showing up with abnormal use of memory. But in the two taskman screenshots, the main difference is in the amount of kernel memory ("Kernel-Speicher"), which seems to support a driver-related problem. The kb article dealing with storport.sys apparently does not apply to Windows Server 2003, but I'll look into the poolmon utility.
There is indeed a Silicon Image controller (3114) present in the system, but it is not involved in the backup process. The source drive is a RAID on a 3ware 9500s controller, the destination is the aforementioned iSCSI network drive.

[jsf]

You may want to search the Internet for more info on how to track down kernel memory leaks.

You can also try Driver Verifier Manager (verifier.exe). Select several drivers to verify at a time. Select "Special Pool" and "Pool Tracking", don't select anything else. Verifier allows you to see certain info about "currently verified drivers", including the number and total size of memory allocations.

[chcpnf]

Thanks, will do.

[chcpnf]

Ok, one last try... I have taken some stack traces in Process Explorer during backup, maybe they contain some hints. The CPU use is divided between Interrupts and the System process. Inside system, I captured the stack of the two threads that momentarily used the most CPU time.
I also had a look at the output of verifier.exe, but I'm unable to make much of it. However, there seem to be no failing pool memory allocations.

[jsf]

It doesn't really matter why the CPU usage increases when the memory is low. There may be many different reasons. One of them, looking at your last screenshots, Windows is busy swapping thread contexts.

In Verifier, look not for failed allocations but for the total size and number of allocations. The driver that leaks memory will have these values constantly increasing as the backup progresses. Eventually it will have tens or hundreds of megabytes allocated comparing to the low values at the beginning of the backup. Check the drivers in the storage stack first.