Disabling Receive-Side Scaling and Receive Windows Auto-Tuning Level Improved Backup Rate

Recently I setup 3 virtual machines for our new file servers and a physical server as our new backup server running Symantec BackupExec 2010 R3.  All 4 servers are running Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1.

Today I disabled Receive-Side Scaling and Receive Windows Auto-Tuning Level on 2 of the 3 file servers and the backup server.  I just ran the backup for the 3 file servers and I am seeing improvement in backup rate for the 2 file servers with Receive-Side Scaling and Receive Windows Auto-Tuning Level disabled.  The 2 file servers are having  backup rate of about 3000MB/min while the other file server is having backup rate of 2000MB/min.

• To disable Receive-Side Scaling: netsh int tcp set global rss=disabled
• To disable Receive Windows Auto-Tuning Level: netsh int tcp set global autotuning=disabled
• Reboot servers