# Optimizing the Backup Performance for Cosmos DB for NoSQL

Throughput during an Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL backup is determined by several variables, including provisioned throughput. Provisioned throughput of each container or database, as administered in the Azure portal, determines the maximum rate at which Commvault software can read data from each container. For more information, see Introduction to provisioned throughput in Azure Cosmos DB on Microsoft's website.

Provisioned throughput also indirectly influences the number of physical partitions for a container. For more information, see Partitioning and horizontal scaling in Azure Cosmos DB on Microsoft's website.

The parallelism obtained during backup operations for a container is the minimum of the following values:

- The number of streams available to back up the container. Note that the number of streams that is configured for the storage policy is shared between the backup of all containers configured as subclient content.

- The number of physical partitions for the container.

To increase backup throughput for containers with an inadequate number of physical partitions, it is possible to temporarily increase provisioned throughput for those containers to a high value, such as at least 50,000 RUs per second. The elevated provisioned throughput value should not be lowered until automatic re-partitioning has finished. This can leave a container with an increased number of physical partitions, even after the provisioned throughput is returned to a much lower value.

Full backups need to read the entire container, which is a read-intensive, high-RU consumption use case. Therefore, scheduling default weekly full backups can be expensive. This is not recommended if the data contains only read-only entries.

## Additional Recommendations for Large Containers

To back up large containers with multiple physical partitions and reduce the RU consumption rate, it is recommended that you configure a separate subclient and set the number of backup streams to a number lower than the total number of physical partitions in that container. This ensures that only a few partitions are engaged with read operations at any given time, thereby reducing the overall RU consumption rate across all partitions in the container.

For large containers that require a high backup throughput, use an access node that is not heavily loaded with other activity and has sufficient RAM and CPU cores. Using the CommServe computer as an access node can negatively impact backup performance.

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