Need a solution to backup 3TB of data on a Windows 2003 file server.

Hi all,

We currently have a challenge on backing up our file server within a reasonable amount of time.  Here is the details on what's currently involve:

1. File server is a Windows 2003 box running as a VM guest within ESX 4.1 Enterprise environment.
2. There are millions of large and small files and deep folder structures on the file server.
3. There are several disk volumes for the file server.  Some disks are virtual disks as part of the VM but some larger disks are configured as RDM within VMware.  One disk volume is over 1.7TB and couple others are over 500GB on an iSCSI SAN.
4. We run both VEEAM and Backup Exec 2010 R3 for this system.  We use VEEAM to backup the VM itself including all virtual disks.  We use Backup Exec to backup the entire server including all disk volumes (virtual and physical RDM on iSCSI).
5. The entire file server with all disk volumes has close to 3TB of data.
6. We only have Gigabit connectivity between the VMware host, the iSCSI storage and the Backup Exec and VEEAM media server.
7. Full backup for this file server in Backup Exec currently taking over 222 HOURS (9+ days)!  That's not including 'Verify' after backup.
8. Full backup in Backup Exec goes directly to LTO5 tapes as we currently do not have disk space that can retain 3TB+ of data.  However, we are open to purchase storage if necessary.
9. VEEAM backup for this file server which only include some disk volumes takes over 3 hours with close to 400GB of data.

My goal is to re-engineer the backup operation for this file server so we can complete the backup for the entire file server including all disk volumes within 48 hours.  Within the 48 hours timeframe, we must be able to run the 'Verify' portion of the backup.  We like to convert the backup for this file server from D2T to D2D2T.  Any suggestion or recommendation on how we can achieve the goal here?

Thank you,

David