11G WebCenter Content filesystem backups is abnormally slow

We have installed 11.1.1.6 WebCenter Content and have migrated the configuration/content over from our 10g version of the product.  After migrating all our content (4,000,000 + documents) our backups have become abnormally slow.  The 10G version is running on Red Hat 4 and backs up fine.  The 11G version is running on Red Hat 5 and takes about 10 time as long to run.  It gets to a point where it’s backing up at a pace of kb/sec which is unacceptable.  The issue seems to be when backing up the vault and weblayout directories.  I can see that there is a vast difference in the directory structure under these directories.