1. A computer-implemented method by a backup application server comprising: profiling by an analyzer module running within the backup application server a performance capability of a host that is to back up data, wherein the host is a source storage system that backs up data to a target storage system, and wherein the performance capability of the host includes one or more static or dynamic properties of the host machine that is related to computing performance, and wherein the performance capability of the host further includes a size of data that can be backed up by the host and an amount of memory that can be allocated by the host to back up the data; profiling by the analyzer module a property of the data, wherein the property of the data includes the size of the data to be backed up and a type of data to be backed up; sending the performance capability of the host and the property of the data to a rule engine module to determine a backup configuration parameter, the rule engine module including pre-defined rules for determining a backup configuration parameter based on host performance capability and data property, wherein the pre-defined rules of the rule engine module are stored in a lookup table having a plurality of mapping entries, each mapping entry mapping host performance capability and data property of each host to a recommended backup configuration parameter, and the lookup table can be modified by a backup administrator to create custom rules and/or to modify existing rules, wherein the backup configuration parameter includes a number of stripes to be used to back up data, whether compression should be applied to back up data, or whether deduplication should be performed on the data; receiving by a backup module the determined backup configuration parameter from the rule engine module; and transmitting by the backup module the backup configuration parameter to the host to instruct the host to back up the data from the host to a backup storage over a network using the determined backup configuration parameter.