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hyper-v agent gives huge backups

magnus1
Level 2

This problem occures with both backupexec 2010 and 2010 R2

Ive selected all the virtual machines on a hyper-v server. The result is a huge backup.

F example if there is a virtual machine named mail. it has a d: drive thats 300GB. Even though the d drive only has 10GB on it backupexec takes 300GB.

This is a huge problem since we dont have enough tape... How can we fix this. If the d drive has only 10GB on it I want the backup to take only those 10GB not the whole thing.

This goes for all the virtual machines. They all have fixed disk sizes due to best performance.

Thx in advance for any answers you can give.

4 REPLIES 4

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

Hi Magnus,

 

Backups will be based on the files selected. In your case, you're selecting the whole VM. No matter what the size of the drive in Windows, that whole file will be backed up. If the size of the flat file is 300GB, you're going to back up 300GB.

If you had a server with an x64-bit OS, you could look into deduplicating those VMs, which in theory would mean less space used. However, this would have to go to disk, and the minute you stream off to tape, you end up rehydrating the files to the original size.

Best bet too is to get hold of the BE 2010 Admin guide from here...

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH77887

It will give you more information around backing up VMs in Hyper-V.


Thanks!

dgunner
Level 3
Partner

Are you sure you can't reduce the size of the VM?

300GB with only 10GB of data seems overkill but I don't know what app you are running - maybe it creates lots of temporary files?

If not then there must be some other issue if you need a drive that size for performance reasons.....

If you need 300GB drives then I'm afraid you're going to have to get a backup drive that can accomodate that amount of data if you want to use BE.

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

Hi Magnus,

 

Did you ever come right here?

 

Thanks!

teiva-boy
Level 6

First off, BE cannot dedupe VHD files, hardly at all.  Unlike Vmware VMDK's, BE is actually behind in this regard.  You are relegated to client-side dedupe and not media server in this case.  NBU can do this as of its latest update, but BE will have to wait for the next major update to do it natively and not just via a remote agent.  

As for backing up only the used space on the VHD files, it should only backup roughly the used space, ignoring the white space/free space.  This is one of those cases, where a support cases is needed more than likely.  Though it's been a month now...