Free space on VM counted as full space?

[BoiseIT]

So I have a server I recently deleted a bunch of data from to make the backup image smaller. The previous size was 3.8TB and now the server size is around 800GB, but my backups are still 2.7TB with extreme compression. How do I get Veeam to stop counting free space as data in the backup image?

[Gostev]

Could it be that those 800GB are extremely fragmented? Because by default Veeam does not grab blocks where all content belongs to deleted files.

[BoiseIT]

I guess it's possible, I assumed Veeam would just ignore the empty space. I'll see what I can do - wasn't sure if I was missing a setting somewhere or not. I was just surprised the data didn't really change at all, not even a tiny bit, after deleting 3tb of data.

[david.domask]

Hi @BoiseIT, what's the file system on the GuestOS being backed up? Is it NTFS or something else?

The feature Anton mentioned is here: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120 and maybe check the details I mentioned against your machine and then check the considerations on the Bitlooker User Guide page.

[BoiseIT]

It's NTFS, server 2016. Yes the options for Bitlooker are enabled by default. I'm running a fresh backup now to test it - I hadn't done an active full since I deleted the data.

[BoiseIT]

It took an active full to reduce the size - without doing that it was still wanting to refer to the larger amount of data in the older backup chain.