How To Force Active Full Backup

[NashBrydges]

Hi All,

I'm running Veeam B&R latest update 2 version. Trying to force a Active Full backup but it always jumps to 72% before running the backup. The resulting backup file is 2.1TB but it should be well over 21TB (full drive used is 29TB). I've removed the backup from disk and started the backup again and same issue. I've deleted the backup job and set it up again and same issue. I've fully removed Veeam B&R and reinstalled and same issue. Nop matter what I do it always jumps to 72% before resuming. There is clearly something I'm missing, some remnant somewhere that's causing Veeam to not do the full backup. I want to force the Active Full backup but it refuses to run as expected.

- Veeam B&R is running in a VM on HOST1
- The backup repository is a Windows Server (HOST1)
- The VM I am trying to backup is on HOST2
- HOST2 also has 12 other VMs but these are backed-up to a NAS
- All hosts and VMs are running Windows Server 2012R2 fully patched

Any help would be appreciated.

[Shestakov]

Hi,
Do you have other backups of that VM, what is the .vbk size if any?
I believe there can be big number of zero blocks which are skipped or lots of duplicated blocks so the backup size is much smaller than the original VM`s.
You may try to restore that VM from backup or run a Surebackup job to confirm its recoverability.
Thanks!

[NashBrydges]

I've actually deleted all of the existing backups for this VM so there shouldn't be anything remaining. Sadly I can't restore the VM since I don't have the necessary space to do so.

[foggy]

To effectively force active full, you need just right-click the job and select the corresponding command.

How do you check the space occupied by VM? Do you check VHDX file size or in-guest OS space? How many disks does the VM have and are all of them regular VHDX disks (not pass-through or iSCSI)?

[NashBrydges]

No matter what I try, right-click and select active full or select from the top menu, the backup starts from approximately 72% and only processes 2.1TB. These are video files so the backup should be close to the original server disk size. The VM has 2 disks that total 29.1TB VHDX.

[Shestakov]

In this case contact Veeam support please to get the detailed issue investigation. Thanks!

[NashBrydges]

Ha, I've just noticed that this happens to be the size of DISK #2 on the VM. In other words, the backup is only capturing the smaller of the VHDX drives and ignoring the larger drive. Any thoughts on why it would ignore one drive and not the other?

I'm using the NFR version hence my question in this forum vs support.

[foggy]

Do you see any related messages in the job session log? What is the last operation logged there (if you select the VM in the list to the left)?

Btw, you can contact support even with NFR license, just expect response time based on actual staff availability.

[NashBrydges]

The session logs show this for a new job I created this afternoon...

10/5/2016 1:42:35 PM :: Job started at 10/5/2016 1:42:34 PM
10/5/2016 1:42:38 PM :: Building VMs list
10/5/2016 1:43:15 PM :: VM size: 37.0 TB (29.1 TB used)
10/5/2016 1:43:15 PM :: Changed block tracking is enabled
10/5/2016 1:43:16 PM :: Processing FILE_SERV01
10/5/2016 1:43:21 PM :: All VMs have been queued for processing
10/5/2016 4:17:05 PM :: Load: Source 63% > Proxy 30% > Network 53% > Target 35%
10/5/2016 4:17:05 PM :: Primary bottleneck: Source
10/5/2016 4:17:05 PM :: Job finished at 10/5/2016 4:17:05 PM

Took about 2.5hrs to process 2.1TB which represents the amount of data on just the one drive on this VM. Currently running the SureBackup which will eventually fail.

[NashBrydges]

I guess I'll have to contact support since I'm at a loss to explain what's happening.

[Shestakov]

Provided part of log looks normal.
Are both VM disks of the same format? Do you have any exclusions enabled in the backup job?

[foggy]

This is a general part, if you select the particular VM in the list to the left, you will see the detailed processing log for that VM.