VBK Backup sizes

[jamesbranch]

Hi all,

We currently backup some VMs on a Hyper-V cluster and one of the VMs (Windows Server 2012 R2) has an 80GB system volume and a 3TB data volume.

There is approx 1.1TB of data sitting on the data volume, mostly just small files (doc, xls, pdf etc)

The initial full backup was taken of the VM and the size of the VBK (after deduplication) is 2.5TB.

I just wanted to know if this was correct, as that seems to be a lot of data written into VBK which is taken up by 'white space'

Is there a better way to do this that will minimise space used in the repository?

Thanks all,
James

[PetrM]

Hi James,

Yes, that's correct because data read is performed by Source Data Mover at the level of Hyper-V host and not at the level of VM.

The only idea which comes to my mind is to select higher compression level in job settings.
On the other hand, you should keep in mind that higher compression algorithms require more CPU resources on source side.

I'd suggest to take a look at the restore point simulator: it shows hypothetical value of consumed space depending on many different factors like backup chain mode, job schedule etc.

Thanks!

[jamesbranch]

Thanks very much for the information, very helpful.

Cheers
James