Deduplicated Volume on Server 2012 reporting wrong size

[sdelacruz]

So I went ahead and tried the deduplication option on windows 2012 as my Backup Target.
Running Veeam BR 7.0 on a Windows Server 2012 with 5 TB of local storage and 2 TB on Dell Iscsi storage from an MD3000i

After creating the jobs and sending them now to the deduped iscsi storage, i noticed that my iscsi target ran out of space really quick. I checked the volume and windows was reporting I was using 1.99 TB and had not space left. Veeam jobs continue to fail. I then checked the folder containing the backup jobs and noticed that those files were less than 1 TB. Am I missing something on how to reclaim space on a deduplicated target?

I am using no compression on my jobs as it mentions that it's best practices when using a target with deduplication.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

SAM

[veremin]

Hi, Sam,

I doubt we can do something in this case, as we receive information regarding free space from OS. Technet forums might be a better place to ask this sort of questions, since the issue seems to be related to Windows deduplication mechanism mostly and the way underlying OS reports free space.

Thanks.

[EricZBA]

If Windows is reporting no space available, then no space is available. It is possible either your files are not getting deduplicated or they are being deduplicated but the space savings are not quite enough.

You can check if the files are being deduplicated by running the Get-DedupStatus PowerShell command. It should give you a listing of the current space savings and number of files being deduplicated.

Here are a couple of TechNet links that talk about Deduplication

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 31505.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 31434.aspx

[sdelacruz]

Thank you very much for your response.

As you mention, it was more on the Windows Server side rather than the Veeam.
I restarted both Data deduplication services and ran the following command.
Start-DedupJob H: –Type GarbageCollection on my Winddos 2012 Server

After I few hour, I recovered the drive space I was missing. I am able to run backups now.

Thank you very much for pointing me out thos articles.

SAM

[veremin]

The garbage collection removes unused chunks, indeed. As far as I remember, by default it runs on weekly basis. So, you can play with its schedule and see which one answers your requirements best. Thanks.