VEB and Server 2012 Dedup

[sibinsam]

Hi,
We have installed VEB on a server 2012 with dedup enabled. The backups are a success with each increment around 30 GB. The garbage collection is scheduled on Fridays and Saturdays.
The backup jobs fails around the times this garbage collection runs with an error "The system cannot find the file specified. Failed to open I/O device Failed to open emulated disk. Failed to open disk for read. Failed to upload disk. Agent failed to process method {DataTransfer.SyncDisk}. ".
Is this an issue with VEB, or should i just turn off the backups during the garbage collection?

The other issue we are facing is regarding the backup size after garbage collection occurs. We deleted a few folders last week and when the backup job ran after the garbage collection the incremental backup size went up to more than 800 GB which is way higher than 30 GB incremental seen last week. I checked through the logs but was not able to pinpoint any specific issues.
Any ideas as to why this might be happening?
Opened a ticket with id 711778.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Sibin,

Is this an issue with VEB, or should i just turn off the backups during the garbage collection?

Do you store Veeam backups on the dedupe volume?

We deleted a few folders last week and when the backup job ran after the garbage collection the incremental backup size went up to more than 800 GB which is way higher than 30 GB incremental seen last week. I checked through the logs but was not able to pinpoint any specific issues.
Any ideas as to why this might be happening?

Yes, that's actually expected to have large increments if you're using dedupe feature inside the guest OS being backed up. See these topics for further reading > Windows 2012 and deduplication, Backing up dedupped Windows 2012 server? and this one Large VIB file on a small static server

Thanks!

[sibinsam]

The Backups are stored in a windows server 2008 R2 server.

Yes I got your point. Maybe the sys vol folder where the metadata of deduped data gets stored is changed and VEB backs up those bits of data which is why the increase in backup size.

[Vitaliy S.]

Try to use different schedule for maintenance tasks and backup job, should help in identifying the first issue.

[m.novelli]

Hello, the Windows 2012 R2 deduplication is fully supported by VEB on the source server? Thanks

[Dima P.]

Hi Marco,
I can’t imagine any issues while backing up a volume with dedup enabled via entire computer or volume level backup mode but would highly appreciate if you share your testing experience. Thanks in advance.

[m.novelli]

Hi Marco,
I can’t imagine any issues while backing up a volume with dedup enabled via entire computer or volume level back mode but would highly appreciate if you share your testing experience. Thanks in advance.

Just wondering... for example Veeam B&R need to be installed on Windows 2012 R2 with dedupe enabled in order to restore files deduplicated by a source Windows 2012 R2 source VM

Cheers

[Dima P.]

Indeed, there might be issues with file level recovery from deduped volume (I'll check if we got any info at the QA side) but as I’ve said before – volume level backup and volume level restore (including bare metal recovery) should work.

[pfguglielmi]

Hi Dima!

Could you get any feedback from the QA, especially on being able to restore files from a Windows Server with dedupe enabled backup ?

Thanks!
Pierre-Francois.

[Dima P.]

Hi folks,

Thanks for bringing this up! To cut the long story shot the recovery from the deduped volume should be supported within the same OS (the same deduplication driver version should be presented inside the machine where you are performing a File Level Recovery). That covers the volume level backup, while file level backup is performed in a raw undeduped format, so, again, file level recovery should work.