Restore linux backup to a smaller disk - how to?

[RobertKO]

hi,

I have a 3 TB big Vmware Linux Guest OS with actually 5 GB data in it. I backed this guest up installing first the linux guest drivers in the linux machine. So I got a small backup file with around 2.5 GB size. That's perfect.

Now I would like to restore this vmware guest into a new vmware guest with a smaller hd, only 100 GB instead of 3 TB. How can this be done?

I tried it this way:
- I had created a new vmware guest on the esxi server with a smaller 100 GB disk
- I mounted the veem iso and booted from it
- I succesfully connected to the veem backup server

But now I cannot restore the big 3TB vmware into the smaller one / although there is only a few GB of data in the 3 TB vmware backup.

It seems I have to create a new 3 TB disk file and it is not possible to restore into a smaller disk.

I am sure I am missing something. Can you please point me into the right direction?

[PTide]

Hi,

Would you clarify whether you used VBR to backup the VM, or you used Veeam Agent for Linux?

Thanks!

[RobertKO]

I used VBR to backup the virtual linux machine. I installed the Veem Agent for Linux first on the machine.

The job is a "Linux Agent Backup" type, but started from the VBR console, not locally on the Linux machine.

[PTide]

Ok, now I get it. Unfortunately currently there is no way to shrink disk in the backup, however that is a planned improvement for future releases. As an ugly workaround I can suggest dropping into CLI, creating a required partition manually, and then use file-level restore to move files from backup.

Thanks!

[joaoferreira]

@PTide how is the roadmap for this feature ? I'm trying to restore a backup from a 2TB host with 100 GB of data with Veeam Agent Linux, and unlike the Windows version, we can't use the customer resize partitions. Is this going be release soon ? Thank you

[Gostev]

I would not bet on that. It is infinitely more complex to support than in Windows version, due to the wide variety of file systems in Linux. Windows was very easy to support because there's only NTFS, while Linux ecosystem is unfortunately very fragmented in that sense. Even when we start building this, we'll be adding support for different file systems one by one, and there's no guarantee first file systems will be the ones you happen to be using.