Convert ntfs to refs to take advantage of fast clone

[jogermany]

Hi,
I use Veeam v10 to back up my Hyper-V VMs.
My backup repository is a Win2016 server with local hard drives. The volume is formatted with NTFS. I would now like to convert the volume to ReFS to take advantage of e.g. block/fast clone.
I have about 6 TB of data on the volume.
My planned approach:
- Stop all jobs
- Copying the data to an external media
- Format the volume with ReFS
- Copying the data back
- Reactivate the jobs

Can I do it like this?
Thx

[Egor Yakovlev]

Yes, but you will have to also:
- edit through repository settings going next-next-next-finish style, for us to detect ReFS
- initiate another Active Full for all jobs, for us to start using Fast Clone

Check out Fast Clone limitations mentioned here.

/Thanks!

[jogermany]

Active full for all jobs? It's like a fresh start.
Can this also be used without copying back the old data?
My retention periods on the volume are between 2-4 weeks. After 4 weeks without problems, I would then delete the outsourced data.
?
Thx

[Mildur]

You can left your old backup data on the external media.
Veeam is able to restore data from the external media without any problem.
You can import the backups or create a backup repo target to the folder on the external media.

Import Backups:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100

Adding Backup Repo (normal process )
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100

[jogermany]

Thanks for the help!
I'll try this out soon

[Egor Yakovlev]

Sure, if that will work for you as well, that's a valid scenario.
Make sure to rescan empty repository anyway, so Veeam will be aware of missing backup files, because otherwise Veeam will expect manually moved files to be still there and jobs will yell at you =)

[jogermany]

I formatted the volume with refs and then rescanned it.
Then I backed up a computer with "Veeam Agent for Windows" (Backup Destination = Veeam backup repository).
The computer uses 150GB on its hard drive. The backup file on the ReFS volume is also 150GB in size.
Shouldn't the file on the backup server be smaller due to compression & inline dedup?

[Mildur]

ReFS will only help you to safe space with this operations:

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100

In backup jobs:

• merge of backup files

• creation of synthetic full backups (including GFS backups)

• transformation of reverse incremental backups

• compact of full backup files

In backup copy jobs:

• merge of backup files

• creation of GFS backups (synthetic method)

• compact of full backup files

It's looks a little bit strange, that the size of the vbk is the same as the provisioned size of your computer. Are you backuping up the volumes of the hyperv Server with Veeam Agent or do you have configured a HyperV VM Backup Job (Image Level Backup Job)?
Or is this a test run for Veeam AGent Backup of your work computer?

[jogermany]

It is a test run for a physical server with Veeam Agent Backup.
I also have Veeam Backup & Replication v10 and the repository server in it.
The Physical Server uses the repository server as a backup target

[Mildur]

What type of data do you have on this physical server?
150GB Databases? Or only files?
Are there encrypted or already deduplicated with Windows Deduplication?

There should be some compression:
Example 1TB used Exchange Data --> 0.65TB *.vbk File
Example 0.8TB used SQL Server --> 0.25TB *.vbk File

Is Inline Data Deduplication activated in the backup Job?
VBR Managed: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100
VBR Standalone: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/agent ... tml?ver=40

[jogermany]

I looked again more closely

Total size 434,7 GB Backup size 137,1 GB
Data read 155,4 GB Dedupe 2,8x
Transferred 123,4 GB Compression 1,1x

Poor compression, but the physical server is our MDT (Microsoft Deployment Server) with lots of ISO files, microsoft updates and driver files (* .cab). I think the material is already compressed.

[Mildur]

This can be the reason. Compression looks fine for me.
Do you have configured synthetic Full for the weekend? You will see in the backup logs after the synthetic full the following entry:
20.02.2021 22:03:27 :: Synthetic full backup created successfully [fast clone]

This will indicate, that refs block cloning was working for this backup job.

[jogermany]

Incremental forever job.

before:
05.02.2021 21:16:33 :: Full backup file merge completed successfully 03:09
now
25.02.2021 06:49:22 :: Full backup file merge completed successfully [fast clone] 00:41

It works.

Thanks for your help.