Veeam Data Cloud duplicating backed up data

[hrai]

IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS IS NOT A TECHNICAL ISSUE. I just want to see if other VDC users have experienced the same thing.

I set up Veeam Data Cloud for our company on March 5, 2025. SharePoint Backup takes almost 4 days to complete in the first run of the Backup Policy (after than it runs fast: between 5 and 30 mins)


After backing up my objects I had approximately 1.2TB of Storage space (in that blue bar on the top left)
After I switch to Variable (from Static) I created a new Backup Policy and then ran the new policies. Even though it was the same objects the backups took again 4 days to complete and the data increased to 2.4TB.
A few days later I created security groups to handle the different objects automatically and created new Backup Policies, again even though it was the same objects it took 4 days to complete and the data increased to 3.7TB


It seems VDC is duplicating the backed up data each time a new policy is created and ran. Has someone else experienced the same thing?

[micoolpaul]

Hi,

Can I confirm a couple of things please:
1. These jobs were going to the same backup repository each time?
2. Did you keep the existing backup jobs when creating the new jobs?

Thanks,
Michael

[hrai]

Hi Michael,

1. In Veeam Data Cloud (VDC), there isn’t a selectable backup repository like in Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 On-Prem (which I also use), so I’m not entirely sure what you mean in this context.

2. I deleted the original backup policies after creating the new ones. (In VDC they're called policies, while in the on-prem version they’re referred to as jobs.)

My assumption was that VDC uses a shared backend repository and would handle new policies as differential backups if the data remained unchanged; similar to how Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 behaves. Since that doesn't seem to be the case and I saw the data size double with each policy change, it looks like VDC may perform a full backup even when the objects are identical (e.g., Mailboxes, OneDrive, SharePoint).

[micoolpaul]

Hi.

Depending on organisation requirements, it's possible to store VDCM365 backups within multiple locations, e.g. for organisations that require data sovereignty within multiple geos, hence the request. Thank you for clarifying.

I would expect a new job to sync with the repository, but I wouldn't expect it to be causing the data size to double, this could be a reporting issue. Have you raised this with support?

[hrai]

At this stage, I’m mainly curious to know if others have seen similar behavior. We've been using Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 on-prem for the past year, and that remains our primary backup solution for now. I started testing VDC about a month ago to evaluate if we can fully transition to it in the future, so I don’t mind wiping everything and starting fresh if needed. That said, I’ll go ahead and open a support ticket. Thanks again!