File Splitting or an option to store large backup files other than locally?

[merman]

Hi all, first time poster.
Ive been looking through the forums with no real luck on a solution and I was hoping someone could help.

Ive just started using the community version for home use and Im really liking it. Thanks Veeam

The one major issue I see is that there doesnt appear to be a way to split backup file sizes.
I have a server (2019 wintel) that Im running Stablebit Drivepool on which suits almost all my requirements.
However, when trying to backup a Windows 10 client to the pool it appears the max file size for the backup is the max file size of one of my drives that is pooled (in this case 8TB for my backup volume. Total available space is 40TB). Thats a big problem for me as Im trying to backup my video editing PC which has around 20TB of data on it. Effictively what happens is that as soon as the server drive hits 100% on that particular volume Stablebit is writing to, the backup bombs.

So my question is, is there a way to either:
Split the backup file sizes to reasonable levels so my server can handle the backups
or would Storage Spaces effectively work and allow me to transfer a file that is larger than the hard drives installed?
Or is the newbie missing something here? (totally possible)

Im not able to do multiple backups (i believe) as Im only using the community version which is restricted.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I REALLY dont want to go back to using Acronis!

Thanks everyone (stay safe),

Matt

[HannesK]

Hello,
and welcome to the forums.

The Veeam agents have one backup file per backup job. No way to split it into chunks because modern filesystems can easily deal with large files.

Windows storage spaces work fine, yes. Also the classic dynamic disks work fine.

If you have multiple smaller volumes, you could also maybe create multiple jobs and make the backup files smaller that way.

Best regards,
Hannes

[merman]

Thanks for your reply

I’ll try storage spaces for my backup volumes.

I think it’s a real shame that veeam doesn’t allow the option to split. A lot of backup software solutions support this and it just gives users more flexibility.

[h3ctic]

I agree. Split would be VERY useful.

Often the files are being copied to other locations and the bandwidth might be low or unstable. Pretty annoying when you've uploaded a 1TB file 99% and it fails, just to retry and it fails again.

[HannesK]

Hello,

Pretty annoying when you've uploaded a 1TB file 99% and it fails, just to retry and it fails again.

I don't know which type of copy / upload you use, but that issue could be maybe improved without smaller files. There are situations where the software continues over unstable links. To understand your request, we need the details what exact situation you have (I guess incremental backup copy jobs without WAN accelerator). What is the scenario, that it fails?

Best regards,
Hannes

[vmtech123]

I'd be happy with split files for concurrency when doing tape restores / backups.
A large VM with multiple drives could have each disk backed up on a separate tape in a separate drive. The backup job could process the VM's sequentially filling the drives.

We often backup many file servers at once to tape, which will use multiple drives and max out our throughput, however, restores are usually done 1 at a time which would be very beneficial.

[HannesK]

about tape only: if one splits a machine to multiple tapes, that's fast during (full)backup. It becomes more complicated, when doing incremental restores. The amounts of data would be small and spread over multiple tapes and files. So that type of restore would become slower.

Are you only doing full backups, or also incremental backups to tape?

[robnicholsonmalt]

>The Veeam agents have one backup file per backup job. No way to split it into chunks because modern filesystems can easily deal with large files.

That might be the case but if you want to transfer a large backup to another storage media, split files would help if the copy operation got interrupted. Copying a 10TB file is a lengthy process which could fail part way for many reasons. I guess if you've got a enough storage you could zip it up in smaller chunks.

Aside - is there a Windows utility that can resume copies? Never tried one. Robocopy has /z option - might give that a go.