Workstation with huge incremental backups - how to track source?

[ValiantMartian]

I'm using Veeam B&R 11a to back up Windows workstations. One workstation is 40 gb for weekly full backups. Sounds about right, but daily incremental files are ~25 GB! Incremental files for other workstations are usually < 1 GB.

Is there a quick way to track down what's generating so much change, either within Veeam or Windows?

[Mildur]

Are you using File Backup Jobs or Volume level Backup Jobs?

If it‘s file backup jobs, if a user changes one small part of a file, veeam will backup the entire content, not only the changed data.

If it‘s a volume level backup, check for installed databases or daily exports of application data. Both could led to many changed blocks inside your machine.

I don‘t know a way in veeam to find out exactly which file was changed if using block level backup. I don‘t think there is one, because veeam sees only blocks and not a file when the backup is running.

[ValiantMartian]

I'm using Job Mode "Server", and backup mode "File Level Backup". If it's true that changing any portion of a file will cause the whole file to backup, perhaps this is an Outlook data file or some other large file with minimal change. I'll check there. Thanks!

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi VM

I would start by comparing results of a changed files count within a week, from an affected machine to others without such symptoms.

Code: Select all

$AllChangedFiles = Get-ChildItem -Path "C:\" -Recurse -File -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | ? {$_.LastWriteTime -gt (Get-Date).AddDays(-7)}
Write-Host "Changed files: " $AllChangedFiles.Count
$FileStatistics = $AllChangedFiles | Measure-Object -Property Length -Sum
$AllChangedFilesTotalSizeGB = [math]::Round($FileStatistics.Sum/1GB,2)
Write-Host "Changed files total size GB: " $AllChangedFilesTotalSizeGB

Then I would add a filter by file size to find biggest objects that changed in last 7 days(100MB threshold in the example)

Code: Select all

$AllBigChangedFiles = $AllChangedFiles | ? {$_.Length/1MB -gt 100}
Write-Host "Big changed files: " $AllBigChangedFiles.Count
$BigFileStatistics = $AllBigChangedFiles | Measure-Object -Property Length -Sum
$AllBigChangedFilesTotalSizeGB = [math]::Round($BigFileStatistics.Sum/1GB,2)
Write-Host "Big changed files total size GB: " $AllBigChangedFilesTotalSizeGB

That might shed some light on the objects changing...

[Mildur]

your welcome

that changing any portion of a file will cause the whole file to backup, perhaps this is an Outlook data file or some other large file with minimal change

That could be the case
With File Level Backup Jobs, Veeam will always backup the entire file, if one small portion was changed since the last backup.