Endpoint backup - resize volume being backed up

[Fledge]

On a Windows volume with an existing VEB job deployed (and the backup chain is happily doing its thing) - What affect will doing a grow on the Windows volume size have ?

a) Existing backup job and its chain will accommodate it and continue as is

or

b) Volume size change will necessitate a new full backup to start a new chain reflecting the new volume size


Thanks

[Dima P.]

Hi,

Backup file will be incremental but it will keep the full backup of the resized volume.

[Fledge]

Thanks Dima

So it a) in my list above?

Say nothing changes file (block) wise and just the volume size grows (i.e. it just ends up with more free space)
- the existing VEB backup chain will continue with the next incremental (which will be very small if no file changes to speak of?)
- the volume size change is 'captured' in the incremental

[Dima P.]

I’d say it’s a combination of a and b. Yes we take a full backup of a volume (layout was changed so we must back it up from scratch) but we will continue the existing backup chain with an incremental backup file.

[Fledge]

Ah - so the next incremental will be effectively be a new full backup of the new volume ?
This way you keep a chain going (to maintain the historical restore points) but size wise there will be effectively 2 x full backup (the pre grow VBK and the post grow incremental - at least until retention time rolls through and the post grow incremental merges into the VBK)

The reason am double checking the scenario is that the drive involved is a large data volume currently ~ 9TB in size (current VBK is ~ 2.4TB)
The VEB backup is to a VBR repository across a firewall'd LAN infrastructure - so a "full" sized incremental will take some time to run
The VBR repository also has a backup copy job used to push the VEB backup across a WAN to another off-site VBR repository for DR, which will take a number of days for a full" sized incremental
(and the DR repository will need space for 2 x full backup as well)

We looking at adding another 1TB of free space to the volume
I guess the additional 1TB of free space will have little effect on backup size, it just the side effects of the above that will have impact on; time for the 'post grow incremental' transfers to complete and temporary impact on backup storage space (until that washes through)

Thanks

[Dima P.]

Fledge,

Is that the only volume you are backing up or you have other source volumes for this job?