Defragment and compact full backup file

[BackupBytesTim]

My recent support case #06041477 has come to my needing to do periodic active full backups to mitigate fragmentation issues that cause unusually high data transfer and file sizes on the repository. The affected clients already had issues with low network speeds and unreliable connections, which is the big reason we even noticed the problem in the first place, else the increased data transfer probably would've been unnoticed. At this point I'm honestly unsure if the apparent connection issues are actual network problems or if it's another bug in the Veeam software, but regardless I was told a fix is in the works and should be available in an undetermined future update. Unfortunately that doesn't help right now, so we are looking at how feasible it is to actually do periodic full backups for some of our customers, where previously the "forever forward incremental" format was deemed beneficial and made backups on poor connections fairly realistic.

Partially for my own curiosity, and partially because my boss is also concerned this will just result in more failures due to unreliable network connections preventing the full backups from ever completing, I must ask why the macOS agent backup jobs don't have the "Defragment and compact full backup file" option like Windows does. It's still stored in the same Veeam VBK/VIB/VBM file format and it's on the same repository, so wondering if that's intentionally missing for some reason or if it's planned to be added soon or anything like that. Either way there's more load on our servers, but for some of our clients completing full backups regularly isn't realistic due to not being connected to the internet for that long at one time.

[HannesK]

Hello,
I understand, that it's not helping you, but AIX, Solaris and MAC agent don't have that option (because it's not implemented).

Best regards,
Hannes

[BackupBytesTim]

The support rep on the case mentioned it's been requested internally and planned for implementation in a future update, that he also added my case as a reason for implementing it.

I'm curious if that's something that may be implemented before a major version update, "major" being like VBR 13 and Mac Agent v3. Doesn't matter too much either way, it'll be added when it's added, but as that may be the only proper solution to the problem in the case it would definitely be nice to have an approximate time frame for the update.

[HannesK]

discussions about time-frame are still on-going

[BackupBytesTim]

Just a curiosity question, but what's different about doing this for Windows vs non-Windows backups? My understanding is the process is supposed to happen entirely on the server side so there's nothing different to implement in the agent software, and from my understanding the backup format is the same with VBK and VIB files for different operating systems. Not trying to rush the implementation, just curious what it is that needs implementing still.

[PTide]

This holds true for 'managed by backup server mode'.

However, AIX/Solaris agents don't have that management mode implemented yet. Therefore all synthetic/compact/transform operation have to be carried by the agent.

Thanks!

[BackupBytesTim]

Okay, that makes sense. However I'm specifically using the Mac Agent, as mentioned above. So while I do understand that difference in the AIX/Solaris agents, that doesn't really explain the missing capability for macOS backup jobs.

[PTide]

Mac agent is the same thing from management perspective. I.e. the feature should be implemented and tested on the Mac agent side. This is scheduled for the future releases though.

Thanks!