Backing Up an Previously Archived File Server

[nunciate]

We use Symantec eVault for File Server Archiving. Recently we archived all data on an old file server and want to keep all data in the archive but leave stub files on the original server for a time.

We ran the process and have achieved that result. When I look at the original server I see the two 2Tb drives are greatly reduced in size. Both drives had about 1.5Tb of used space before and now have about 20Gb used. I see nothing but stub files as I would expect.

I then decided I would run a new active full on the server we just archived and assumed that the backup would be pretty small. When I do properties on all the drives I show a total of around 85Gb including the C: drive. However, when running the active full it appears that the backup is just as big as it was originally.

Is this expected behavior? Does Veeam somehow know the data is archived off to another system and therefor backups up the full file set or something?

[Gostev]

Are you still on v8? Just a guess

[nunciate]

Yup v8 is what I am running. Planning an upgrade in about a week or so.

[Gostev]

Once you upgrade to v9, please enable deleted file blocks exclusion and see if that helps.
Not 100% positive it will help though, because I do not know how eVault creates those stubs.

[nunciate]

I have been meaning to follow up on this post and finally got around to it.

So we upgraded to v9 a few weeks back. I am quite happy with all of the new features.
I did rerun this full backup after enabling deleted file block exclusions. The full backup ran and did not backup the entire VM as it did before so this does appear to resolve my issue.