Backup job fail - insufficient target space

[trevora]

Hi,

I have a backup job that has failed because it ran out of disk space on the target (I added a new large VM and forgot to exclude it from this particular backup job).

The target now contains a number of reverse incremental files (which i can afford to lose if necessary), one very large VBK file and about 300 Kb of free space. What's the correct way to proceed in order for the next run of the backup job to succeed? Can i just delete the oversize VBK file or will that confuse Veeam - obviously i'll also exclude the large VM from the backup job as well?

Thanks in advance

[foggy]

If you are ok with losing previous restore points (vrb files) and their total size is sufficient for the new full, you can delete them, remove the large VM from the job, and perform new active full.

[trevora]

Hi Foggy,

Thanks for the reply.

I don't need to delete the VRB files - I have enough space if i keep them, but presumably they will be useless if i have to delete the VBK file anyway. If i did want to just bin it all and start again, can i just delete all the files in the target folder (VBM, VBK and VRB files)? I guess Veeam will see there is nothing in the target and do a full active backup without me having to do anything else to the job itself?

Thanks again.

[foggy]

I meant you could remove vrb's but keep the vbk (to have at least one restore point for the purpose of restore). Right, if you delete the vbk, vrb files will become useless since they relay on the full backup. If you are ok to delete all the files, you need to specify a ForceCreateMissingVBK regkey, otherwise the job will fail due to missing VBK file.

[trevora]

I've assumed, because the VBK file became too big for it's target during the backup, that the VBK is actually 'broken' and only contains some VM's and parts of others. Are you saying if I delete all the VRB files but leave the VBK in place the backup should complete and create a single VRB file containing the differences between the failed backup and the next backup plus the VBK file?

[foggy]

Ah, the fact that the job has failed completely slipped out of my mind. Anyway, even in this case you are still able to restore from earlier restore points. Since full backup file is updated transactionally, Veeam B&R always knows where the good data is (more on that here). So you could set the deleted VMs retention period to 1 and continue the job to run normally after releasing some space by deleting the oldest vrb files, however deleted VM blocks would not be reclaimed (but rather simply marked in vbk as unused). To actually reclaim the space occupied by the newly added large VM, you need to perform a new active full, which will start the backup chain anew resulting in completely fresh vbk file containing only actual data.