Defrag & compacting backup copy job benefits ?

[albertwt]

Hi All,

Can anyone here please share some thoughts and comments of whether is it the best practice in new Veeam Backup v9.0 or not to enable the below features of Defragging & compact secondary backup ?



My goal here is to gain extra disk space in my Secondary backup job (Backup Copy job) repository.

Would that be beneficial for me to run it for all secondary backup job or not ? What's the impact in the backup copy job window ?
Note: the secondary backup copy repository storage hardware is just plain DAE with no dedupe capabilties.

Thanks in advance.

[nielsengelen]

Not sure if you already looked into our best practices guide (http://bp.veeam.expert/job_configuratio ... y_job.html) ?

The storage level corruption guard is advised to turn on to prevent corruption. In regards to saving space the second option should be enabled (make sure you meet the conditions for it: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/vsp ... _file.html) however don't put these 2 options at the same day or with the risk of them overlapping.

[albertwt]

Niels,

OK, so I will change the schedule so that VM Backup defragmentation is running one week after the check.

Regarding the Full Backup File Compact, my Backup repository is mostly 80% full, so can I still do it ?

[nielsengelen]

How big is your repo and your backup files? If you still have enough space with the 20% it shouldn't be an issue to do this one by one.

[albertwt]

Niels,

For example,
Backup Repo 1
715 GB free out of 13 TB
The largest .VBK file is 7.6 TB
...
Backup Repo 12
1.34 TB free out of 13 TB
The largest .VBK file is 9.12 TB

Am I still be able to use both features ?

[foggy]

No, since you need a space for another full backup for this.

[albertwt]

OK, if that's the case then I will enable the compacting feature from the smallest backup copy job first until it is completed.

[foggy]

Yes, you can try to reclaim space gradually, job by job, starting from the smallest one.

[albertwt]

Thanks Niels and Alex,

What about the capability to create full backup every X amount of time ?
would that also helps in reducing the disk psace usage in Reverse Incremental mode or is it just consuming more instead ?

[foggy]

This will help to get rid of unused blocks in the backup file and reduce fragmentation, however you still need space for the new full to create.

[albertwt]

Niels and Alex,

So when I enable the Defragment and compact full backup file option in the backup copy job settings, do I need to uncheck the Remove Deleted VMs data after ... option as well ?

[nielsengelen]

Remove deleted vms will delete a vm from the backup after the defined amount of days when you delete a vm from the production infrastructure. It can help save up space if you delete vms regulary from your production.