Purge VM from VBR / VBK

[tyno81]

Hello, i would like to delete a virtual machine from our backup files.
The VM is already deleted from the Backup job. However, it it's a old virtual machine which is never deleted from the backup file, so it is still consuming some space.
What is the best way to delete this VM from the backup files?

Within Veeam 5 its quite easy. Just click on the backup, open the job, select the VM, right click the VM, and choose 'delete'.
This option is not available in Veeam 4.

[Vitaliy S.]

The only way to remove "deleted" VMs from the backup files in v4 is to perform a full backup run. Thanks.

[tyno81]

Thanks! What is the best way to remove a VM from backup it the VM is to be deleted to prevent this issue in the future?

[Vitaliy S.]

Perform a full backup job run after you delete VM from inventory

As to v5 then as you've correctly stated there are multiple ways to do that.

[tyno81]

Thanks Vitaliy,

So in V5, after you removed the vm from the inventory and the backup set you dont have to perform the full backup to clean up the VBK & VBR?
Just, delete from disk is enough?

[Gostev]

Yes, just Delete from Disk is enough in v5. Corresponding VM blocks in the backup file will then be marked as unused, and reused by the new data. However, if you want to "claim" this disk space back and reduce VBK size, you need to initiate full backup. Basically, in most modern file systems (such as NTFS) there is no way to reduce the file size when some of its blocks are no longer needed without re-creating the file. Thanks.

[stuartmacgreen]

[merged]

When you right-click select a single VM in Backups>Disk and under the Job (which has several other VM's) and choose Remove from Disk.

I see a lot of the backup files in that job folder being touched and Modified date updated. But do not see that space recovered - the size of the backup files don't change.

Is this expected.

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B&R 6.1 Patch 1