Question regarding backups/replications and Windows 2016 RDS Profile Disks

[martin_nz]

Hello,
I am noticing that when i back up servers containing Windows 2016 RDS profiles on them my backups are rather large due to the ever changing RDS profile disk data. Has anyone ever seen this at all and is there a way to help with this?

[HannesK]

Hello,
"ever changing" means "large block based backup". That's immanent to the technology (works as designed).There are a few people on this forum who should have seen the same (forum search for rds profile)

Just to clarify: your RDS profile disks are places on a file-server that is running as virtual machine?

Best regards,
Hannes

[martin_nz]

Hi
Yes they are placed on a file server running as a virtual machine

[veremin]

As Hannes' said, this is expected, that constantly changing profile results in large number of changed blocks, which in its turn leads to big backup file. For the purpose of testing, you can try to back this machine up from the inside, using Veeam Agent for Windows, and see whether incremental backups occupy less space. Thanks!

[martin_nz]

Hi Veremin
How would i go about backing up the machine from the inside? Not quite sure what you mean by that

[veremin]

From a backup server you can install a Veeam Agent for Windows inside Virtual Machine and back it up as physical machine. More information regarding agent management can be found here. Thanks!

[martin_nz]

So what could I use as the backup target? Can I use a repository and would it take a full image of the server or just selected data?

[veremin]

You can use backup repository as a target, you can back up whole OS or just bunch of selected files - it's up to you. I recommend checking the provided materials - they should clarify these and other questions for you. Thanks!