I need to delete a duplicate backup of a VM from the backup file. We've discovered that some VMs were not added to the job correctly (via IP instead of vCenter) and corrected, this resulted in multiple backups of the same VM. I want to delete the extra copies out of main and copy jobs.
If i use "Delete from Disk" action in screenshot - will it delete just the duplicate VM data out of the backup?
Yes, however blocks belonging to the said VM will not be physically cleaned up, but rather marked as deleted in the backup file, so next time you run the job it will re-use these blocks for the new data (in case of reversed incremental mode). The space will be reclaimed after a new active full is performed.
Ok, so we do full active full on first friday of the month, so this upcoming friday the blocks will be removed from the chain, thats good. We have a secondary destination job on this main job - it moves data off-site and as such does not have a FULL schedule. It does do a compact on fourth saturday though. What will be the course of events for the off-site job?
Blocks belonging to that VM will be cleaned up during compact operation, since brand new VBK file is created and only required blocks are copied to it.