Restore guest OS files from Srv 2012 with deduplication

[GreenEnvy]

Hi all,
Running vSphere 5.1, and a file server running Server 2012 with dedupe enabled (yea I know, running all the newest stuff has it's issues)
Backups are working fine (or appear to be) but when I try to do a file level restore from the 2012 file server, Veeam sits with the "Please wait" message for eternity. I never get the file browser. Event log shows some ntfs errors (Event 55, "The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume .").

I have to kill veeam, cancel the job, which then gets stuck at "cancelling" forever. I followed KB1534 to fix that part.

So does file level restore work in 6.1? Or will I have to restore the whole vmdk and mount that in a Server 2012 machine to get the file out?

[GreenEnvy]

Looks like this might be a compatibility issue between 6.1 and vsphere 5.1 ?

[dellock6]

Windows 2012 as a repository is not supported on Veeam 6.1, you need to wait until 6.5, so I do not know if this prolems is related to unsupported version.
How did you configured the dedupe? Veeam release right today a blog post about it:

http://www.veeam.com/blog/how-to-get-un ... ation.html

but there is no clear statement about which version of Veeam they were using. Maybe is in the video but I did not watched it.

Luca.

[chrisdearden]

I did run a quick test on 6.5 - was able to restore fine from a deduped volume of files that I had forced a dedupe on. ( disclaimer - this is my own testing with the beta, not a full smoke test. Results may differ in the release version )

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Lee,

Yes, Luca is correct, you'd better wait for Veeam B&R v6.5, which will have full support for Windows Server 2012.

Thanks!

[TheJourney]

I can do file level restores just fine with win 2012 deduped BR.
VMware is at 5.0 however. Guessing that is your issue?

Veeam 6.1
vSphere 5.0 U1
win 2012 RTM

[GreenEnvy]

Ok so an update,
Installed BR6.5 today, did upgrade from 6.1. The host Veeam is running on it 2008R2.
Tried to do a FLR from last nights backup, get the same thing.

I click through the steps to create the restore job, select my backup point, and after clicking finish, it just sits at "Please Wait..." forever. Windows event log again shows ntfs errors at the time I tried to do the restore.
I can restore from Win2008R2 guest vm's ok, but not 2012 machines.


EDIT:
Found this in the release notes:
Native File Level Restore
• File level restore may fail if a restored VM is lacking free space.
• To restore files from deduplicated volumes, backup server must be installed on Windows Server 2012 with Data Deduplication feature enabled in the OS settings.
• Restore from native 4K VHDX disks is not supported. To work around, restore the entire disk using VM Files restore wizard, and mount it manually using native mount provided by Windows Explorer.

So, I'll have to update our Veeam host to 2012.

[pizzim13]

I just want to make sure I am reading from the Veeam 6.5 guide correctly:
"To restore files from deduplicated volumes, backup server must be installed on Windows Server 2012 with Data Deduplication feature enabled in the OS settings."

-Veeam can do file level restore from a server 2012 deduped volume
-To do file level restores from a server server 2012 deduped volume, the Veeam "job scheduler" server must be installed on Windows Server 2012 with Data Deduplication feature enabled in the OS

[Vitaliy S.]

Correct.

[Jamie]

Was this issue ever solved?
Our main Windows 2003 file server has this issue (always has) and the only way I have got around it is to restore using the "Restore guest files (Other OS)..." option
I am currently running Veeam 6.5 (I keep upgrading Veeam hoping this issue will magically go away in the next version)

[tsightler]

How can a Windows 2003 file server have this issue as the thread is about restoring files from deduped Windows 2012 which is a new feature in Server 2012? Was this posted, or perhaps merged, to the wrong thread? Perhaps you're file server has a dynamic spanned volume? Those are now supported in 6.5.

[Jamie]

I just did a search for the issue ("Please wait...")--> . Got this thread, saw that this guy has the exactly same symptoms, it that the thread had not been updated for a bit.
I was hoping I could apply the same fix (if there was one); hence my question.

This issue may not be related to OS / Dedup features etc because it certainly occurs on Windows 2003, with Veeam 6.5/6.1/ 5.x etc

[tsightler]

It would likely be best to pursue your issue with support as certainly it's something that should work, and that many, many customers use daily, so there's something unique about your circumstance. The specific customer that started this thread was trying to restore files from a Windows 2012 volume that had dedupe enabled which was not supported until 6.5, and even then requires that the Veeam server itself be installed on Windows 2012.

The fact that you are able to use the "Other OS" option to access the files indicates to me that this was likely an issue with dynamic volumes, which is now supported with 6.5, but support should be able to help you identify the specific issue. Using the "Other OS" option would not have helped the OP's issue because the "Other OS" option does not support Windows deduped volumes so it seems likely that, while the symptom may be the same, the core issue is different.

[Jamie]

I did log a job for this issue about a year ago , but it was closed off after we got the non-OS restore working (and I was happy at that at the time).
There must be something the way this machine is configured specifically, but it does not look any different the 120+ VMs we backup OK with Veeam.

It wouldn't be so bloody frustrating wasn't our file server. If it was any other server this happened on I couldn't care less (Murphy's law I guess).

There are no dynamic disks or anything on the machine, but I will have another look and see if the LUNs are concatenated or some other crap going on.

Thanks for replying

[tsightler]

So you can do FLR from the other 120+ VMs with no problem? The reason i wondered about spanned volumes is because I see it regularly used to break the 2TB barrier or just because they new to grow the fileserver share and don't have space on the old datastore. Admins will sometimes just add a new disk a span/concatenate it. This would break FLR for versions before 6.5. Good luck!

[Delo123]

We are in process of rolling out Sever 2012 with Storage Pools and Dedupe.
Since we had some Issues in the Past i was wondering if File Level Restore is supported for Storage Pools in Server 2012 under ESXi5.1? (Veeam Server will also get 2012 Server as OS)
With Dynamic Disks we always had (still have) Issues using flr even with 6.5 (Veeam is currently investigating).

Background:
We are using ESXi 5.1 so we have multible luns each hosting a Volume for the VM and there we currently group them by dynmic Disk.
In 2012 we wanted to create storage pools, containing the multiple disks, feed data then dedupe and remove one or more disks to regain storage.
For instance: Create 3TB Storage Pool from 3 Disks, create one Volume on it (3TB). Copy nearly 3TB Data, then Dedupe. Tests showed we can then save nearly 2TB, so actual Data would be 1TB. Then remove the 3rd Disk from the Storage Pool so we physically save 1TB...

[wasc]

Hi,

One of my favourite things about Veeam is you can choose to do a "Guest files (Windows)" restore and it then mounts the virtual hard disk directly on the Veeam Backup server which you can then browse through.

I have a windows 2012 virtual machine acting as a file server. At the moment I have deduplication turned off, but I'm wondering if I turn it on, will it break this veeam restore functionality since I imagine Veeam will need to understand the underlying dedupe structure of the disk. The file server is about 3TB in size so I imagine there will be significant space savings to be had by enabling deduplication, but if this will then prevent me from doing the instant restore so I have to do an instant VM recovery again to get a file back,this will potentially be a deal breaker for me.

So, does anyone know the answer? Many thanks in advance.

[Delo123]

Hi Wasc,

You just need to make sure Veeam is installed on a Server 2012 Host with Deduplication enabled (doesnt need to be enabled on any volumes)...
3TB Fileserver, Ill bet you will get it down to 800GB

[lsolty]

Hello everybody,

we plan to migrate our hardware fileserver to a VM running Server 2012. We already made some tests with Server 2012 and the files from our current file server, and its deduplication feature saves about 40% of space within the VM, which is great. My question: when a veeam backup is done of a VM with deduplication on its volumes, is there any issue when it comes to restoring single guest OS files from within the veeam backup?

Thanks!

[chrisdearden]

As long as your Veeam Server is also 2012 , with the dedupe feature enabled , you'll be ok.

[veremin]

If you want to restore, or use SureBackup functionality regularly from such a volume, it might be worth setting OS to dedupe only files that are older than a specified interval (7 days, by default). Otherwise, the speed of restoration activity might be too low.

Thanks.

[breakaway]

Hello everyone

I have just completed a trial of the duplication system that is built into Windows server 2012 R2 in my environment.It resulted in a pretty significant space-saving, so I am considering deploying it in production.However I understand there are backup implications.My expectation is that if I ever have to restore an entire disk that is de-duplicated, I will be able to attach it to another Windows VM which has this role installed and it should automatically pick it up. This seems relatively straightforward.

However what happens when I want to run a file level restored from the guest operating system inside of veeam? Since the file level restore relies on Windows binaries inside the system disk of the virtual machine in question, and also the information in system volume information on the disk I am trying to file level restore from, will that still work? If not, is there a workaround that will allow me to conduct file level restores?

Thanks

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello, doing FLR restores from a dedupe volume is fully supported. Please see this thread for additional details. Thanks!

[veremin]

However what happens when I want to run a file level restored from the guest operating system inside of veeam

Just to reiterate what is stated in the Release Notes, in order to restore files from deduplicated volumes you backup server has to be installed on Windows Server 2012/R2 with DD feature being enabled. Thanks.

[eilz]

Hello, have weird problem doing a FLR file/folder recovery from MainSite's(B&R7) VM to offsite server with a stored backup that also has a duplicated folder saved on it :

If i select FLR option from B&R7 console to the offsite backup which contains a backup that contains a dedupe volume and also non-dedupe files/folders, it connects ok to the backup, and all other non-dedupe folder/files on this backup are ok to browse,

BUT I can't browse the Dedupe volume(s) contents, I can only see the root folder name which is called 'shares', I just can't filter down and see individual Files and/or Folders within this 'shares' folder and FLR browser will not let me filter down further.

If I restore the whole 'shares' folder it starts restoring ok with all the correct folder/file structure. But as its a huge folder I only want to restore individual files or folders But just can't seem to browse from FLR browser, have tried double-clicking 'shares' folder but no luck.

Again all other non-dedupe folders in the backup all display ok, and can filter down those folders/files fine and restore individually ok so farly confident dedpue and versions and setup is ok.

I'd really appreciate any help with this.. Thanks
Note: Using B&R7 at main site fully patched which runs on HyperV as VM, both the Hypervisor and the VM have duplication enabled, and so does the OffSite Server, they are all Windows2012r2 all with dedpu enabled and all patched. Also have WAN Accelerators setup on both ends.

[eilz]

Hello, have weird problem doing a FLR file/folder recovery from MainSite's(B&R7) VM to offsite server with a stored backup that also has a duplicated folder saved on it :
...................

Fixed I think: On further investigation, I kept getting a "Call execution timeout" error when trying to retrieve, so tried looked http://www.veeam.com/kb1176 and it seems to have fixed the problem
just in case anyone else has a similar issue.

p.s. - I love to know how people recover files from an offsite server, then copy them across if you don't have a vpn inbetween though.
Thanks Eilz