Safe way to free up disk space on Backup Repository

[Benjamin.Cramphorn]

Morning All,

First off I'm completely new to VEEAM!

Our backup jobs have been failing for the last few days. We're getting "There is not enough space on the disk. Failed to flush the buffers" error messages for all our jobs. The backup repository has 20TB of space so not sure why it's failing as our VMs are well under that in terms of disk usage.

For each job we have 1 x vmb file which I understand is the meta data for the job. 1 x vbk file and a lot of vrb files. Am I ok to delete the vrb files directly off the repository or do I need to do it from within VEEAM to free up space?

Does anyone have any tips for freeing up space?

Sorry for the vague question! But hoping someone can help.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Benjamin,

As far as I see you're using reversed incremental backup mode for your backup jobs, so it is safe to delete the latest VRB file without affecting the entire backup chain. On the other hand, I don't believe that would help, cause you say that you have 20 TB of free space on your repository or it is a total capacity? What's your destination target for the backup job?

Thanks!

[Benjamin.Cramphorn]

The destination we are backing up to is a QNAP NAS box with capacity of 20TB. In total the virtual machines we are backing up are about 14TB.

Backups have been running fine for a few months but today we were having issues about the destination running out of disk space. We were also getting error messages about the meta data being corrupted. I've freed up some space by deleting some of the older VRB files and started new backup sets as per http://www.veeam.com/kb1885. I'm going through our backup jobs and running them manually one by one and currently having no more issues backing up. I'm also removing the old vbk files once the backup has completed to free up even more space and basically starting again.

I am guessing that the number of VRB files got so big it took up all the space making the backups fail? Is there a way to limit the number of VRB files? Or should these automatically be deleted once we start running out of space?

[Vitaliy S.]

I am guessing that the number of VRB files got so big it took up all the space making the backups fail? Is there a way to limit the number of VRB files? Or should these automatically be deleted once we start running out of space?

The number or restore points (VRB/VIB files) depends on the configured retention policy that you set in the backup job configuration. If you don't have enough space, then I suggest lowering the existing retention policy settings.

[Benjamin.Cramphorn]

Thank you.

I will set the retention policy to something more appropriate. The original installer set it to 150 restore points which I am assuming is a very high number?!

[Vitaliy S.]

Retention policy depends on your internal policies that define for how long data should be stored. If you need a lot of restore points, then I would suggest considering backup copy jobs and cheap storage for long time archival purposes.

[B2r2]

Hi

My backup repository is full, please can someone advise whats the best way to free up space with out affecting any future backups?

Many thanks in advance.

Craig

[PTide]

Hi,

The best thing would be to copy existing backups somewhere either manually or using Backup Copy Job, and adjust your retention policy afterwards so it frees up some space.

Thank you

[B2r2]

Hi,

Moving the backup files (presumably the .vib files) does that not break the backup job and subsequently cause the corresponding backup job to fail?

Thanks

[PTide]

Hi,

You need to move the .vbk and vibs, after that you can continue the chain that has been moved with a help of backup mapping.

Thanks.

[B2r2]

Thanks Ptide

I tell you what, Veeam is good but it is a mind field to use.

Thanks again