Server 2012 vs 2012 R2 Deduplication

[mschlott]

I have not seen any posts about this, so I thought I would share my experiense. It is widely known that if you are backing up a Windows Server 2012 VM that has deduplicated file systems, you need to have a Veeam server running Server 2012 so it can mount that deduplicated file system. What I ran into this week, is a Server 2012 R2 VM with a deduplicated file system that mounted properly on my Veeam backup and proxy servers which are not R2. I ran into at least some files that were unreadable when mounting the file system to my veeam servers. The files were readable when I ran an instant recovery and booted the VM.


After upgrading my veeam proxy server to 2012 R2, I was able to read all of the files from the backed up VM.

Hope this helps someone.

mike

[wa15]

This is great to know. Now I am wondering, if the main Veeam server (which also is the proxy) is running 2012 R2, but 2012 R2 VM's are being backed up from other proxies that are running just Server 2012, can we still read backed up files since the main proxy is running 2012 R2?

[jake1110]

This is definitely a huge caveat that everyone should remember! Especially if you're leverage deduplication on your file servers. You have to upgrade them at the same time as they have different dedupe engines to them.

Yes, you can still restore files from the 2012R2 VM's despite your proxies being 2012. Reason being is that the files mount to your local B&R server which is 2012R2, not the proxy.

[Vitaliy S.]

if the main Veeam server (which also is the proxy) is running 2012 R2, but 2012 R2 VM's are being backed up from other proxies that are running just Server 2012, can we still read backed up files since the main proxy is running 2012 R2?

Proxy servers can be any machines, it is backup server that matters here.

[mschlott]

I should have mentioned that the reason I upgraded my proxy server, is that in the case of my most recent restores, I had to copy thousands of files from a list, so I mounted the drive from and instant recovery to my proxy server and copied the files from the file share.

Sorry for the confusion.

[wa15]

Proxy servers can be any machines, it is backup server that matters here.

Got it, thanks Vitaliy!