Very Large VBK Files

[tsightler]

Are there any known issues with having very large (>2TB) VBK files, especially when using Linux as a backup target. I have a job that is getting very close to this size and I'm wondering if I need to split it into two or more backup jobs? Just wondering if anyone else out there has jobs with large VBK files or if there are any known limits.

[Gostev]

Hi Tom, actually there were issues with VBK sizes in early Veeam Backup versions prior to 3.0, namely backup failing out as backup size was reaching 1.8-1.9TB. These issues were resolved completely back in Veeam Backup 3.0, and they do not exist in 4.0 either (we do test on large backups). Right now, there are not known issues or limitations around backup size.

Theoretically, I can only see the issue with extremely large backup files on full ESX being backup target (due to very limited service console partition memory). Agent needs to hold an index table of our SIS backup storage in memory, and because of lack of available service console memory, this would result in a lot of swapping, and thus significantly reduced backup performance. But since you are backing up to Linux, the available memory should not be as limited as in case with ESX.

[tsightler]

OK, good to know. Looks like I shouldn't have any issues when I cross the 2TB limit in a few months.

Even if it was ESX, wouldn't it be possible to just increase the default memory allocation for the COS? Actually, we had to do that with our previous backup solution (vRanger).

[Gostev]

Yes, but I think maximum you can increase it too is about 800MB... and if I remember the numbers correctly, agent needs about 40MB of RAM per 1TB of backup file. So with extreme backup sizes, swapping may still occur.