VRB Analysis

[regnak]

Hi Folks,
I'm setting up Veeam 4 to backup to a remote file share for DR. The job I've created is backing up several VMs (File, DC, Exchange, SQL etc). The VRB files are around 50GB and we've a 5 meg link to the DR location. I'm using local storage before copying the VBK & VRB files to DR and editing the backup job to point to the new location.

My question is, I need to get the VRB file down in size. Is there any anaylsis tool available to tell me what is contained in this file. I need a breakdown per VM if possible so I can work out a way to reduce this file size. I've talked to a MS expert about disabling the pagefile in my windows VMs or read here about moving them to a dedicated disk - if I do this do I just exclude the pagefile disk from the backup job and will this give me trouble if I restore the VM & power it on without this disk attached?

The main question I'd like answered is if the VRB can be analysed in detail??
(The backup summary shows the size of each VM but not any detail on rate of change / delta for that incremental job)

Our environment:
16 VMs, 3 x ESX 3.5 hosts, iSCSI San, local Fibre attached disk storage for Veeam backup server, remote Openfiler CIFS share in DR.

Thanks
Mike

[McClane]

You could place the pagefile on an extra disc (say SCSI-ID 0,15) and exclude it in your job. When the pagefile is always on the same disk id its easy when you make new vm's. You can set the option that Veeam takes excluded disks out of the vmx file so that your ESX won't complain after restore about the missing disk. Windows won't mind a missing pagefile.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Micheal,

Yes, McClane is correct. You can move pagefile to the excluded disks and perform your backup jobs, that would reduce changes that should be transmitted. Actually, you can see detailed info if you right-click on the Properties at your Backups tab on the corresponding backup job. It
contains information on compression and de-duplication ratios, available restore points for a particular backup, as well as date, data size and backup size.

Thank you!

[Gostev]

On a side note, Exchange and SQL will always generate large increments because they use transaction logs, which in turn generate a lot of file system changes in VMDK. Typical DC and file servers however usually generate much smaller incrementals, just 1-2% of VM size on average.

[regnak]

Hi Folks,

Thanks for the swift response - I'll move those pagefiles and examine the logs more closely. Appreciate all the advice!

Mike