ESXi Thin Provisioning

[mikegodwin]

When Veeam does a backup, does it backup the full size of the VMDK, or does it only backup the used space? If it backs up the full VMDK, would backups get a big boost from using thin provisioning in ESXi?

[veremin]

There is special CBT query being used by VB&R during backup that returns only non-zeroed disk blocks, therefore, only used blocks of VMDK are read.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.