Switching application-aware on later?

[mikegodwin]

When I run a backup with application-aware unchecked the backup seems to run faster. If I want to re-run my full backup, can I run it with application-aware unchecked to get a full backup, then switch on application-aware later? Or does that mess anything up? My goal would be for the initial full backup to complete faster since it will likely take days to complete the first time.

[csydas]

Hi Mike,

As far as I know, the point with application processing will be application aware and the full will not, but maybe I'm wrong.

Out of curiosity, how much of a difference are you seeing between the two? Application processing should be pretty fast, as all it does is engage the microsoft tooling for VSS during the snapshot phase. Are you really seeing a significant increase in the data transfer time when the application processing is enabled?

I'd focus more on why it's taking so long to back-up the VM, since from my understanding of how Veeam works, it shouldn't matter whether or not you're doing the application processing.

Maybe just test it quick with a smaller VM, or just backup your system volume and see if the application processing stuff works.

[foggy]

Yes, I would also investigate the reasons of slower performance, logs should show the particular operation that takes long during application-aware processing. It could be guest files indexing, for example, in case the number of files is large. AAIP itself doesn't change anything in terms of data transfer, it just does more within the guest OS than pure VSS. Btw, what are the bottleneck stats for this job in both cases?