Disk Exclusion

Hard to say ​@hs08 

Can you post a screenshot of your job selecting the VM whose disks you excluded in the job? I think Veeam has task items which should list the disk exclusions. Just blur out any sensitive information.

Thanks. 

The full backup is going to contain everything as that is the initial backup of the VM before you removed the disks.  The incrementals will get smaller now and if you run another active full or synthetic full it should then get smaller as well.  Removing disks does not downsize the original full backup.

hi ​@coolsport00 

This after i remove some disks and the VM size now 22.4TB but the backup size not decreased.

Can you check your backup job and tell us what you have configured in the maintenance tab? Have you enabled the “Remove deleted items data after” setting? By default it only removes deleted VMs (And likely in this case deleted disks) after 14 days.

hi ​@Chris.Childerhose 

Isn’t the backup will represent what we backup? If we add disk/file then the disk/file will be added to the backup and vice versa if we removed or delete disk/file then this disk/file will be removed also on backup file.

Good points Chris...but I think the Job should still show less data being Processed, as per the Guide (Processed item description), correct?

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/session_results.html?ver=120#statistics-counters

You’re right..total data on the Repo will be retained until the backup Retention is met. Once Retention is met...data on Repo should show the change. The only way to decrease size of Repo is to remove those Restore Points which have the additional disks. But, unless a new Full is created as Chris shared, be aware ​@hs08 ...restores may not be possible.

hi ​@Tommy O'Shea 

here

I may have misunderstood but thought you were expecting the initial backup files to decrease which would not be the case but future backups should yes.

hi ​@coolsport00 ​@Chris.Childerhose 

The retention set to 2 days and i remove the disks on friday so the retention should already met and the full backup should be decreased. Am i right?

hi ​@Tommy O'Shea 

here

 

You should turn on the “Remove deleted items data after” in that screenshot and set the days.  This will then remove unwanted data from backups and should decrease the sizing.

Thanks for sharing ​@hs08 ...but can you double-click the Job session then highlight the VM so we can see the list of task items Veeam is performing during the VM backup? It should show the disks being excluded. Make sure to arrow back to the first Job run after the disk exclusion change.

Tommy...pretty sure the Deleted Items isn’t for disk exclusions...but rather just a whole VM excluded or removed from the Job per the Guide:

“...specify the number of days for which you want to keep backup data for deleted VMs”

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/backup_job_advanced_maintenance_vm.html?ver=120#specifying-backup-file-maintenance

Yes the retention should kick in to reduce backups on disk.  Try running an Active Full to start a new chain and see how that works.

​@hs08 - the files on disk (Repo) will not decrease until a new Full is run AND THE RETENTION IS MET. So, a new Full may have been run...but because you can’t restore previous days without the previous Full and incrementals...they are retained on the Repo until a new Retention is met. Make sense?

hi ​@coolsport00 

Here.

So, a new Full may have been run...but because you can’t restore previous days without the previous Full and incrementals...they are retained on the Repo until a new Retention is met. Make sense?

Still not understand why need active full backup since the retention already met. ​@Chris.Childerhose 

​@hs08 - ok great! Veeam is aware of the exclusions.

If you are running your Job with the Forever Forward Backup method...your Full won’t change as it just gets “synthetically merged forward” with the Incrementals each day. This would be the case even if you used just the Forward Incremental and use Synthetic Fulls and not Active Fulls for your new Fulls.

What you would need to do to see the new size on disk from your Full is perform an Active Full which should show the new decreased total data size.

hi ​@coolsport00 

This mean Forever Forward Backup will not delete any file/disk even the file/disk is deleted from the source or from job?

That’s what I was referring to about the deleted items data checkbox. I know ​@coolsport00 said the guide doesn’t mention excluded/deleted disks, but I think it’s logical that it might extend to that. I think it’s worth trying that setting to see if there is a difference after the next incremental backup.

With the Forever Forward or Forward with Synthetic Fulls...the original Full never gets removed. It’s “merged” into the subsequent Incremental right next to it each day. I believe that’s why the size of your Full still shows 30TB. It still is the size it was when you initially backed up the VM with the additional 8TB. 

Let say i delete 100 files then after retention is met the active full backup still contains this 100 files?

​@Tommy O'Shea - I don’t think it does, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to test it. Good practice to have enabled anyway 😊 

🤣

That is correct unless you have the Active Full option turned on in Advanced settings.

Yes it does!  Until you run an Active Full you will not see the retention nor size go down.  That is how this works.

Remember..Retention isn’t just a Full...it’s the Full and subsequent Incrementals that follow it. Once all of those get created, then any previous backup files on disks get deleted. If Immutability is set...Retention is a bit different

If you’re talking about deleted files within the VM guest OS, I believe data is retained on disk for the VM unless you have Exclude deleted file blocks enabled in the Storage tab, and I think it is by default.

Correct. A quick way to do an Active Full is to open the Job session, rt-click the VM, and select Active Full