Move backup when using FastCLONE, REFS and reflink

You need a block cloning utility.

If you move the files to the new volumes, the storage savings will be lost. All files are dehydrated.

Hi a@Erwan ,

as far as I know you cannot preserve this when moving the backups.

If you clone the volume on a block-level using for example “dd” in Linux in my previous tests this worked fine. Obviously this could take some time and no backups or restores should be happening during the process.

If source and destination is identical in size you could try xfs_copy

I would be interested if this works! 

Me too

Ok, this are all methods for XFS.

Is there a possible procedure for ReFS? I am not aware of any...

@JMeixner 

The same is valid. Use a block cloning utility.

Or the simple way.

Create a backup with Veeam of the volume and restore it to another disk 

Yes, but which block cloning utility would you use for this?

And…. after a backup and restore with Veeam all files are inflated again, aren't they?

You need todo a volume level restore. Not file.
 

You have to map backup jobs of course, after the cloning and do a compact operation.
Then, Fastclone will be used after that. Other option would be an active full. But this would need again all of the space of a entire full :)

There are multiple cloning utilitys out there. 
I have already used acronis to clone disks 5-10 years ago. Not for this specific use case, but for my home computers.

The pointer based synthetic full will be reconstituted as a full backup unless you can clone the file system block for block.

Has anyone tried the BackupCopyMirrorAll registry key? This supposedly will work to copy old backup chains from one repo to another.

Thank you @Mildur

I think, i will test this procedure with my test server this week.

Make a copy of the backup repo vmdk and try to reuse the old backup chain. I think it should work :)

Ok, a repo on a VMDK can be copied on volume level. Then all ReFS links are preserved.

My repos are all on physical disks. I will try this with a test VBR server in the next time...

Thanks to all

randyweis wrote:

The pointer based synthetic full will be reconstituted as a full backup unless you can clone the file system block for block.

Has anyone tried the BackupCopyMirrorAll registry key? This supposedly will work to copy old backup chains from one repo to another.

 

But I do not see how this could help here?

not useful for XFS but if you use a windows server with local disks or sas/san disks (whatever) and ReFS as a repository and have a datacenter licence you can use storage replica with asynchronous replication.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/storage-replica/storage-replica-overview

I hope I will find the time to test it over wan and also “locally” from one volume to another.. we ordered a HPE 4510 and why not testing it with a brand new empty server and “some” space..

Solved in v12, as You probably know already ;-)