Hi ​@BillyG43 ,

It could be enough. Are you running veeam in a virtual machine? If yes you could Just expand your c-drive. 

This is what i found online about the Space requirements.

Disk Space: 5 GB for product installation and 4.5 GB for Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2 installation. 10 GB per 100 VM for guest file system catalog folder (persistent data). Additional free disk space for Instant Recovery cache folder (non-persistent data, at least 100 GB recommended). At least 10 GB for storing logs, although the disk space required for logging depends on the set of features used and may significantly increase. 

Regards 

Chalid

Hi ​@BillyG43 welcome into the Community.

If you cannot extend the disk, you have 2 ways:

1. Backup your configuration,  uninstall all veeam components,  start a fresh installation from new ISO and restore your configuration 

2. Check if you can delete somethings from your server, check if logs are compressed, free space can be done with many solution as OS tools (recycle bin,  disk cleanup, delete temp folder and check largest files). After this you can try to upgrade.  

Thanks CMF and Andante for your speedy replies. Veeam B&R is on a physical Hyper-V host and I’m backing up three VMs. I have cleaned the C: drive already as suggested. Nothing more to do in that regard. I don’t know why the 12.3 installer fails and states that I need 20GB free space. I have done many Veeam B&R in-place upgrades and never had this issue before. My original question was will I free up enough disk space if I uninstall 12.1. I will try this now but it will be a bummer if I have to revert to 12.1 if I get a not enough disk space barrier again.

Hi ​@BillyG43 -

The space requirement has been around for a few iterations of VBR installs now; at least during the 12.x installs. I can’t really remember if 11.x had it. The past couple installs and patches/updates installs have had this requirement. Thankfully, my VBR is a VM and I can increase the disk space pretty seamlessly if need be.

For me, I had about 25GB free but for whatever reason, Veeam does need a bit more for install. I had the previous installer file saved and just removed it and this took care of disk space requirement error I received. You can download the free version of TreeSize and run it against your drive and see if there are any temp/’junk’ files you can remove.

Best.

UPDATE: I found in the ‘update system requirements’ a free disk space check it appears Veeam does:
“We recommend providing the minimum disk space calculated during the system configuration check, but not less than 39.5 GB of disk space: 3 x ISO size (34.5 GB) in the selected installation path plus 5 GB for the database operations on the system volume.”

That appears to be overkill imo.

Thanks, coolsport00. There is a lot to be said for having a VM as your VBR machine! I have the installer on a network share so I can’t recover disk space this way on my VBR. I will have a look at what Resize might find. Still want to see what you think of uninstalling 12.1 to recover some disk space. Will it be enough???

Are you having issues extending the partition? If yes, there are some workarounds.

Well, uninstalling/reinstalling may not guarantee you to still have enough space. For example, if you’ve kept up with Win updates, your WinSxs folder will still have GBs of space used in it so you may still end up back where you started and a waste of time.

I recommend to run TreeSize to see if there were some GBs of files stored somewhere you forgot about (Users folder maybe...or even elsewhere), and that you can then remove.

Best.

lams3le, thanks for your reply. Yes, I am having troubles extending the partition, at least with the Windows DiskManager. Work-arounds? As in 3rd-party tools?

I will have a look at TreeSize in a minute.

What OS is your server? If your OS is not the direct partition next to the partition you want to extend to (maybe smaller partitions are, and in Win2022 this is default), then you won’t be able to extend. You simply just need to delete those other smaller partition so your main/OS partition is congruent to the partition you want to add/extend. See below:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/disk-management/extend-a-basic-volume

I think for a fresh install, this might be sufficient for an upgrade. During the upgrade process, the disk usage can temporarily spike much higher due to other tasks (operations). ​@BillyG43You should also note that Windows always reserves some disk space. Even if it says "7.5 GB free," the real "usable free" for some writes might be less

Kindly take a look at this blog posts: https://techdirectarchive.com/2023/05/01/fix-unable-to-extend-volume-on-windows-protected-by-bitlocker/
- https://techdirectarchive.com/2017/11/15/extending-system-drive-partition-c/

TreeSize found 500MB I could delete. There is an adjacent volume that I tried to shrink, hoping to extend C:. Could not shrink it as it contains the page file! Really don’t want to mess with this too much as it is a production server. I will try the uninstall of 12.1 and see what happens?

Yeah...in using a phys server, it’s hard to make changes without the luxury of creating a snapshot as you can on VMs. And, I did forget to mention, if you did mess with partitions, to back up your data just in case something went awry. 

You can try to uninstall (create VBR config backup first) and see what happens. To this point, not sure what else to suggest.

Hi BillyG43, what about relocate your mentioned Pagefile to another drive, then restart and you would be good do go (or at least you can resize the other partition).

How big is your Catalog folder? If it’s default installed at the system-drive you will find it under C:\VBRCatalog - it could also be an option to move this folder to another Disk with more Capacity (see KB1453: How to Move the VBRCatalog Folder)

Also for further operation/steps, not the worst to have some spare capacity on your system drive. 
Best, Markus

After uninstalling 12.1 I now have a bit over 20GB free on VBR drive. After cleanup I will attempt to install 12.3 and import the configuration. Will let you know how this goes.

Nope. Although installer said I had enough disk space after brutal cull, at stage 5 of the install of 12.3 I ran out of disk space. As this server is well past its use by date I will reinstall 12.1 (I hope) and live with that for now.

Thanks to all who tried to help.

Cheers, Bill

I would add that, if one could deselect agents that are not required for my scenario there would not be an issue since all these are huge.

The failed 12.3 install upgraded the Veeam database and I had to create a new one as I installed 12.1. This is really a pain.

Sorry to hear about all the troubles and that the reinstall didn’t work for you ​@BillyG43 . Yes, for the 12.3 install attemp, if you did not remove the DB, it woulda got updated. You would have needed to create a DB backup (a Config DB backup) in the Console *prior* to your reinstall attempt. You could then have just wiped the previous install completely, reinstall your 12.1 Veeam version, then perform a config DB restore and all your configs woulda been restored.

If you want to make your install suggestion a feature request (would be nice to have Veeam *not* install components not needed), you can do so on over on the Forums.

Best.

Thanks, coolsport00. Now on 12.1 until I get a new server!

No problem ​@BillyG43 . Do you have an option to make VBR a VM? You have more flexibility there. 

Also, if any comment helped you...please mark a ‘Best Answer’ when you get a chance so others who experience the same issue come across this post can benefit.

Best.

@coolsport00 So much help here! Hard to pick a best answer. This was a learning experience for me as I have little experience with VBR. I think it’s a brilliant solution but it’s huge with all the add-ins that are not needed but get installed regardless.

Appreciate it. We’re glad to help out. I’ve been using VBR for close to 15yrs and still am learning. You’re not alone. 

Best.

​@BillyG43 

What prompted you to upgrade to 12.3? I'm trying to figure out  another way to solve your needs.

I don't remember reading in the posts if someone suggested you use recovery media, that is, if you have another physical spare server with more space or even enough resources in your virtual environment, you can make a backup via agent of your current VBR and use recovery media to create a new VBR on another physical server or on a virtual machine.

I have actually been trying to figure out what you meant here! But if this is it in clear terms, it is usually not recommended to have VBR installed directly on a Hyper-V host, but rather on a virtual machine (VM) running on the Hyper-V host. This is because installing Veeam on the host itself can lead to unpredictable system behavior and is generally discouraged by Veeam: https://forums.veeam.com/microsoft-hyper-v-f25/veeam-b-r-installed-on-hyper-v-server-t74261.html