veeam backup created many orphaned files

Hi @Dan_F - many questions here. Which backup transport method are you using?..I assume hotadd? Veeam can tend to leave snapshots on VMs on occasion, regardless of the Veeam version used. On subsequent job runs, Veeam tries to remove/consolidate any leftover snaps. But, if unsuccessful, you can do so manually in a graceful manner by creating a snapshot on a VM, leave it for like a minute or 2, then click the ‘Delete All’ button to remove & consolidate the snaps on the VM(s). Veeam retries snap removal though via its Snapshot Hunter feature. You can read more about it here.

If this is happening on many VMs, you can look at the Veeam Backup Job backup log, located in: C:\ProgramData\Veeam\Backup\<job-name-folder> on the VBR server and see if it shows anything in detail you can potentially modify to rectify the issue. Generally why this happens though is vCenter reports to Veeam the snap is removed, yet still remains. This is called a “phantom snapshot”. And this is why the Snapshot Hunter feature was created. If you’d rather not spend time looking at the logs, you can get ahold of Veeam Support to assist (may be your best best here)