Hello, I am using Backup Exec 2014 to back up VMs hosted on VMware ESXi 5.1 servers, and using the Backup Exec VMware Agent through the related vCenter management server. This is proving to be much faster for full server backups than backing up through the client agent directly (5.5 hours down to 2.5 hours in once case), so great.
But I'm seeing inconsistent size data in the VMware backup jobs. The VMs use thin provisioned disks and I have set up VMware change block tracking and confirmed this is working. When the backup actually happens, the backup job shows that only the actual allocated data on the server is backed up, not the full possible size of the virtual machine's disks:
e.g.
Backed up 0 files in 4 directories.
Backed up 1 virtual machines
Backed up 2 virtual machine disks
Processed 280722373259 bytes in 2 hours, 36 minutes, and 0 seconds.
Throughput rate: 1716 MB/min
Encryption Type: Software
This is 261 GB of data, which matches what is actually allocated on the VM.
Also, the entire job's byte count (which includes a few other things besides this server) is at 276 GB, also showing a reasonable total.
But when I look at the backup device (a USB disk) "Backup Sets" list and find this VM backup, the size of the backup is listed as 620GB, which is the maximum possible size of the VM's disks including empty unallocated space.
When I look in the USB disk's BEData folder and locate the related IMGxxxxx folder, I see servername.vmdk files that are collectively 257 GB in size, so it seems the actual backup device disk storage is correct.
But I'm not sure what other things in Backup Exec might be led astray, if any, by the incorrect size report in the backup sets list. At least, it makes it difficult for me to do retention time planning as I use the backup set list sizes to do this.
Anyone run into this?
Thanks,
Tim Miller Dyck
Ontario, Canada
