Backup Central

Hi everyone,

We are using Networker 7.6.2 to backup our VMware virtual servers using VADP. Due to our DR setup, we perform full backups of our VMs every night. I say that because while I was investigating use of space on our VMs (to see of the amount of space being backed up could be reduced), I talked with our VMware Admin and he told me a lot of our larger volumes of virtual servers are thin provisioned. It was his assumption that these volumes that are thin provisioned would only backup what was being "used" rather than the entire volume of space of the drives. What we found was thin provisioned space is backed up just like thick provisioned space...the entire volumes are backed up regardless of thin or thick provisioning.

Has anyone else seen any information about VADP backups with Networker 7.6.2 and thin provisioning with VMWare? If it is in one of the 10 guides I need to "RTFM", please tell me which one I need to read and I will gladly do so as I have been unable to find it.

Kevin

Kevin Malone
Network Administrator
Information Technology
Salisbury University
Salisbury, MD 21801
410-543-6298



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Have you seen this for 7.6 release notes?

Non-NTFS thin disk VMs get restored as thick disk during disaster recover
NW127446
When NetWorker backs up a non-NTFS thin disk VM, both allocated sectors and
unallocated sectors get backed up. As a result, upon disaster recovery of the thin
disk VM, the thin disk is fully allocated, and is restored as thick disk.

You'll have to look up if there is a fix for this yet or not, if it applies to you?