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#1 2017-07-07 20:11:16

bellocarico
Member
Registered: 2017-07-02
Posts: 10

Hot backup: Is consolidate on destination posisble?

I'm trying to get my head around on different issues:

- I have a running VM with Centos7, the disk is literally 40Gb and the VM has very little activity.
As part of the differential backup it appears like a min of 10GB snapshot file is created hence 1/4 of the VM needs to be retransferred which is not a massive issue but just to understand as  I would expect the snapshot file to be way smaller.

- I can see the Snapshot created on source, transferred on destination and removed from the source once the backup is completed. However the destination folder retains the snapshot file(s) after the backup is completed. Is there any way to consolidate the snapshot on destination?
There's otherwise a serious storage consideration to be address.

Thanks

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#2 2017-07-09 10:45:20

roberto
Moderator
Registered: 2017-04-22
Posts: 49

Re: Hot backup: Is consolidate on destination posisble?

XSIBackup makes use of the snapshot options available in the ESXi system, it does not decide anything in regards to how big the snapshots will be, with the exception of the includememory option: (c)XSIBackup snapshots. Thus, the size of the snapshot will depend on your VM config and how you use your data.

The way snapshots are managed by XSIBackup depends on the type of backup you are performing, please, provide some minimum information to get a concrete response. If you are performing an Rsync backup, XSIBackup will preserve the snapshots on the remote end. Some people might find it extremely useful to keep the snapshots on the backed up VM, you can consolidate them by deleting the snapshots.

Last edited by roberto (2017-07-09 10:46:09)

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#3 2018-01-20 17:14:09

bellocarico
Member
Registered: 2017-07-02
Posts: 10

Re: Hot backup: Is consolidate on destination posisble?

roberto wrote:

XSIBackup makes use of the snapshot options available in the ESXi system, it does not decide anything in regards to how big the snapshots will be, with the exception of the includememory option: https://33hops.com/xsibackup-help-man-p … l#snapshot. Thus, the size of the snapshot will depend on your VM config and how you use your data.

The way snapshots are managed by XSIBackup depends on the type of backup you are performing, please, provide some minimum information to get a concrete response. If you are performing an Rsync backup, XSIBackup will preserve the snapshots on the remote end. Some people might find it extremely useful to keep the snapshots on the backed up VM, you can consolidate them by deleting the snapshots.

About the second point: Ok understood. My point (I think) is still valid.

If I run the backup e.g. daily, I will get 1 additional snapshot file every 24 hours. I understand the answer as per above, but this in my case is unwanted and eventually use lots of precious storage.
I'm wondering if the script itself could force a control to remove all the snapshops files on the destination apart from the last N where N is a number of snapshots (e.g. 3) or a timeframe (anything older than 30 days).

N=30
ssh root@BACKUPHOST 'find /vmfs/volumes/3TB/BACKUP/213w -type f -name '*.vmsn' -mtime +30 -exec rm {} \;'

Thanks

Last edited by bellocarico (2018-01-21 19:18:56)

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#4 2018-01-21 22:09:03

roberto
Moderator
Registered: 2017-04-22
Posts: 49

Re: Hot backup: Is consolidate on destination posisble?

You can backup to a datastore or you can create a script that deletes your old snapshots after the backup cycle has finished.

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#5 2018-01-22 09:28:01

bellocarico
Member
Registered: 2017-07-02
Posts: 10

Re: Hot backup: Is consolidate on destination posisble?

roberto wrote:

You can backup to a datastore or you can create a script that deletes your old snapshots after the backup cycle has finished.

I'm sorry if I insist, but I personally think it is conceptually wrong that I go and run my own script (and schedule) beside xsibackup to keep control of the storage.
Xsibackup creates the data, so it would be (once again in my opinion) a good idea to a control implement within the script itself similar to the one I provided in my example above.

my 2 cents

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