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Re-protecting VMware VMs in DPM 2019 backups only 2 GB from each VM

Stefan Falk 171 Reputation points
2021-09-09T11:39:53.213+00:00

Hello everybody,

At a customer's site, we had the following scenario:

  • DPM 2019 is backing up VMware VMs with no problem.
  • Its disks ran full.
  • Gave it a greater disk.
  • DPM should freshly backup the VMs. However, it does so in just a few minutes (should have backed up some 20+ TB), and occupies just a few GB of space on its disks.

We tried already:

  • Delete and recreate the whole protection group,
  • reset VMware change tracking as described in https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2139574,
  • resetting the DPM server name of the VMs via Get-VM | Set-Annotation -CustomAttribute 'DPMServer' -Value ''

Still, we get no trustworthy backup. How can we get DPM to freshly and correctly backup all those VMs?

Best Regards,
Stefan Falk

Windows Server Backup
Windows Server Backup
Windows Server: A family of Microsoft server operating systems that support enterprise-level management, data storage, applications, and communications.Backup: A duplicate copy of a program, a disk, or data, made either for archiving purposes or for safeguarding valuable files from loss should the active copy be damaged or destroyed.
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  1. Limitless Technology 39,516 Reputation points
    2021-09-09T15:20:23.04+00:00

    Hello,

    Thank you for your question..

    I would like to suggest you below troubleshooting points

    1. Please try to delete DPM Storage pools disk after removing VMs from Protection group.
    2. Uninstall and Install DPM agents again on the VMs.
    3. Create Protection group with new Name and different Retention plan
    4. Additionally , If you have Hyper-V VM then try to backup using DPM and see how it consumes disk space in Hyper-V.

    If the reply was helpful, please don’t forget to upvote or accept as answer.

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  2. Stefan Falk 171 Reputation points
    2021-09-10T13:02:50.11+00:00

    Hello and thanks for the reply!

    1. We did that already. Totally deleted and recreated the (Storage Spaces) pools, disks and volumes.
    2. There is no agent. This issue is about backing up VMware VMs at the host level, by talking directly to VMware.
    3. We deleted the protection group and recreated it with another name already. Is there really a chance that DPM magically remembers things by retention plan somehow?
    4. No Hyper-V, only VMware.

    Thanks for any further ideas.

    Best Regards,
    Stefan

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