Increase root partition on VCSA

First aid if VCSA root partition turns out to be too small

I recent times I frequently see vCenter server appliances (VCSA), whose root partitions ran out of free space. As a result services are unable to start after reboot. There are some tricks to free some space on root but on the long run you should increase the partition size.

Sounds simple – but it’s quite tricky and a bit dangerous. Don’t try this at home! 😉

Continue reading “Increase root partition on VCSA”

Veeam Default Repository

System choked by data – Why you should remove the default repository after installation

A typical Veeam Backup & Replication installation consists of several sub-components. There is the Backupserver with the database, there are backup proxies, Mount Server, Gateway server and Backup-repositories. Repositories are datastores which hold your backup data. Right after initial setup the installer will create a repositoty on your system partition which is the default repository. Normally your system partition isn’t very big. Maybe 100 GB or less. One of the first tasks after installation is to define a new backup repository with Terabytes of free space. Sometimes you might forget about the default repository, which is pointing at your system partition. Under certain conditions this can turn into a timebomb which I witnessed in the wild recently. Continue reading “Veeam Default Repository”

Veeam ReFS Repository on iSCSI Targets

Troubleshooting Repository Deadlocks

With Resilient Filesystem (ReFS) integration into Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 a whole bunch of features was integrated. One of the biggest advantages is ‘Fast Cloning Technology’ which enables synthetic full backups by merely creating pointers to already existing datablocks on the repository.

In a small scale environment I had a hardware repository server (Win 2016) with an iSCSI Volume as repository (ReFS, 64k) as primary backup target. This constellation worked like a Swiss watch. Daily backups ran for months without any trouble. Fast cloning technology enabled weekly synthetic full backups with minimal consumption of extra space.

Recently I’ve added another iSCSI Volume (ReFS, 64k) to be used as repository for backup copies. That’s when the fun began… Continue reading “Veeam ReFS Repository on iSCSI Targets”