Limitations for Scale-Out Backup Repositories

Scale-out backup repositories have the following limitations:

• You cannot use a scale-out backup repository as a target for the following types of jobs:

• Configuration backup job
• Replication jobs (including replica seeding)
• VM copy jobs
• Veeam Agent backup jobs created by Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 1.5 or earlier  
• Veeam Agent backup jobs created by Veeam Agent for Linux 1.0 Update 1 or earlier

• You cannot add a backup repository as an extent to the scale-out backup repository if any job of unsupported type is targeted at this backup repository or if the backup repository contains data produced by jobs of unsupported types (for example, replica metadata). To add such backup repository as an extent, you must first target unsupported jobs to another backup repository and remove the job data from the backup repository in question.

• Scale-out backup repositories do not support rotated drives. If you enable the This repository is backed by rotated hard drives setting on an extent, Veeam Backup & Replication will ignore this setting and will work with such repository as with a standard extent.

• If a backup repository is added as an extent to the scale-out backup repository, you cannot use it as a regular backup repository. You cannot target jobs to this backup repository. Instead, you have to target jobs to the configured scale-out backup repository.
• You cannot add a scale-out backup repository as an extent to another scale-out backup repository.
• You cannot add a backup repository as an extent if this backup repository is already added as an extent to another scale-out backup repository.
• You cannot add a backup repository as an extent if this backup repository is already used as a backup destination by VMware vCloud Director organizations.
• You cannot add a backup repository in which some activity is being performed (for example, a backup job or restore task) as an extent to the scale-out backup repository.

• We do not recommend adding more than 16 extents to one scale-out backup repository, otherwise you might have performance issues.

• If you apply the Forget or Remove from disk options to a missing restore point in a scale-out backup repository, the backup file associated with the missing restore point will be deleted from capacity tier and archive tier on the next offload and archiving job run.

• If you use Enterprise edition of Veeam Backup & Replication, you can create two scale-out backup repositories.

For each scale-out backup repository, you can add one object storage repository as a capacity extent and four standard backup repositories as performance extents: three active, and one inactive (that is put to the maintenance mode). You can add inactive extents, for example, if any of active extents has no free space, and you want to evacuate backup data from it.

If you add four performance extents and do not put any of them to the maintenance mode, the jobs targeted at the scale-out backup repository will fail.

Veeam Universal License and Enterprise Plus editions have no limitations on the number of scale-out backup repositories or performance extents.

• If you want to use the Extract utility to work with backup files located on any of the extents of your scale-out backup repository, make sure that incremental and full backup files are located on the same extent.
• You can use the Veeam Backup Validator utility only for backups stored in the performance tier which consists of backup repositories. Make sure that incremental and full backup files are located on the same extent.
• We do not recommend adding more than 24 extents to one scale-out backup repository, otherwise you might have performance issues.

• To let Veeam Backup & Replication automatically import backups during rescan of a scale-out backup repository, names of VBM files and paths to VBM files (starting from the backup repository root to VBM files, not including the root itself) must contain only allowed characters:

• Alphanumeric characters: a-zA-Z0-9
• Special characters: _-.+=@^

Names of VBM file and paths to VBM files must not contain spaces.

If a name of a VBM file or a path to a VBM file contains prohibited characters, Veeam Backup & Replication will fail to import such backup during rescan of the scale-out backup repository. To import such backup, you can replace prohibited characters with the underscore character, for example: C:\My Repository\Backup_Job\Backup_Job.vbm. You do not need to rename the actual backup files.

• Veeam Backup & Replication does not split one backup file across multiple extents.
• An object storage repository added as a capacity tier in a scale-out backup repository can not be used for storing NAS backups. To archive NAS backup files to an object storage repository, assign the object storage repository as an archive repository when you create a file share backup job.
• You cannot assign the role of a cache repository for file share backup to a scale-out backup repository and its extents. To learn more about cache repository, see NAS Backup Support.
• If a repository is used as a cloud repository, you cannot add it as an extent of a scale-out backup repository.
• [For Nutanix AHV VM backups] Due to specifics of backup jobs for AHV VMs, Veeam Backup for Nutanix AHV always creates a separate backup chain for each VM added to a backup job. Thus, even if you clear the Use per-machine backup files check box in the advanced settings of a scale-out backup repository, backups of multiple AHV VMs are not stored in a single backup file.