Re-Scanning Storage Systems

You can rescan a storage system added to the backup infrastructure. Storage system rescan may be required, for example, if you create or delete snapshots on the storage system. Storage system rescan will help you discover these changes and update the storage system hierarchy in the Veeam Backup Free Edition console.

Storage system rescan can be performed automatically or manually.

• Automatic storage rescan: Veeam Backup Free Edition uses the following processes to rescan the storage system:

• The Storage Monitor process runs in the background. The process detects new snapshots and volumes, and performs their rescan with a time interval of 10 minutes.
• The Storage Discovery process starts every 7 days. The process performs rescan of the whole storage system or selected volumes (if you limited the rescan scope for the storage system).

• Manual storage rescan: if necessary, you can start the Storage Discovery process manually. Storage discovery can be performed against any node in the storage system hierarchy: storage system, storage volume and so on.

Before you start storage discovery, make sure that you have a properly configured backup proxy in the backup infrastructure. Otherwise, Veeam Backup Free Edition will not be able to match storage volumes to VMware datastores and locate VMs on these storage volumes.

To start storage discovery:

1. Open the Storage Infrastructure view.
2. In the inventory pane, expand the storage system tree.
3. Select a node in the storage system hierarchy: storage system, volume and so on.
4. Click Rescan on the ribbon or right-click the node in the hierarchy and select Rescan storage or Rescan volume.

Limiting Rescan Scope

The storage system hierarchy can be very extensive, and the rescan process can take much time. To minimize the rescan time, you can instruct Veeam Backup Free Edition to rescan only specific volumes.

To limit the rescan scope:

1. Open the Storage Infrastructure view.
2. In the inventory pane, select the storage system type.
3. In the working area, right-click the root node of the storage system and click Choose volumes.
4. In the Choose Volumes window, select which volumes you want to rescan:

• To exclude volumes from rescan, select All volumes except, click Add and select volumes in the list.
• To rescan only specific volumes, select Only these volumes, click Add and select volumes in the list.

If you leave the Automatic detection option selected, Veeam Backup Free Edition will rescan all volumes in the storage system hierarchy.

5. Click OK.
6. Click Finish.