Re-Scanning Storage Systems

You can rescan the storage system added to the backup infrastructure. Storage rescan may be required, for example, if you create or delete volume snapshots on the storage system. Storage 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:

• Storage Monitor runs in the background. This process detects new snapshots and volumes and performs their rescan with a time interval of 10 minutes.
• Storage Discovery is started every 7 days. This process performs rescan of the whole storage system or selected volumes (if you limited the rescan scope when you added the storage system to Veeam Backup Free Edition).

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

Before you begin storage discovery, make sure that you have a properly configured backup proxy in your 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 perform storage discovery:

1. Open the Storage Infrastructure view.
2. In the inventory pane, expand the tree of the storage system.
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.

Choosing Volumes to Rescan

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 rescan specific volumes:

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