Transferring backups

[Walery]

I have backed up 2 virtual machines (vm102 and vm103).
I am connecting to PBS using WinSCP (/ mnt / datastore / data1 / vm) and want to copy backups but these copies take up very little space (vm102 1Mb and vm103 2Mb)

 

[dcsapak]

the didx/fidx files only references chunks, which are found in the .chunks folder of the datastore
the index files alone do not contain data, only the chunks do

 

[aaron]

There are no single directories that contain the full backup for a VM. The way PBS works is by splitting up the backup data into chunks. If data didn't change between backups, the same chunk can be used in the new backup as well. Thus saving a lot of space. The files you see will reference which chunks are used for that backup.

If you want to move backups somewhere else, you will have to copy the whole datastore and include hidden directories as well because the chunks are stored in a directory called .chunks present in the datastore.

To be able to have offsite backups, you can install another PBS instance and use the Sync Feature to pull the backups.