Linked Clone Desktops and VEEAM Backup

[jonathanjabez]

Hello, we are running Horizon 7.8 Linked clone persistent desktops. We have deployed VEEAM 9.x version for full VM backup and incremental for our Linked clone desktops. After enabling the backup jobs, we see VDIs are facing guest OS Crash. Also, upon restoration, full clone machine gets restored. So, the chain with the replica is lost. Is VEEAM backup supported for Linked Clone VDIs? We are also suspecting VEEAM backup are causing the crash as it takes repeated snapshots and then consolidates. Also, during the job, it adds some advanced parameters e.g. enabling CTK and vice versa. Could this be the cause of the VDI guest OS to crash? Any help is appreciated.

[Alex_Romeo]

Hi,

Yes, veeam backup & Replication supported linked Clone:

Restoring Linked Clone VMs to vCloud Director - Veeam Backup Guide for vSphere

VMware Horizon 7: configurazione Instant Clone • Nolabnoparty

ARomeo

[jonathanjabez]

Hi AlessandroRomeo68,

Thank you for your quick response. I could see in the user guide that, it supports linked clone VMs provisioned by vCloud Director. It does not say anything about linked clone desktops provisioned by VMware Horizon View. Also, restoring linked clone from backup actually restores it as a full VM as the backup process consolidates all the parent and delta disks and creates a singe virtual disk at destination. So this is not serving our purpose. We are not using Instant Clone. So, we need to know whether it is supported.

[MaxStr]

Just a couple questions, do you have nvidia GRID? And have you tried using the Veeam Backup agent instead? Lastly, why are you backing up linked clones anyway, the user data should all reside on the user persistent disk

[jonathanjabez]

Hi MaxStr, we have mix of VDIs with Nvidia GRID vGPU attached and without vGPU. We do not use user persistent disk. This is a linked clone persistent pool with OS Disk used for persistence. VDI has only 1 disk (C:) drive.

[MaxStr]

Well, depending on which GRID card you have, it may not support snapshots or vmotion, which would prevent Veeam from working. I have GRID K1 cards and those can't be snapshotted. In those cases you could use Veeam's local backup agents (which is a separate license of course)

[hoang92bn · Accepted solution]

i had opened a ticket with Veeam Engineer (Case # 03997537).

They confirmed that Veeam cannot backup linked clones/Instant Clone in VMware Horizon view and Veeam is unable to backup independent disks.