Posted on by gabriele pelizzari

XFS & Veeam Repository

Today I’m going to talk about how to create a new Veeam repository using the XFS file system.

As much as you already know, v. 10 of Backup & Replication loves Linux. There are 3 top features that attest to it and they are:

  • XFS integration
  • Proxy Linux
  • Direct NFS Repository

The first article wants to talk about the XFS Integration and  which steps you should follow to use this smart technology integrated with Veeam Repositories

We will have 3 majors steps:

  1. Adding New Disk and formatting it as XFS
  2. Adding a Backup Repository
  3. Working and testing with XFS integration

So, let’s start with Point 1, remembering how to add a new disk to a Linux Server (we consider you have already added a disk to your physical or virtual Server)

First command is lsblk  that shows which disks have been recognized by the Operating System (in my case the new disk has been seen as sdc)

 sda           8:0    0   16G  0 disk

 ├─sda1        8:1    0  600M  0 part /boot/efi

 ├─sda2        8:2    0    1G  0 part /boot

 └─sda3        8:3    0 14.4G  0 part

   ├─cl-root 253:0    0 12.8G  0 lvm  /

   └─cl-swap 253:1    0  1.6G  0 lvm  [SWAP]

 sdb           8:16   0  200G  0 disk

 └─sdb1        8:17   0  200G  0 part /media/RepoXFS1

 sdc           8:32   0   16G  0 disk

 sr0          11:0    1    7G  0 from

Running the command fdisk -l  /dev/sdc it’s possible to catch the correct size of the disk.

 Disk /dev/sdc: 16 GiB, 17179869184 bytes, 33554432 sectors

 Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

 Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

 I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

 fdisk /dev/sdc to create new   partition

Now it’s time to create a new disk (this procedure deletes all previous file systems present) with the command fdisk /dev/sdc.

Just follow the steps below to create the new disk: 

 n (to create a new partition)

 p (to create a primary partition)

 1 (default)

 First sector (default)

 Last sector (default) (if you want to use all the disk capacity)

 w write 

Relaunching the lsblk command it’s possible to see if the sdc1 disk appeared.

lsblk /dev/sdc

 NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNT POINT
 sdc 8:32 0 16G 0 disk
 └─sdc1 8:33 0 16G 0 part /media/RepoXFS2

Three more steps to complete the first phase: 

1. Creating an XFS file system with Data-Block Sharing enables (reflink=1) 

mkfs.xfs -b size=4096 -m reflink=1,crc=1 /dev/sdc1

2. Creating the mount point on your server with the command:

mkdir  /backup/xfs-01

3. Mounting file system addicting the following line in /etc/fstab file

 /dev/sdc1           /backups/xfs-01             xfs          defaults     0   0

If you know the UUID of the disk (blkid /dev/sdbc1) you can also use the following digit instead of the previous one.

 UUID=UUID  /backup/xfs-01   xfs defaults 0 0

Reboot the server and everything should work.

See you soon with the second phase.

See you soon and take care.