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One of my virtual machines, backed up by DPM, is repeatedly creating recovery checkpoints and exponentially increasing the storage space required on the host.

Three servers involved:

  • Server 2012 R2, Hyper-V host [HOST/ASH-LIBRARY]
  • Server 2008 R2, virtual machine [VM/ASH-PRINTERS] run on HOST
  • Server 2012 R2, physical machine [DPM/AHSSCCM01], running SCCM 2012 R2 with DPM R2 4.2

HOST is backed up by DPM, and VM is part of that:

DPM backing up VM

VM is creating Backup checkpoints every day... and not getting rid of any of them when they're no longer needed:

VM snapshots

From the reading I've done online, this may be because one of the earlier checkpoints failed to create properly - and now it can't be removed, so DPM keeps adding to the tree and being unable to remove any of them.

I'm looking for a way to remove these checkpoints and free up space on HOST's hard drive. Obviously I could just delete the files, but that won't stop the on-going problem.

I have tried the following:

  • Disk merge, latest AVHD to parent VHD, no change
  • Deleting the Checkpoint subtree, "Cannot delete a checkpoint subtree containing a recovery checkpoint"
  • Exporting the latest checkpoint to then try and mount a new VM from it, "Cannot merge automatic VHD chain"
  • Running the command Get-VMSnapshot -VMName ASH-Printers | Remove-VMSnapshot, results in Error 0x80070002: The system cannot find the file specified (which may be because HOST's hard drive only has 6Gb space remaining ... but I have no room to manoeuvre the VMs to test this)

What else can I try to fix this problem?

turbonerd
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    Have you tried recovering the VM from the latest backup? With luck, you get a working VHDX or whole vm with files from it. – Daniel Oct 27 '17 at 19:47
  • Yeah, that's what I'm having to do Daniel (taking ages - very little space available on local drives so resorting to USB). My worry is... will this Checkpoint issue continue to occur? Or now that I've basically created an entirely new VM with no Checkpoints, will DPM start working again? – turbonerd Oct 29 '17 at 17:53
  • removing recovery checkpoints shouldn't free up any space because the checkpoints are incremental. Have you or are you replicating these servers in addition to backing them up? Replication has an option to create recovery check points for each synchronization. Doesn't seem like your issue, but worth mentioning just in case. – Jonathon Anderson Nov 02 '17 at 18:38

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