SMS - size of backup file

[Mikula83]

Hello,

after installation of Gaia R82 JHF Take 36 on SMS (Security Management Server) I have found something very strange. Maybe it was before but after that action I have noticed it. During local system backup I noticed that process is very slow and file size is too big. Backup has finished after 37:58 minutes and size is 30.13 GB. (attached picture). I have never seen it before.

Is it possible that system backup is larger than snapshot?

What could be the cause of this?

Best regards,

Milan Babic

[Danny]

Simply check what's inside the backup file taking so much storage.
The location of your backup file is shown on your screenshot.

[G_W_Albrecht]

Better open SR# with TAC to seen if there is an issue ! My SMS Backup is less 1 than GB, but that can vary...

@PhoneBoy  can you put this to Management?

[Alex- · Accepted solution]

It was reported that R81.20 Take 111 started to include logs in backups.

https://community.checkpoint.com/t5/Product-Announcements/R81-20-Jumbo-Hotfix-Accumulator-take-111-h...

That might be something similar here, TAC could confirm.

[Dov_Fraivert]

@Alex- It really looks like the same issue, and there’s already a fix for TAC that will be released soon for all relevant versions.

[G_W_Albrecht]

I have given feedback to https://support.checkpoint.com/results/sk/sk91400 that this should be included!

[DavidD]

We have detected similar issue in our environment, but regarding backups of gateways.

We have x 2 15400 GW-s running in VSX mode.

Gaia version is R81 JHF T92

From being below 1GB to increasing over 7GB in size.

The only correlation we can make is when we migrated Smart-1 appliance management server to a VM running R81.20

[_Val_]

Check if your backups now include logs or not.

[DavidD]

I confirm logs are included, in this case there is even log files from 2021....

I guess it is best to clear up these old logs from the Gateways?

The original file was 1.6GB, extracted 8GB. And this is one of the lighter files, the latest backups are over 2.9GB.

[DavidD]

Just to add, we just tested creating a backup locally after upgrading the gateways to R82 JHF T34.

And now the size of backup is 284MBs.....

[Dov_Fraivert · Accepted solution]

The following SK describes the issue and the possible workarounds:

https://support.checkpoint.com/results/sk/sk183835?server=us

[David_C1]

My 2 cents:

This is a bad idea to make this the default (especially without telling anyone). The size of the backup file, in particular on an SMS, can change dramatically if you keep any amount of historical logs on the device. This can cause backups to fail, or if they succeed, to take up much more space than anticipated. Not good.

Dave