Veeam

Backup & Replication

Version 6.1
User Guide
for Hyper-V Environments
June, 2012
 © 2012 Veeam Software.
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CONTENTS
CONTENTS.................................................................................................................... 3
CONTACTING VEEAM SOFTWARE............................................................................... 6
ABOUT THIS USER GUIDE ............................................................................................ 7
INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 8
OVERVIEW .................................................................................................................. 10
SOLUTION ARCHITECTURE .................................................................................................................... 10
Components................................................................................................................ 10
Deployment Scenarios .............................................................................................. 13
Resource Scheduling ................................................................................................. 16
BACKUP .................................................................................................................................................. 19
Backup Process ........................................................................................................... 20
Backup Modes ............................................................................................................ 24
Backup Architecture .................................................................................................. 26
Choosing a VSS Provider ........................................................................................... 28
Backup Methods......................................................................................................... 29
Retention Policy .......................................................................................................... 32
Scheduling ................................................................................................................... 33
Backup Content .......................................................................................................... 34
Changed Block Tracking ........................................................................................... 34
Compression and Deduplication ............................................................................ 35
Transaction Consistency .......................................................................................... 36
Integration with Traditional Backup...................................................................... 37
VEEAMZIP .............................................................................................................................................. 37
DATA RECOVERY.................................................................................................................................... 37
Instant VM Recovery .................................................................................................. 38
Full VM Recovery ........................................................................................................ 39
VM File Recovery......................................................................................................... 39
Guest OS File Recovery .............................................................................................. 39
REPLICATION .......................................................................................................................................... 39
Replication Architecture ........................................................................................... 40
Replica Seeding .......................................................................................................... 41
Replica Mapping ........................................................................................................ 43
Network Mapping and Re-IP.................................................................................... 43
Replica Failover and Failback .................................................................................. 44
FILE COPY ............................................................................................................................................... 48
PLANNING AND PREPARATION ................................................................................ 49
PREREQUISITES ....................................................................................................................................... 49
REQUIREMENTS ...................................................................................................................................... 49
JOB PLANNING ....................................................................................................................................... 53
DEPLOYMENT ............................................................................................................ 55
INSTALLING VEEAM BACKUP & REPLICATION ...................................................................................... 55
UNINSTALLING ....................................................................................................................................... 59
VEEAM BACKUP & REPLICATION LICENSING........................................................................................ 59

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 PRODUCT EDITIONS............................................................................................................................... 61
FULL AND FREE FUNCTIONALITY MODES ............................................................................................ 61
VEEAM BACKUP & REPLICATION USER INTERFACE ............................................................................. 62
ADMINISTRATION ..................................................................................................... 66
SETTING UP THE BACKUP INFRASTRUCTURE ....................................................................................... 66
Adding Servers ............................................................................................................ 66
Managing Servers ...................................................................................................... 78
Adding Offhost Backup Proxies ............................................................................... 80
Configuring Advanced Options for Offhost Backup Proxies ............................. 83
Managing Offhost Backup Proxies ......................................................................... 86
Adding Backup Repositories .................................................................................... 86
Managing Backup Repositories .............................................................................. 91
Managing Network Traffic ....................................................................................... 92
MANAGING JOBS ................................................................................................................................... 94
Creating Backup Jobs ................................................................................................ 94
Creating Replication Jobs....................................................................................... 106
CREATING VEEAMZIP FILES ................................................................................................................ 121
PERFORMING RESTORE ........................................................................................................................ 123
Performing Instant VM Recovery .......................................................................... 123
Performing Full VM Recovery................................................................................. 130
Restoring VM Files .................................................................................................... 137
Restoring VM Guest Files ........................................................................................ 140
RESTORING VMS WITH THE EXTRACT UTILITY ................................................................................... 144
Using the Extract Utility in the Interactive Mode ............................................... 144
Using the Extract Utility from the Command Line ............................................ 145
PERFORMING REPLICA FAILOVER AND FAILBACK .............................................................................. 146
Performing Failover ................................................................................................. 146
Performing Permanent Failover ........................................................................... 149
Undoing Failover...................................................................................................... 150
Performing Failback ................................................................................................ 151
Committing Failback............................................................................................... 157
Undoing Failback ..................................................................................................... 158
MANAGING BACKUPS & REPLICAS ..................................................................................................... 159
IMPORTING BACKUPS .......................................................................................................................... 159
SPECIFYING VEEAM BACKUP & REPLICATION OPTIONS ................................................................... 160
Specifying E-Mail Notification Settings ............................................................... 160
Specifying SNMP Settings ....................................................................................... 162
Specifying Storage Space Notification Settings ................................................. 164
Specifying Advanced Settings ............................................................................... 164
REPORTING ........................................................................................................................................... 165
USERS AND ROLES ............................................................................................................................... 167
LOGGING .............................................................................................................................................. 167
Exporting Logs .......................................................................................................... 168
PERFORMING FILE COPY OPERATIONS .................................................................. 170
ADDING SERVERS AND FOLDERS ........................................................................................................ 170
COPYING AND MOVING FILES AND FOLDERS .................................................................................... 170
CREATING FILE COPY JOBS ................................................................................................................. 170

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 CHANGING SERVER CONNECTION SETTINGS ..................................................................................... 173
EDITING LINUX FILE ATTRIBUTES ........................................................................................................ 173

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CONTACTING VEEAM SOFTWARE
At Veeam Software we value the feedback from our customers. It is important not only to help you
quickly with your technical issues, but it is our mission to listen to your input, and build products
that incorporate your suggestions.

Customer Support
Should you have a product issue, suggestion or question, please visit our Customer Center at
www.veeam.com/support, to open a case, search our knowledge base, reference documentation,
manage your license or obtain the latest product release.

Company Contacts
For the most up-to-date information about company contacts and offices location, please visit
www.veeam.com/contacts.html.

Online Support
If you have any questions about Veeam Backup & Replication, you can use the following resources:
• Full documentation set: www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-backup/resources.html
• Community forum at forums.veeam.com

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ABOUT THIS USER GUIDE
This user guide provides information about main features, installation and use of
Veeam Backup & Replication in Hyper-V environments. The document applies to version 6.1 and all
subsequent versions until it is replaced with a new edition.

Intended Audience
The user guide is intended for anyone who wants to use Veeam Backup & Replication. It is primarily
aimed at Hyper-V administrators, consultants, analysts and any other IT professionals who use the
product.

Related Documentation
The complete set of Veeam Backup & Replication documentation can be found on the product
resources web page at www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-backup/resources.html.

Conventions
In order to help you get the most out of this guide, we have used the following formatting
conventions, terms and abbreviations in the document: Style Used for

Style Description

Boldface User interface elements (names of dialog windows, buttons and so

on).
Italics Titles, special terms and general emphasis, file paths, names of files
and folders.
Green Cross reference links and external hyperlinks.

Additionally, important information, notes and tips are provided in the following format:

Note This type of formatting is used for tips, notes and important information the user should pay
attention to.

Term/Abbreviation Description

CSV Cluster-shared volume

NAS Network attached storage
SAN Storage area network
VM Virtual machine
VSS Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service
Source host A host on which a VM to be backed up or replicated resides.
Target host A host where a replica should be started or to which a VM is
restored.

Document Revision History

Revision # Date Description of Changes

Revision 1 6/4/2012 Initial version of the document for Veeam Backup & Replication
v6.1

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INTRODUCTION
Veeam® Backup & Replication™ is a data protection and disaster recovery solution for VMware
vSphere and Windows Hyper-V virtual environments of any size and complexity. Combining all of
the necessary functions in one intuitive interface, Veeam Backup & Replication serves to solve the
most critical problems of virtualized infrastructure management and protects mission-critical
virtual machines from both hardware and software failures.
Veeam Backup & Replication provides the following features and functionality:

Microsoft Hyper-V Support

Veeam Backup & Replication provides full support for Windows Hyper-V, offering advanced data
protection capabilities such as 2-in-1 backup and replication, Veeam’s proprietary changed block
tracking, compression and deduplication and others for Hyper-V virtual environments. Veeam
Backup & Replication works with standalone Hyper-V Server, SCVMM or Hyper-V clusters.

Distributed Backup Architecture

Veeam Backup & Replication features a distributed backup architecture which helps take backup
workload off the source Hyper-V hosts and backup server and speed up backup, replication and
restore over WANs or slow links. Distributed architecture lets you move data processing to offhost
backup proxies that act as data movers, and backup repositories used as common backup
locations. A single backup server acts as a “point of control” managing several offhost backup
proxies and backup repositories across a large backup site or multiple branch offices. Installation
and configuration of architecture components is fully automated, which helps streamline
deployment and maintenance of remote sites and large installations.

2-in-1 Backup and Replication

To provide the most comprehensive protection of your virtual environment,
Veeam Backup & Replication complements backup capabilities with image-based replication. You
can back up any VM, VM container or VM disk, or replicate VMs on-site for high availability or off-
site for disaster recovery, across local area and wide area networks.
By utilizing advanced technologies, such as Veeam’s native changed block tracking mechanism for
Hyper-V VMs, Veeam Backup & Replication delivers unprecedented replication speed. It provides
near-continuous data protection (or near-CDP) at a fraction of cost of traditional CDP systems –
you can capture changes and update VM images as often as every few minutes.

Advanced Replication Options

Veeam Backup & Replication offers advanced replication options allowing you to cope with any
disaster recovery scenario. If a VM goes down for some reason, you can fail over to its replica in
several seconds. Once the production host is up again, you can use the failback option to get back
to the original VM, or to a VM restored from the backup, in the original site or in a new location.
During failback, Veeam Backup & Replication compares source and target replica states and
transfers only differences, which dramatically decreases use of WAN traffic.
In addition to failover and failback capabilities, Veeam Backup & Replication provides advanced
replication possibilities – you can use replica seeding to minimize use of WAN traffic, map replicas
to existing VMs in the DR site, and perform replica re-IP and network mapping in case the network
settings of your production site does not match those of the DR site.

Multiple Data Recovery Options

Veeam Backup & Replication uses the same image-level backup to perform Instant VM Recovery,
recover a full VM image, VM files and individual guest OS files. You can recover a full VM to any
good-to-know point in time, and place it to its original location, or select a new location for a
restored VM. You can also perform granular VM guest OS file- or folder-level recovery for FAT16,
FAT32 and NTFS file systems without extracting a full VM image to the local drive. Along with VM

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OS files recovery, Veeam Backup & Replication allows restoring specific VM files (VHD, XML and so
on), either to their latest state or to a specific point in time.

Forward Incremental and Reversed Incremental Backup

Depending on the type of backup storage you use, you can choose between two backup methods
— incremental and reversed incremental. Incremental backup is recommended for disk-to-disk-to-
tape and remote site backups — it reduces the time spent to move backups to tape or a remote
site, and the amount of tape required. Reversed incremental backup is recommended for disk-to-
disk backup, enabling you to keep the latest image of a VM in a ready-to-restore state on disk. With
advanced options from Veeam Backup & Replication, you can select to perform incremental
backup and schedule creation of synthetic full backups on specific days, which lets you combine
advantages of incremental backup with those of reversed incremental.

File Indexing, Search and 1-Click Restore

Veeam Backup & Replication provides possibilities for indexing guest OS files in Windows-based
VMs, which enables you to perform quick and accurate search for files within backed up VM
images without the need to restore them first. Using Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager, you can
browse and search for files in a single selected VM backup or use the advanced search option to
find necessary files in all VM backups within your backup infrastructure. Found files can be restored
with one click directly from Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager to the original location on the
source VM disk, or downloaded to the local machine.

Data Deduplication and Compression

In order to decrease the size of created backups, Veeam Backup & Replication deduplicates
identical blocks inside a backup file. Higher deduplication rates are achieved when backing up
multiple VMs created from a single template or VMs with gigabytes of free space within. You can
also decrease the backup file size by using compression.

Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager

Veeam Backup & Replication comes with Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager — a management
and reporting component that allows you to manage multiple Veeam Backup & Replication
installations from a single web console. In case of a distributed backup infrastructure, Veeam
Backup Enterprise Manager acts as a single management point, enabling you to perform, edit and
clone backup and replication jobs, and providing enhanced notification and reporting options.
Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager is also responsible for replicating and consolidating index files
from backup servers to enable you to browse and search for files, and restore found files in one
click. In addition to that, Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager acts as a license center, allowing you
to centrally update licenses and get statistics on their usage.

Realtime Statistics and Reporting

Veeam Backup & Replication provides comprehensive real-time job statistics (start/end time,
performance metrics – the amount of processed and transferred data, compression and
deduplication ratios and so on), as well as a description of the current job activity. With the
bottleneck detection option, you can evaluate efficiency of data flow, identify problems and make
sure that backup infrastructure resources are used efficiently.
With the reporting option, you can generate HTML reports with statistics for the performed job,
both for one or a number of job sessions.

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OVERVIEW
This section contains a high-level overview of Veeam Backup & Replication, its architecture and
features, as well as data protection and recovery concepts necessary to understand
Veeam Backup & Replication background operations and processes.

Solution Architecture
Veeam Backup & Replication is a modular solution which allows flexible scalability for
environments of different sizes and configuration. The installation package of
Veeam Backup & Replication includes a set of components used to configure your backup
infrastructure. Some of them are mandatory and provide core functionality; some of them are
optional and can be installed to provide additional functionality for your business and deployment
needs. You can consolidate Veeam Backup & Replication components on the same machine, either
physical or virtual, or set them up separately for a more scalable approach.

Components
Veeam Backup & Replication comprises the following components. Some of which are installed
using a setup file, while others are configured while working with the product.
• Veeam Backup Server
• Offhost Backup Proxy
• Backup Repository
• Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager
• Veeam Backup Search

Veeam Backup Server

The Veeam Backup server is a Windows-based physical or virtual machine on which
Veeam Backup & Replication is installed. It is the core component in the backup infrastructure that
fills the role of the “configuration and control center”. The Veeam Backup server performs all types
of administrative activities:
• Coordinates backup, replication, recovery verification and restore tasks
• Controls job scheduling and resource allocation
• Is used to set up and manage backup infrastructure components as well as specify global
settings for the backup infrastructure
In addition to its primary functions, a newly deployed Veeam Backup server also performs the role
of the default backup repository, storing backups locally.
The Veeam Backup server uses the following services and components:
• Veeam Backup Service is a Windows service that coordinates all operations performed
by Veeam Backup & Replication such as backup, replication, recovery verification and
restore. Veeam Backup Service runs under the administrator account with the Log on as
service right granted.
• Veeam Backup Shell provides the application user interface and allows user access to the
application's functionality.
• Veeam Backup Manager is activated by the Veeam Backup Service at startup of every
job. Veeam Backup Manager controls Veeam agents to perform jobs according to the set
job parameters.

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 • Veeam Backup SQL Database is used by the Veeam Backup Service, Veeam Backup Shell,
Veeam Backup Catalog Service and Veeam Backup Manager to store data about the
backup infrastructure, jobs, sessions and so on. The database instance can be located on a
SQL Server installed either locally (on the same machine where the Veeam Backup server
is running) or remotely.
• Veeam Backup Catalog Service is a Windows service that manages guest OS file system
indexing for VMs and replicates system index data files to enable search through guest OS
files. Index data is stored in the Veeam Backup Catalog – a folder on the Veeam Backup
server. The Veeam Backup Catalog Service running on the Veeam Backup server works in
conjunction with search components installed on Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager and
(optionally) a dedicated Microsoft Search Server.
• Veeam Backup PowerShell Snap-In is an extension for Microsoft Windows PowerShell
2.0. Veeam Backup PowerShell adds a set of cmdlets to allow users to perform backup,
replication and recovery tasks through the command-line interface of PowerShell or run
custom scripts to fully automate operation of Veeam Backup & Replication.

Offhost Backup Proxy

By default, when you perform backup or replication jobs in the Hyper-V environment, VM data is
processed directly on the source Hyper-V host where VMs reside and then moved to the target,
bypassing the Veeam Backup server.
VM data processing can produce unwanted overhead on the production Hyper-V host and impact
performance of VMs running on this host. To take data processing off the production Hyper-V
host, you can use the offhost backup mode.
The offhost mode shifts the backup and replication load to a dedicated machine – an offhost
backup proxy. The offhost backup proxy functions as a “data mover” – it retrieves VM data from the
source datastore, processes it and transfers to the destination.
The machine performing the role of an offhost backup proxy must meet the following
requirements:
• The role of an offhost backup proxy can be assigned only to a Microsoft Windows 2008
Server R2 machine (either physical or virtual) with the Hyper-V role enabled since the
offhost backup proxy requires interaction with VSS components.
• The offhost backup proxy must have access to the shared storage where VMs to be
backed up or replicated are hosted.
• To create and manage volume shadow copies on the shared storage, you must install a
VSS hardware provider that supports transportable shadow copies on the offhost proxy
and the Hyper-V host. The VSS hardware provider is usually distributed as a part of client
components supplied by the storage vendor.
When you assign the role of an offhost backup proxy to the selected machine,
Veeam Backup & Replication automatically installs on it light-weight components and services
required for backup proxy functioning. Unlike the Veeam Backup server, backup proxies do not
require SQL – all settings are stored centrally, within the SQL database used by the Veeam Backup
server.
To enable a Hyper-V host or a Windows machine to act as an offhost backup proxy,
Veeam Backup & Replication installs the following services on it:
• Veeam Installer Service is an auxiliary service that is installed and started on any
Windows and Hyper-V server once it is added to the list of managed servers in the
Veeam Backup & Replication console. This service analyses the system, installs and
upgrades necessary components and services.
• Veeam Backup Proxy Service is responsible for deploying Veeam agents and
coordinating their operation. Agents perform main job activities on behalf of
Veeam Backup & Replication, such as performing data deduplication and compression
and so on.

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 • Veeam Hyper-V Integration Service is responsible for communicating with the VSS
framework during backup, replication and other jobs, and performing recovery tasks. The
service also deploys a driver that handles changed block tracking for Hyper-V.

Backup Repository
A backup repository is a location used by Veeam Backup & Replication jobs to store backup files.
Technically, a backup repository is a folder on the backup storage. By assigning different
repositories to jobs and limiting the number of parallel jobs for each one, you can balance the load
across your backup infrastructure.
In the Veeam backup infrastructure, you can use one of the following repository types:
• Windows server with a local or directly attached storage. The storage can be a local
disk, directly attached disk based storage (such as a USB hard drive), or iSCSI/FC SAN LUN
in case the server is connected into the SAN fabric.
On a Windows repository, Veeam Backup & Replication deploys a local Veeam agent
(when you add a Windows-based server to the product console,
Veeam Backup & Replication installs a set of components, including the Veeam Backup
Proxy Service with Veeam agent, on that server). When any job addresses the repository,
the agent on the repository establishes a connection with the source-side agent on the
backup proxy, enabling efficient data transfer over LAN or WAN.
• Linux server with local, directly attached storage or mounted NFS. The storage can be
a local disk, directly attached disk based storage (such as a USB hard drive), NFS share, or
iSCSI/FC SAN LUN in case the server is connected into the SAN fabric.
On the Linux repository, Veeam Backup & Replication deploys and starts the Veeam agent
when a job addressing this repository is launched. The agent establishes a connection
with the source-side agent on the backup proxy, enabling efficient data transfer over LAN
or WAN.
• CIFS (SMB) share. SMB share does not support Veeam agents, therefore data to the SMB
share is written from a Windows-based proxying server. By default, the role of such a
proxying server is performed by the Veeam Backup server.
However, if you plan to move VM data to an offsite SMB repository over a WAN link, it is
recommended that you deploy an additional proxying Windows server in the remote site,
closer to the SMB repository. Veeam Backup & Replication will deploy a Veeam agent on
that proxying server, which will improve data transfer performance.

Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager

Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager is an optional component intended for distributed enterprise
environments with multiple backup servers. Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager federates Veeam
Backup servers and offers a consolidated view of these servers through a web browser interface.
You can centrally control and manage all jobs through a single pane of glass, edit and clone jobs,
monitor job state and get reporting data across all backup servers. Veeam Backup Enterprise
Manager also enables you to search for Windows guest OS files in all current and archived backups
across your backup infrastructure, and restore these files in one click.
Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager can be installed on a physical or virtual machine. You can
deploy it on the Veeam Backup server or use a dedicated machine.
Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager uses the following services and components:
• Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager Service coordinates all operations of Veeam Backup
Enterprise Manager, aggregates data from multiple Veeam Backup servers and provides
control over these servers.
• Veeam Enterprise Manager Enterprise SQL database is used by Veeam Backup
Enterprise Manager for storing data. The database instance can be located on a SQL
Server installed either locally (on the same machine as Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager
Server) or remotely.

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 • Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager Catalog service replicates and consolidates guest
OS file system indexing data from Veeam Backup servers added to Veeam Backup
Enterprise Manager. Index data is stored in Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager Catalog (a
folder on the Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager Server) and is used to search for
Windows guest files in backups created by Veeam Backup & Replication.

Veeam Backup Search

In Veeam Backup & Replication, search for guest OS files in backups is performed with Veeam
Backup Enterprise Manager. However, if you frequently need to search through a great number of
backups, it is recommended to configure the Veeam Backup Search. The Veeam Backup Search is
an optional component in the backup infrastructure that is used for the purpose of search
performance optimization.
To configure the Veeam Backup Search component, you need to install Veeam Backup Search from
the installation package on a machine running Microsoft Search Server.
The Veeam Backup Search server runs the MOSS Integration service that invokes updates of
index databases on Microsoft Search Server. The service also sends search queries to Microsoft
Search Server which processes them and returns necessary search results to Veeam Backup
Enterprise Manager.

Deployment Scenarios
Veeam Backup & Replication can be used in virtual environments of any size and complexity. The
architecture of the solution supports onsite and offsite data protection, operations across remote
sites and geographically dispersed locations. Veeam Backup & Replication provides flexible
scalability and easily adapts to the needs of your virtual environment.
Before installing Veeam Backup & Replication, it is strongly advised to familiarize yourself with
common deployment scenarios and carefully plan your backup infrastructure layout.

Simple Deployment
In a simple deployment scenario, one instance of Veeam Backup & Replication is installed on a
physical or virtual Windows-based machine. This installation is referred to as Veeam Backup server.
Simple deployment implies that the Veeam Backup server fills two roles:
• It functions as a management point, coordinates all jobs, controls their scheduling and
performs other administrative activities.
• It is used as the default backup repository. By default, backup files are stored to the
C:\backup folder on the Veeam Backup server.
In a simple deployment scenario, source Hyper-V servers act as backup proxies, handling job
processing and transferring backup traffic directly to the target. All necessary backup proxy
services are installed on source Hyper-V servers.

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 If you plan to back up and replicate only a small number of VMs or evaluate
Veeam Backup & Replication, this configuration is enough to get you started. If you choose a
simple deployment scenario, Veeam Backup & Replication is ready for use right out of the box – as
soon as it is installed, you can start using the solution to perform backup and replication
operations. To balance the load of backing up and replicating your VMs, you can schedule jobs at
different times.

Tip If you decide to use a simple deployment scenario, you can install Veeam Backup & Replication
right on the Hyper-V host where VMs you want to work with reside. However, to use this Hyper-V
host as the source for backup and replication, you will still need to add it to the Veeam Backup &
Replication console. To learn more, see Adding Hyper-V Servers.

In Hyper-V environments that require an intensive number of backup or replication activities

performed, the simple deployment scheme is not appropriate due to the following reasons:
• The Veeam Backup server might not have enough disk capacity to store the required
amount of backup data.
• A significant load is placed on production servers that combine the roles of backup
proxies and source hosts.
To take the overhead off the Veeam Backup server and source Hyper-V servers, you can use the
advanced deployment scenario.

Advanced Deployment
For mid-size and large-scale Hyper-V environments with a great number of backup and replication
jobs, the advanced deployment scenario can be a good choice.
The advanced deployment includes the following components:

• Virtual infrastructure servers – Hyper-V hosts used as source and target for backup and
replication.

• Veeam Backups server – a configuration and control center of the backup infrastructure.

• Offhost backup proxy – a “data mover” component used to retrieve VM data from the
source datastore, process it and deliver to the target.

• Backup repository – a location used to store backup files.

In the advanced deployment scenario, data processing is shifted from the Hyper-V server to an
offhost backup proxy – a dedicated machine that is deployed on the source side, closer to the
source Hyper-V host. The offhost backup proxy functions as a “data mover”, processing VM data

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and mediating the backup traffic from source to target. Therefore, the job processing overhead
and data transport is offloaded from the source Hyper-V host.
In the advanced deployment scenario, backup data is no longer stored to the backup repository on
the Veeam Backup server. Instead, data is transported to dedicated backup repositories. The
Veeam Backup server becomes a “manager” for offhost backup proxies and backup repositories.

With the advanced deployment scenario, you can expand your backup infrastructure horizontally
in a matter of minutes to meet your data protection requirements. Instead of growing the number
of backup servers or constantly tuning job scheduling, you can install multiple backup proxies and
repositories and distribute the backup workload among them. The installation process is fully
automated, which simplifies deployment and maintenance of the backup infrastructure in your
virtual environment.
In virtual environments with several proxies, Veeam Backup & Replication dynamically distributes
the backup traffic among these proxies. A job can be explicitly mapped to a specific proxy.
Alternatively, you can let Veeam Backup & Replication choose an offhost backup proxy. In this case,
Veeam Backup & Replication will check settings of available backup proxies and select the most
appropriate one for the job. The backup proxy should have access to the source and target hosts,
and to backup repositories to which files will be written.
To regulate the backup load, you can specify the maximum number of concurrent tasks per
backup proxy and set up throttling rules to limit the proxy bandwidth. For a backup repository, you
can set the maximum number of concurrent tasks and define a combined ingestion rate.

Distributed Deployment
The distributed deployment scenario is recommended for large geographically dispersed virtual
environments with multiple Veeam Backup servers installed across different sites. These backup
servers are federated under Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager – an optional component that
provides centralized management and reporting for these servers through a web interface.

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Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager collects data from Veeam Backup servers and enables you to
run backup and replication jobs across the entire backup infrastructure through a single pane of
glass, edit them and clone jobs using a single job as a template. It also provides reporting data for
various areas – for example, all jobs performed within the last 24 hours or 7 days, all VMs engaged
in these jobs and so on. Using indexing data consolidated on one server, Veeam Backup Enterprise
Manager provides advanced capabilities to search for guest OS files of Windows-based VMs
through backups created on all Veeam Backup servers (even if they are stored in repositories on
different sites), and recover them in one click. Search for guest OS files is enabled through Veeam
Backup Enterprise Manager itself; to streamline the search process, you can optionally deploy a
Veeam Backup Search server in your backup infrastructure.
If you use Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager in your backup infrastructure, you do not need to
install licenses on every Veeam Backup server you deploy. Instead, you can install one license on
the Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager server, and it will be applied to all servers across your
backup infrastructure. This approach simplifies tracking license usage and license updates across
multiple Veeam Backup Servers

Resource Scheduling
With its inbuilt mechanism of resource scheduling, Veeam Backup & Replication is capable to
automatically select and use optimal resources to run configured jobs. Resource scheduling is
performed by the Veeam Backup Service running on the Veeam Backup server. When a job starts, it
communicates with the service to inform it about the resources it needs. The service analyzes job
settings, parameters specified for backup infrastructure components, current load on the
components, and automatically allocates optimal resources to the job.
For resource scheduling, the Veeam Backup service considers the following settings in the backup
infrastructure:
• Network traffic throttling
• Maximum number of concurrent tasks for backup proxies and backup repositories
• Data ingestion rate for backup repositories

Network Traffic Throttling and Multithreaded Data Transfer

To limit the impact of Veeam Backup & Replication jobs on the network performance, you can
throttle network traffic for Veeam Backup & Replication jobs. Network traffic throttling prevents
jobs from utilizing the entire bandwidth available in your environment and makes sure that
enough traffic is provided for other critical network operations. It is especially recommended that
you throttle network traffic if you perform off-site backup or replicate VMs to a DR site over slow
WAN links.

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 In Veeam Backup & Replication, network traffic throttling is implemented through rules that apply
to backup proxies (or servers that perform the role of a backup proxy in specific scenarios), so you
do not have to make any changes to your network infrastructure.
Network traffic throttling rules are enforced globally, at the level of the Veeam Backup server. Every
throttling rule limits the maximum throughput of traffic going between servers on the source and
target side. These can be a Hyper-V and Hyper-V host (in case of the on-host replication), a backup
proxy and a Hyper-V host (in case of off-host replication), a Hyper-V host and a backup repository
(in case of on-host backup), a backup proxy and a backup repository (in case of off-host backup), or
a backup proxy and a proxying Windows server (in case of backup to a SMB share).
Rules are set for a pair of IP address ranges (the range can include a single IP address), and are
applied to the source server and the target server between which data is transferred over the
network.
When a new job starts, Veeam Backup & Replication checks network traffic throttling rules against
the servers engaged in the job. If the source and target IP addresses fall into specified IP ranges,
the rule will be applied. For example, if for a network traffic throttling rule you specify 192.168.0.1 -
192.168.0.255 as the source range and 172.16.0.1 – 172.16.0.255 as the target range, and the
source server has IP address 192.168.0.12, while the target server has IP address 172.16.0.31, the
rule will be applied. The network traffic going from the source side to the target side will be
throttled.

Note Please keep in mind that throttling rules are reversible (that is, they function in two directions). If
the IP address of the server on the source side falls into the target IP range, and the IP address of
the server on the target side falls into the source IP range, the rule will be applied in any case.

The Veeam Backup server equally splits available bandwidth between all jobs that use servers to
which a network throttling rule applies. For example, if you run one job that uses a pair of servers
to which the rule applies, the job will get the entire bandwidth allowed by the rule. If you run two
jobs at a time, the allowed bandwidth will be equally split between them. As soon as one of the
jobs completes, the bandwidth assigned to it will be freed, and the remaining job will use the
entire bandwidth allowed by the rule.

Throttling rules can be scheduled for specific time intervals – for example, during business hours.
This way, you will minimize the impact of job performance spikes on the production network.
Alternatively, you can select to apply throttling rules regardless of the time.

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In addition to traffic throttling, Veeam Backup & Replication offers another possibility for network
traffic management – management of data transfer connections. Normally, within one backup
session Veeam Backup & Replication opens 5 parallel TCP/IP connections to transfer data from
source to target. Multithreaded data transfer increases the transfer speed but can place additional
load on the network. If required, you can disable multithreaded data transfer and limit the number
of connections per session to 1.

Limiting the Number of Concurrent Tasks

To avoid overload of Hyper-V hosts, offhost backup proxies and backup repositories,
Veeam Backup & Replication allows you to limit the number of concurrent tasks performed on a
backup proxy (either onhost or offhost), or tasks targeted at a backup repository.
When a new job starts, Veeam Backup & Replication analyzes the list of VMs that the job includes,
and creates a separate task for every VM. Tasks of the same jobs are accomplished in turn, that is,
VMs in the same job are processed one by one. Before processing a new task,
Veeam Backup & Replication detects what backup infrastructure components (backup proxies and
repositories) will be involved.
Task limiting is performed by the Veeam Backup Service that is aware of all backup proxies and
backup repositories connected to it, and settings specified for these backup proxies and
repositories, namely the number of allowed concurrent tasks. Every job running in the backup
infrastructure informs the Veeam Backup Service about its tasks at a 10 second interval. Before a
new task targeted at a specific backup proxy or repository starts, the Veeam Backup Service checks
the current workload (the number of tasks currently working with the proxy or repository) and the
number of allowed tasks per this component. If this number is exceeded, a new task will not start
until one of the currently running jobs is finished.

Limiting Data Ingestion Rate for Backup Repositories

With Veeam Backup & Replication, you can limit the data ingestion rate for backup repositories.
The Veeam Backup Service is aware of data ingestion settings configured for all repositories in the
backup infrastructure. When a job targeted at some backup repository is performed, the Veeam
Backup Service informs the Veeam agent running on the repository about the allowed write speed
specified for this repository so that the agent can limit the write speed to the specified value.
If the repository is used by a number of jobs, the allowed write speed is equally split between all of
them.

Detecting Performance Bottlenecks

As any backup application handles a great amount of data, it is important to make sure the data
flow is efficient and all resources engaged in the backup process are optimally used. During a job
run, VM data blocks are processed in cycles. Every cycle includes a number of stages – reading data
blocks from source, processing data on the source host or an offhost backup proxy, transmitting
data over the network and writing data to target. VM data therefore is passed over the data pipe.
When one data processing cycle is over, the next cycle begins.
Veeam Backup & Replication provides advanced statistics about the data path performance and
lets you identify bottlenecks in the data transmission process.
To evaluate the data flow efficiency, Veeam Backup & Replication analyzes performance of all
components in the data pipe working as the cohesive system, and evaluates key factors on the
source and target sides.

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In the data pipe, the following points, or components, are considered:
(1) Source – the source disk reader component responsible for retrieving data from the
source storage.
(2) Proxy – the backup proxy component responsible for processing VM data.
(3) Network – the network queue writer component responsible for getting processed VM
data from the backup proxy and sending it over the network to the backup repository or
another backup proxy.
(4) Target – the target disk writer component (backup storage or replica datastore).
The resource usage level for the four points is evaluated in percent. This percent rate defines the
amount of time for which components are busy during the job. An efficient data flow assumes that
there is no latency at any point of the data pipe and all its components work for approximately
equal amount of time. If any of the components operates inefficiently, there may appear a
bottleneck in the data path. The insufficient component will work 100% of time while the others
will be idling, waiting for data to be transferred. As a result, the whole data flow will slow down to
the level of the slowest point in the data path, and the overall time of data processing will increase.
To identify a bottleneck in the data path, Veeam Backup & Replication detects the component with
the maximum workload – that is, the component that works for the most time of the job. For
example, you use a low-speed storage device as the backup repository. Even if VM data is retrieved
from SAN storage on the source side and transmitted over a high-speed link, VM data flow will still
be impaired at the backup repository. The backup repository will be trying to consume transferred
data at the rate that exceeds its capacity, and the other components will stay idle. As a result, the
backup repository will be working 100% of job time, while other components may be employed,
for example, for 60% only. In terms of Veeam Backup & Replication, such data path will be
considered insufficient.
The bottleneck statistics for a job is displayed in the job session data. The bottleneck statistics does
not necessarily mean that you have a problem in your backup infrastructure – it simply informs you
about the weakest component in the data path. However, if you feel the job performance is low,
you may try taking some measures to resolve the bottleneck. For instance, in the case described
above, you can limit the number of concurrent tasks for the backup repository.

Backup
Unlike traditional backup tools designed to work with physical machines,
Veeam Backup & Replication is built specifically for virtual environments. It operates at the
virtualization layer and uses an image-based approach for virtual machines backup. To retrieve
VM data, no agent software needs to be installed inside the guest OS – instead,
Veeam Backup & Replication leverages VSS snapshot capabilities. When a new backup session
starts, a VSS snapshot is triggered to create a cohesive point-in-time copy of a VM including its
configuration, OS, applications, associated data, system state and so on.
Veeam Backup & Replication utilizes this point-in-time copy to retrieve VM data for backup.
Image-based backups are used for different types of recovery — Instant VM Recovery, full VM
recovery, VM file recovery, file-level recovery.
Use of the image-based approach allows Veeam Backup & Replication to overcome shortfalls and
limitations of traditional backup – such as the necessity to provide guest OS credentials for every
VM, significant resource overhead on the VM and on the hypervisor during the backup process,
management overhead and so on. This approach also helps streamline the restore process – to
recover a single VM, there is no need to perform multiple restore operations.
Veeam Backup & Replication uses a cohesive VM image from the backup to restore a VM to the
required state without the necessity for manual reconfiguration and adjustment.
In Veeam Backup & Replication, backup is a job-driven process – one backup job can be used to
process one or more VMs. A job is a configuration unit of the backup activity. Essentially, the job
defines when, what, by what means, how and where to back up. It indicates what VMs should be
processed, what components should be used for retrieving and processing VM data, what backup

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options should be enabled and where to save the resulting backup file. Jobs can be started
manually by the user or scheduled to run automatically.
The resulting backup file stores VM data compressed and deduped. All backup files produced by
the backup job are located in a dedicated job folder on a backup repository.
Veeam Backup & Replication creates and maintains the following types of backup files:
• Full backup (.vbk) to store copies of full VM images;
• Backup increment (.vib or .vrb) to store incremental changes;
• Backup metadata file (.vbm) to provide information on the backup job, VMs in the backup,
number and structure of backup files, restore points, and so on. The metadata file
facilitates import of backups or mapping of backup jobs to existing backups.
To back up VMs, you can use one of two available methods – incremental backup or reversed
incremental backup. Regardless of the method you use, the first run of a job backs up full VM
images. Subsequent job runs are incremental – Veeam Backup & Replication copies only those
data blocks that have changed since the last backup cycle. To keep track of changed data blocks,
Veeam Backup & Replication uses its proprietary changed block tracking mechanism.

Backup Process
Veeam Backup & Replication performs host-based backup of Hyper-V VMs. In contrast to
traditional backup tools that deploy agents inside the VM guest OS and back up from within a VM,
Veeam Backup & Replication uses an agent running on the Hyper-V host or an agent running on
the offhost backup proxy. A VM is treated as an object from the perspective of the Hyper-V host —
Veeam Backup & Replication captures the VM configuration and state along with VM VHD’s and
creates an image-based backup of a VM.
To perform backup of Hyper-V VMs, Veeam Backup & Replication leverages the VSS framework and
Hyper-V VSS components. It acts as a VSS requestor and communicates with the VSS framework.
Veeam Backup & Replication obtains from VSS information about available VSS components,
prescribes what components should be used, identifies volumes where files of the necessary VMs
are located and triggers the VSS coordinator to create volume snapshots.
Before a snapshot of a volume is created, VMs on the volume must be prepared for the snapshot
— that is, data in the VM must be in a state suitable for backup. Veeam Backup & Replication uses
three methods to quiesce Hyper-V VMs on the volume: online backup, offline backup and crash-
consistent backup.
Whenever possible, Hyper-V VSS uses online backup to quiesce VMs. If online backup cannot be
performed, one of the other two methods is used to prepare a VM for a volume snapshot. By
default, Veeam Backup & Replication fails over to the crash-consistent backup if online backup is
not possible. However, you can configure your backup jobs to use the offline backup method
instead.

Online Backup
Online backup is the recommended backup method for Hyper-V VMs. This type of backup requires
no downtime — VMs remain running for the whole period of backup and users can access them
without any interruption. Online backup can only be performed if a VM meets a number of
conditions such as: the VM runs under a VSS-aware guest OS, Hyper-V Integration Services are
installed inside the guest OS, the backup integration service is enabled, and some other
requirements. For a complete list of conditions required for online backup, refer to Microsoft
Hyper-V documentation.
For online backup, Veeam Backup & Replication uses a native Hyper-V approach. To quiesce VM
data, Hyper-V uses two VSS frameworks that work at two different levels and communicate with
each other:
• The VSS framework at the level of the Hyper-V host. This VSS framework is responsible for
taking a snapshot of the volume on which VMs are located (this snapshot is also called
external snapshot).

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 • The VSS framework inside the VM guest OS. This VSS framework is responsible for
quiescing data of VSS-aware applications running inside the VM and creating a snapshot
inside the guest OS (this snapshot is also called internal snapshot).
Online backup includes the following steps:
1. Veeam Backup & Replication interacts with the Hyper-V VSS on the host and requests
backup of specific VMs.
2. The Hyper-V VSS Writer on the host passes the request to the Hyper-V Integration
Components (HV-IC) installed inside the VM guest OS.
3. The HV-IC, in its turn, acts as a VSS Requestor for the VSS framework inside the VM — it
communicates with the VSS framework installed in the VM guest OS and requests backup
of VSS-aware applications running inside this VM.
4. The VSS Writers within the VSS-aware applications inside the guest OS are instructed to
get the application data to a state suitable for backup.
5. After the applications are quiesced, the VSS inside the VM takes an internal snapshot
within the VM using a VSS software provider in the VM guest OS.
6. After the internal snapshot is taken, the VM returns from the read-only state to the read-
write state and operations inside the VM are resumed. The created snapshot is passed to
the HV-IC.
7. The HV-IC notifies the hypervisor that the VM is ready for backup.
8. The VSS provider on the Hyper-V host takes a snapshot of a volume on which the VM is
located (external snapshot).
9. The volume snapshot is presented to Veeam Backup & Replication.
Veeam Backup & Replication reads VM files from the volume snapshot using one of two
backup modes — on-host backup or off-host backup. After the backup is completed, the
snapshot is deleted.

Internal and external snapshots are taken one after another, with a little time difference. During
this time interval, the VM on the volume is not frozen – its applications and OS are working as
usual. For this reason, when the external snapshot is created, there may remain unfinished
application transactions inside the VM, and this data can be lost during backup.
To make sure the VM data is consistent at the moment of backup, Hyper-V VSS Writer performs
additional processing inside the created external snapshot – this process is also known as auto-
recovery.

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 Auto-recovery is performed when a volume snapshot is taken. This process includes the following
steps:
1. Right after the external snapshot (snapshot of a volume) is taken, Hyper-V VSS allows the
Hyper-V VSS Writer time to update data inside the external snapshot before it is
permanently changed to the read-only state.
2. The Hyper-V VSS Writer rolls back a VM on the external snapshot to the state of the
internal snapshot. All changes that took place after the internal snapshot was taken are
discarded – this way, VM data inside the external snapshot is brought to a completely
consistent state suitable for backup. At the same time, the internal snapshot on the
production volume is deleted.
3. As a result, you have a VM on the production volume, and a consistent volume snapshot
that Veeam Backup & Replication uses for backup.

Important! Please note that auto-recovery may take up to several minutes.

Offline Backup
Offline backup (or backup via saved state) is another native Hyper-V approach to quiescing VMs
before taking a volume snapshot. This type of backup requires some downtime of a VM. When a
VM is backed up, the Hyper-V VSS Writer forces the VM into the saved state to create a stable
system image.
Offline backup is performed in the following way:
1. Veeam Backup & Replication interacts with the Hyper-V VSS on the host and requests
backup of specific VMs.
2. The Hyper-V VSS Writer forces a VM into the saved state for several seconds. The VM OS
hibernates and the content of the system memory and CPU is written to a dump file.
3. The VSS provider takes a snapshot of a volume on which the VM is located. After the
snapshot is created, the VM returns to the normal state.
4. The volume snapshot is presented to Veeam Backup & Replication.
Veeam Backup & Replication reads VM files from the volume snapshot using one of two
backup modes – on-host backup or off-host backup. After the backup is completed, the
snapshot is deleted.

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Offline backup may be inappropriate since it incurs downtime to a VM. As an alternative to offline
backup, Veeam Backup & Replication also offers a crash-consistent backup method for those cases
when online backup is not possible, while offline backup is unsuitable.

Crash-Consistent Backup
Crash-consistent backup is Veeam’s method of creating crash-consistent VM images. A crash-
consistent image can be compared to the state of a VM that has been manually shut down. Unlike
offline backup, crash-consistent backup does not involve any downtime. At the same time it does
not preserve data integrity of open files of transactional applications and may result in data loss.
Crash-consistent backup is performed in the following way:
1. Veeam Backup & Replication interacts with the Hyper-V VSS on the host and requests
backup of specific VMs.
2. The Hyper-V VSS Writer notifies the VSS provider that volume snapshots can be taken.
3. The VSS provider creates a snapshot of the requested volume.
4. The volume snapshot is presented to Veeam Backup & Replication.
Veeam Backup & Replication reads VM files from the volume snapshot using one of two
backup modes – on-host backup or off-host backup. After the backup is completed, the
snapshot is deleted.

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Backup Modes
Veeam Backup & Replication offers two modes for processing volume shadow copies – on-host
backup and offhost backup. The difference between the two modes lies in the location where VM
data is processed.

On-host Backup
During on-host backup, VM data is processed on the source Hyper-V host where VMs you want to
back up or replicate reside. All processing operations are performed directly on the source Hyper-V
host. For this reason, on-host backup may result in high CPU usage and network overhead on the
host system.
The on-host backup process includes the following steps:
1. Veeam Backup & Replication triggers a snapshot of the necessary volume.
2. The Veeam agent uses the created volume snapshot to retrieve VM data; it processes the
VM data and copies it to the destination.
3. Once the backup process is complete, the volume snapshot is deleted.

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Offhost Backup
In the offhost backup mode, backup processing is shifted from the source Hyper-V host to a
dedicated machine – an offhost backup proxy. The offhost backup proxy acts as a “data mover”–
the Veeam agent running on it retrieves VM data from the source datastore, processes it and
transfers to the destination. This type of backup does not impose load on the Hyper-V host —
while resource intensive backup operations are performed on the offhost backup proxy,
production hosts remain unaffected. To learn more, see the Offhost Backup Proxy section.
To perform offhost backup, Veeam Backup & Replication uses transportable shadow copies. The
transportable shadow copy technology enables you to create a snapshot of a data volume on one
server and import, or mount, it onto another server within the same subsystem (SAN) for backup
and other purposes. The transport process is accomplished in a few minutes, regardless of the
amount of the data. The process is performed at the SAN storage layer so it does not impact the
host CPU usage or network performance. To learn more, see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ee923636(v=ws.10).aspx
The offhost backup process includes the following steps:
1. Veeam Backup & Replication triggers a snapshot of the necessary volume on the
production Hyper-V host.
2. The created snapshot is split from the production Hyper-V server and mounted to the
offhost backup proxy.
3. The Veeam agent running on a backup proxy uses the mounted volume snapshot to
retrieve VM data; the VM data is processed on the proxy server and copied to the
destination.
4. Once the backup process is complete, the snapshot is dismounted from the offhost
backup proxy and deleted on the SAN.

To be able to perform offhost backup, you must meet the following requirements:
1. You must configure an offhost backup proxy. The role of an offhost backup proxy can be
assigned only to a Microsoft Windows 2008 Server R2 machine with the Hyper-V role
enabled.
2. In the properties of a backup or replication job, the offhost backup method must be
selected. If necessary, you can point the job to a specific proxy (to learn more, see the
Configuring Advanced Options for Offhost Backup Proxies section).
3. The source Hyper-V host and the offhost backup proxy must be connected (through a
SAN configuration) to the shared storage.
4. To create and manage volume shadow copies on the shared storage, you must install and
properly configure a VSS hardware provider that supports transportable shadow copies
on the offhost proxy and Hyper-V host. Typically, when configuring a VSS hardware
provider, you need to specify a server controlling the LUN and disk array credentials to

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 provide access to the array.
The VSS hardware provider is usually distributed as a part of client components supplied
by the storage vendor. Any VSS hardware provider certified by Microsoft is supported.
Note that some storage vendors may require additional software and licensing to be able
work with transportable shadow copies.

Important! If you plan to perform offhost backup for a Hyper-V cluster with CSV, make sure you deploy an
offhost backup proxy on a host that is NOT a part of a Hyper-V cluster.
When a volume snapshot is created, this snapshot has the same LUN signature as the original
volume. Microsoft Cluster Services do not support LUNs with duplicate signatures and partition
layout. For this reason, volume snapshots must be transported to an offhost backup proxy outside
the cluster. If the offhost backup proxy is deployed on a node of a Hyper-V cluster, a duplicate LUN
signature will be generated, and the cluster will fail during backup or replication.

Helpful resources:
• To see a list of tested VSS hardware providers for DPM, use the following link:
http://technet.microsoft.com/library/hh146886.aspx.
• The table below provides links to resources and documentation from some of storage
vendors.

Storage Vendor/ Links to Resources Notes

Type

http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storagewo —
HP
rks/vdsvsshard/index.html
DELL http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/ The VSS hardware provider
PowerVault pvaul/en/hyperv_data_protection_guide_on_%20 for Dell PowerVault can be
dell_powervault_md_series.pdf found on the Resource CD.
DELL Equal http://www.equallogic.com/partnerships/default.a The VSS hardware provider
Logic spx?id=6467, is a part of Host Integration
http://www.equallogic.com/support/default.aspx Tool ( HIT/Microsoft )
(account required)
IBM DS6000 http://www- —
& DS8000 01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=ssg1S4000
series 372&rs=1114
EMC http://powerlink.emc.com/ (account required) Go to Support > Software
(Clarion and downloads and licensing
Symmetrix) > Downloads T-Z> VSS
Provider.
To get detailed information, contact your SAN vendor.

Backup Architecture
The backup infrastructure in the Hyper-V environment comprises the following components:
• One or more source hosts with associated volumes
• Offhost backup proxy (optional)
• Backup repository
The source host and the repository produce two terminal points between which VM data is
moved. Backup data is collected, transformed and transferred with the help of Veeam agents.
Veeam Backup & Replication uses two-agent architecture – one agent interacts with the source
host, and the other one interacts with the repository. The agents communicate with each other
and maintain a stable connection. All backup infrastructure components engaged for the job
make up a data pipe. VM data is moved over this data pipe block by block; processing of a single
VM includes multiple processing cycles.
When a new backup session is started, the target-side agent obtains the job instructions and
communicates with the source-side agent to begin data collection.

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 1. After a VSS snapshot is created, the source-side agent copies VM data from the volume
shadow copy. While copying, the source-side agent performs additional processing – it
consolidates content of virtual disks by filtering out overlapping snapshot blocks, zero-
data blocks and blocks of swap files. During incremental job runs, the agent retrieves
only those data blocks that have changed since the previous job run (note that with
changed block tracking enabled, the speed of incremental backup dramatically
increases). Copied blocks of data are compressed and moved from the source-side agent
to the target-side agent.
2. The target-side agent deduplicates similar blocks of data and writes the result to the
backup file on the backup repository.
Veeam Backup & Replication supports a number of backup scenarios that depend on the type of
repository you use and its location. See the Backup Repository section to learn more about types
of repositories.

Onsite Backup
If you choose to back up to an onsite Windows or Linux-based repository,
Veeam Backup & Replication will start the target-side agent on the Windows or Linux repository
server. The source-side agent can be hosted either on the source host or on a dedicated offhost
backup proxy – depending on the backup mode you use (on-host or off-host). Backup data is sent
from the source host to the repository over LAN.

To back up to an onsite SMB share, you need a Windows-based proxying server that has access to
the SMB share. This can be either the Veeam Backup server or another Windows server added to
the Veeam Backup & Replication console. In this scenario, Veeam Backup & Replication starts the
target-side agent on the proxying server. The source-side agent can be hosted either on the source
host or on a dedicated offhost backup proxy – depending on the backup mode you use (on-host or
off-host).

If you choose to back up VMs to the SMB share in the off-host backup mode, you can use the same
server as the Hyper-V offhost backup proxy and as the proxying server for SMB. In this case,
Veeam Backup & Replication will start the source-side and target-side agents on the same proxy
server.

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Offsite Backup
The common requirement for offsite backup is that one Veeam agent runs in the production site
(closer to the source volume), while the other agent runs in the remote target site (closer to the
repository). During backup, the agents maintain a stable connection, which allows for
uninterrupted operation over WAN or slow links.
If you choose to back up to an offsite Windows or Linux-based repository,
Veeam Backup & Replication will start the target-side agent on the Windows or Linux repository
server. The source-side agent can be hosted either on the source host or on a dedicated offhost
backup proxy – depending on the backup mode you use (onhost or offhost). Backup data is sent
from the source to the repository over WAN.

If you choose to back up to an offsite SMB share in the on-host mode, you should deploy an
additional Windows-based proxying server in the remote site and point SMB to this proxying
server in the Backup Repository settings. In this scenario, Veeam Backup & Replication starts the
target-side agent on the proxying server. The source-side agent can be hosted either on the
source host or on a dedicated offhost backup proxy in the source site – depending on the backup
mode you use (on-host or off-host).

Choosing a VSS Provider

Before you configure backup jobs, it is recommended to decide on a VSS provider that will be used
to create and maintain volume shadow copies.
By default, Veeam Backup & Replication automatically selects a VSS provider on every volume.
Once a day, it scans all managed Hyper-V hosts to update information on connected volumes. As
part of this process, Veeam Backup & Replication also collects information on software and
hardware VSS providers available on every volume. If hardware providers are available,
Veeam Backup & Replication will select a hardware provider. If no hardware providers are installed,

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the VSS system software provider will be selected to create and manage shadow copies on a
volume.
If necessary, however, you can assign a VSS provider on every volume manually. For details, see the
Configuring Connected Volumes section.
If both software and hardware-based providers are present on a volume, it is recommended to
select a hardware provider. Although software providers are generally applicable to a wider range
of storage platforms, they are exposed to a number of limitations:
• Software providers do not support transportable volume shadow copies and cannot be
used for off-host backup. For offhost backup, you must use a VSS hardware provider.
• Software providers are not suitable for backup on CSV, since a significant backup window
is required to back up of VMs that reside on the same volume but are registered on
different hosts. When a cluster node initiates a snapshot on a cluster-shared volume, the
CSV is placed in the “Backup in Progress, Redirected Access” mode. The node that initiated
backup becomes the coordinator node; other cluster nodes cannot take snapshots until
the CSV returns to the direct access mode.
 If a hardware provider is used to take a snapshot in such case, the CSV stays in
the redirected mode while the snapshot is taken; after a volume shadow copy is
created, the CSV resumes direct I/O.
 If a software provider is used to take a snapshot, the CSV stays in the redirected
mode until the backup process completes. In cases when large virtual disks are
processed, the backup time can be significant.
• In Veeam Backup & Replication, only 4 jobs can use the same software provider
simultaneously.
• Hardware providers work at the storage system controller level. Software providers
operate at the software level, between the file system and the volume manager, and can
cause a significant performance overhead on the source host.
• Hardware providers can work with several snapshots simultaneously – if you have several
jobs that work with the same volume, you can run them in parallel. If you use a software
provider, Veeam Backup & Replication serializes VM processing. You will not be able to
start several jobs working with the same volume simultaneously. The volume on which
VM disks reside remains locked by one job for the whole period of data processing. Once
the job completes, the volume becomes accessible for other jobs.

Backup Methods
Veeam Backup & Replication provides two methods for storing backup files:
• Reversed incremental backup (recommended for disk-based backup)
• Forward incremental backup (recommended for disk-to-disk-to-tape and remote site
backups)
Additionally, it is possible to create periodic synthetic or active full backups.

Reversed Incremental Backup

Reversed incremental backup implies that during the first run of a backup job a full backup of a VM
is created. VM data is copied block by block, compressed at an appropriate compression level, and
stored in a resulting full backup file (.vbk). All subsequent backups are incremental – that is,
Veeam Backup & Replication copies only those data blocks that have changed since the last job
run. During incremental backup, Veeam Backup & Replication ‘injects’ changes into the .vbk file to
rebuild it to the most recent state of a VM. It also creates a reversed incremental backup file (.vrb)
containing data blocks that are replaced when the full backup file is rebuilt. Therefore, the most
recent restore point is always a full backup, and it gets updated after every backup cycle.

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 This backup method lets you perform forever-incremental backup and save disk space as you have
to store only one full backup. With reversed incremental backup, you do not have to perform
periodic full backups to guarantee safety of data and to keep up with the specified retention
policy. If the number of restore points allowed by the retention policy is exceeded,
Veeam Backup & Replication will simply delete the earliest reversed increment. For details, see the
Retention Policy section.
Reversed incremental backup enables you to immediately restore a VM to the most recent state
without extra processing. If you need to restore a VM to a particular point in time,
Veeam Backup & Replication will apply related .vrb files to the .vbk file to get you to the required
point in time.

Forward Incremental Backup

During the first run of a forward incremental backup (or simply incremental backup),
Veeam Backup & Replication creates a full backup file (.vbk). At subsequent backups, it only gets
changes that have taken place since the last performed backup (whether full or incremental) and
saves them as incremental backup files (.vib) next to the full backup.

Incremental backup is the best choice if company regulation and policies require you to regularly
move a created backup file to tape or a remote site. With incremental backup, you move only
incremental changes, not the full backup file, which takes less time and requires less tape. You can
initiate writing backups to tape or a remote site in Veeam Backup & Replication itself, by
configuring post-backup activities.

Note With Veeam Backup & Replication, you can easily switch the selected backup mode to the other
one at any moment of time. In this case, Veeam Backup & Replication will not transform the
previously created chain – it will create a new chain next to the existing one. For example, if you
switch from the reversed incremental backup mode to incremental one, it will create a new full
backup next to the reversed incremental chain and will further use it to create forward increments.

Synthetic Full and Active Full Backups

To get the most out of incremental backup, Veeam Backup & Replication enables you to schedule
creation of synthetic full backups on specific days. This option lets you combine advantages of
tape-friendly incremental backup with those of reversed incremental: you can write small
incremental changes to tape and at the same time have the latest VM image in a ready-to-restore
state on disk.
When performing full synthetic backup, Veeam Backup & Replication does not address your Hyper-
V environment to retrieve VM data – it uses the chain of full and incremental backups that are
already kept on backup storage.

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 For example, if you select to perform daily forward incremental backups with synthetic fulls
scheduled on Thursday, Veeam Backup & Replication will perform incremental backup Sunday
through Wednesday as usual. On Thursday, however, it will first create an increment and then, at
the end of the backup job, use the previous full backup (created on Sunday) and a chain of
increments (Monday through Wednesday) to build a new full VM backup (synthetic full). After that,
Veeam Backup & Replication will delete the increment created on Thursday. Such mechanism will
work only once a day on which it is scheduled — if you run the backup job once again on
Thursday, Veeam Backup & Replication will perform an incremental backup.
Every next backup job run will create an incremental backup starting from the new full backup
until next Thursday - when then a new synthetic full will be created in the same way.

If you select to create a synthetic full backup, you can additionally choose to transform all previous
full backup chains to a reversed incremental backup sequence. That is, in the example above,
incremental .vib files (created on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday), as well as the full backup
created on Sunday will be transformed to reversed increments (.vrb files), and you will only have a
full backup created on Thursday. This option enables you to keep only one full backup image on
disk and so reduce the amount of space required to store backups. However, such transformation
takes more time than simply creating a periodic full synthetic backup.

Some companies have to obey regulations and policies requiring that a full backup is created
regularly. To conform to these requirements, Veeam Backup & Replication offers an ability to
periodically perform active full backups instead of forever-incremental backup. Unlike a synthetic
full backup method, when Veeam Backup & Replication re-builds a full backup using existing
backup files on backup storage, during a full active backup, Veeam Backup & Replication reads
data directly from source in your Hyper-V environment.
You can schedule active full backups on specific week days or a day of month, or create a full
backup manually using the shortcut menu of a job. Creation of a new active full backup resets the
chain of increments, so all subsequent backups will use the new full backup. A previously used full
backup file will remain on disk until it is automatically deleted by backup retention policy.

Important! If you choose the incremental backup mode, you will have to select to periodically create a
synthetic full backup or active full backups. This will help you avoid long chains of increments and
thus ensure safety of backup data, and let you maintain a specified retention policy. To learn more,
see the Retention Policy section.

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 Retention Policy
Every successful run of a job creates a new restore point that lets you return your data to an earlier
point in time. When you define retention policy, you specify how many restore points you want to
keep and thus how ‘far’ you want to be able to roll back. Once the specified number is exceeded,
the earliest restore point will be automatically removed. So if the retention policy is set to three
and you already have three restore points, the fourth successful run of a job will delete the restore
point created at the first job run.

Note To maintain the retention policy, Veeam Backup & Replication deletes backup files on the whole,
not separate VMs from the backup files.

Veeam Backup & Replication handles restore points in different ways for incremental and reversed
incremental backups.
In case of reversed incremental backup, Veeam Backup & Replication immediately deletes the
earliest reverse increment as soon as it falls out of the retention policy. For example, if the
retention policy is set to three restore points, two latest reverse increments and a full backup will
be retained.

To be able to restore from a forward incremental backup, you need to have a full backup and a
chain of subsequent increments on disk. If you delete a full backup, the whole chain of increments
will become useless. In a similar manner, if you delete any increment before the restore point to
which you want to roll back, you won’t be able to restore your data (since later increments depend
on earlier increments).
For this reason, if you select forward incremental backup, in some days there will be more restore
points on disk than specified by your retention policy. Veeam Backup & Replication will remove the
full backup chain only after the last increment in the chain falls out of your retention policy (which
will happen once the retention policy reaches the next full backup).

For example, the retention policy is set to three restore points. A full backup is performed on
Sunday, incremental backups are performed Monday through Saturday, and a synthetic full
backup is scheduled on Thursday. Although the policy is already breached on Wednesday, the full
backup is not deleted because without it the chain of increments would be useless, leaving you
without any restore point at all. Thus, Veeam Backup & Replication will wait for the next full backup
and two increments to be created, and only then delete the whole previous chain consisting of the
full backup and increment, which will happen on Saturday.
Veeam Backup & Replication also helps you control retention policy for VMs that were deleted
from the virtual infrastructure, moved to another location or excluded from a job. This option helps

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you avoid keeping redundant data on disk. When you remove a VM, its restore points still remain
on the backup storage.
Retention policy for deleted VMs is especially useful if a job processing deleted VMs is configured
to create synthetic fulls. When creating synthetic full backups, Veeam Backup & Replication does
not address the virtual environment and may stay unaware if a VM is deleted; so, synthetic full
backups will contain data of VMs that have already been removed. To avoid this situation, you can
specify for how long you want to keep restore points for VMs that were deleted for some reason.
When the retention policy is breached, data of the deleted VM will be automatically removed from
backup files.

Scheduling
When you create a job, you can start it manually at any convenient time. However, as the number
of backup and replication jobs increases, it may become hard to keep track of them.
Veeam Backup & Replication provides a number of job scheduling options which enables you to
set up automatic startup schedule for jobs, automatic retries for failed jobs, and a backup window
to limit the time when jobs are performed.

Automatic Startup Schedule

To perform a job on a regular basis, you can schedule it to start automatically, every specified
interval. The Veeam Backup Service running on the backup server continuously checks
configuration settings of jobs and starts them in accordance with their schedules.
Jobs can also be scheduled to run continuously, that is, in a non-stop manner. Technically, a job
running continuously is launched as soon as previous job processing is complete. With
Veeam Backup & Replication, you can run jobs continuously or with an interval as low as one
minute to implement near-continuous data protection (near-CDP) for the most critical applications
and workloads.

Automatic Retry
Veeam Backup & Replication can be configured to retry a job for a certain number of times if the
initial job fails. When Veeam Backup & Replication re-runs a backup job with several VMs, it does
not create a new backup file for failed VMs. Instead, it updates the backup file that has already
been created.
If a VM fails to be backed up during all the specified retries, Veeam Backup & Replication will
attempt to back it up during the next job run. At that, data for all VMs processed by the job will be
written to the same backup file. For example, if a full backup of a VM failed, during the next job run
Veeam Backup & Replication will create a full backup for this failed VM, incremental backup for
other VMs in the job, and write data to the same backup file.

Backup Window
To prevent a backup or replication job from overlapping with production hours and ensure it does
not provide unwanted overhead on your virtual environment, you can limit all jobs to a specific
backup window. A backup window is a period of time on week days when backup and replication

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jobs are permitted to run. If the job exceeds the allowed window, it will be automatically
terminated.

Backup Content
When creating a backup, replication or copy job, you can select to process separate VMs or VM
containers – SCVMM, clusters, hosts, host groups, folders. Alongside with a general case of backing
up a VM or VM container as a whole, Veeam Backup & Replication allows you to determine the
content of the created backup by including or excluding specific VM disks from it.
In some situations it may be necessary to back up only specific VM disks. For example, you may
want to back up only the system disk instead of creating a full backup which would take much
more space than you actually require. Veeam Backup & Replication provides the following options
for disks selection:
• Back up all IDE and SCSI disks (selected by default)
• Back up custom disks at your discretion
Disk processing settings are specified granularly for every VM in the job.
While processing VM data, Veeam Backup & Replication consolidates the content of virtual disks to
present data in the same manner as it is seen by the guest OS. As part of this process,
Veeam Backup & Replication filters out overlapping blocks of snapshots, blocks of swap files and
zero-data blocks.

Changed Block Tracking

When Veeam Backup & Replication performs incremental backup, it needs to know what data
blocks have changed since the previous job run. To keep track of changing data blocks, Veeam &
Backup & Replication uses its proprietary Hyper-V changed block tracking mechanism (CBT).
The CBT mechanism is implemented as a file system filter driver. Veeam CBT driver is installed on
every Hyper-V host that is added to the list of managed servers in Veeam Backup & Replication. The
driver is activated when the host is first addressed by a job with enabled CBT.
The Veeam CBT driver keeps track of changing data blocks in virtual disks. Information on data
blocks that have changed is registered in special .ctp files. When a job is run,
Veeam Backup & Replication uses .ctp files to learn what blocks of data have changed since the last
run of this particular job, and copies only changed data blocks from the disk image.

.ctp files are stored in the C:\ProgramData\Veeam\CtpStore folder on standalone Hyper-V hosts or
on every node of the Hyper-V cluster. The CtpStore folder contains a set of subfolders — one for
every processed VM — in which the following files are stored:
• .ctp files. These files are used by the Veeam CBT driver to keep track of changed data
blocks. For every VHD or AVHD files of a VM, there is a separate .ctp file.
• notes.txt file. This file contains basic information about the VM such as VM name and ID,
and describes for which .vhd files changed block tracking is enabled.
If a Hyper-V VM is registered as a cluster resource, the Veeam CBT driver operates on all cluster
nodes that have access to the VM disks on the CSV. When a backup job is run, Veeam Backup &
Replication copies .ctp files to the temporary folder on the backup proxy used by the backup job:
• If backup is performed in the onhost backup mode, .ctp files are copied to the cluster
node being the current VM owner at the moment when a snapshot is taken.

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 • If backup is performed in the offhost backup mode, .ctp files are copied to the offhost
backup proxy.
Use of CBT increases the speed and efficiency of block-level incremental backups. CBT is enabled
by default. You can disable it either at the host level or at the job level for troubleshooting
purposes. Note that is you choose to run incremental jobs with CBT disabled, the backup window
may increase dramatically, as Veeam Backup & Replication will read all of VM data to detect what
blocks have changed since the last job run.

Note In some cases, CBT data may get corrupted — as a result, Veeam Backup & Replication will fail to
process VMs with changed block tracking. To reset CBT data for individual VMs or specific .vhd files,
you can use the Reset-HvVmChangeTracking PowerShell cmdlet. To learn more, see the Veeam
PowerShell reference guide at http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-backup/resources.html.

Keep in mind that CBT data is reset when you perform product upgrade. When you run a backup
job for the first time after upgrade, Veeam Backup & Replication will not use changed block
tracking — instead, it will scan the VM image to learn what data blocks have changed.

Compression and Deduplication

To decrease traffic and disk space required for storing backup files, Veeam Backup & Replication
provides mechanisms of compression and deduplication.

Compression
Compression decreases the size of created backups but affects duration of the backup procedure.
Veeam Backup & Replication allows you to select one of the following compression levels:
• No compression is recommended if you use storage devices with hardware compression
and deduplication tools to store created backups.
• Low compression is an optimized compression level for very low CPU usage. It is
recommended if the backup proxy does not meet minimum system requirements, and do
not want to load it heavily.
• Optimal compression is the recommended compression level providing the best ratio
between the size of the backup file and time of the backup procedure.
• Best compression provides the smallest size of the backup file but may reduce backup
performance. We recommend that you run backup proxies on computers with modern
multi-core CPU (6 cores recommended) if you intend to use the best compression.

Note Changing the compression level in an existing job will not have any effect on previously created
backup files – it will affect only those backups that will be created after you set the new
compression level.

Deduplication
You can apply deduplication when backing up multiple virtual machines that have similar blocks
within (for example, if virtual machines were created on the basis of the same template), or in case
virtual machines with great amount of free space on their logical disks are backed up.
Veeam Backup & Replication does not store zero-byte blocks or space that has been pre-allocated
but not used. With deduplication, identical blocks or blocks of free space are eliminated, which
decreases the size of the created backup file.

Note Changing the deduplication settings in an existing job will not have any effect on previously
created backup files – it will affect only those backups that will be created after you activate
deduplication or otherwise changed its settings.

Depending on the type of storage you select as a backup target, Veeam Backup & Replication uses
data blocks of different size to process VMs, which optimizes the size of a backup file and job
performance.

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You can choose one of the following storage optimization options:
• The Local target option is recommended for backup to SAN, DAS or local storage. The
SAN identifies larger blocks of data (1024 KB) and therefore can process large amounts of
data at a time. This option provides the fastest backup job performance but reduces the
deduplication ratio – the larger are the data blocks, the lower is the chance to find
identical blocks.
• The LAN target option is recommended for backup to NAS and on-site backup. It
provides a better deduplication ratio and reduces the size of a backup file because of
reduced data block sizes (512 KB).
• The WAN target option is recommended if you are planning to use WAN for offsite
backup. Veeam Backup & Replication will use small data blocks (256 KB), which will result
in the maximum deduplication ratio and the smallest size of backup files, allowing you to
reduce the amount of traffic over the WAN link.

Transaction Consistency
When you perform backup of a running VM, it is necessary to quiesce (or ‘freeze’) it to bring the file
system and application data to a consistent state suitable for backup. Backing up a VM without
quiescence produces a crash-consistent backup. Restoring a crash-consistent backup is essentially
equivalent to rebooting a server after a hard reset. In contrast to it, restoring transactionally
consistent backups (produced with VM data quiesced) ensures safety of data for applications
running on VMs.
To create a transactionally consistent backup of a VM running on the Hyper-V platform,
Veeam Backup & Replication interacts with the VSS framework. The Hyper-V VSS Writer coordinates
its operations with the Hyper-V Integration Services running inside the backed up VM to quiesce
VM operations and create a stable shadow copy of the volume. This approach is also known as
Hyper-V online backup (to learn more, see the Backup Process section).
In addition to quiescing capabilities available with online backup, Veeam Backup & Replication
offers advanced application-aware processing possibilities:
• It applies application-specific settings to prepare every application for VSS-aware restore
at the next VM startup.
• If backup is successful, it performs transaction logs pruning for specific applications.
Advanced application-aware image processing can be enabled at the job level. Note that Veeam’s
possibilities of advanced image processing do not interfere with native VSS quiescing processes: if
advanced application-aware processing from Veeam is disabled, guest OS operations will still be
quiesced with VSS tools in case of online backup.

Application-Aware Image Processing

To perform advanced application-aware image processing, Veeam Backup & Replication does not
deploy persistent agents inside VMs. Instead, it uses a run-time coordination process on every VM
that is started once the backup operation is launched and removed as soon as it is finished.
Deploying a run-time process instead of persistent agents inside VMs helps avoid agent-related
drawbacks such as pre-installing, troubleshooting and updating.
Veeam Backup & Replication provides application-level quiescence for all VSS-aware Windows
operating systems: Microsoft Windows VSS integration is supported for Windows XP (x64 and
later), Windows 2003, Windows Vista, Windows 2008, Windows 2008 R2, and Windows 7. Backup
with application-aware image processing enabled requires that your guest OS has Hyper-V
Integration Services are installed.

Transaction Logs Truncation

If you are performing backup or replication of database systems that use transaction logs (for
example, Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft SQL), you can select to truncate transaction logs after
the job so that they don’t overflow the storage space. Veeam Backup & Replication provides
advanced options of transaction logs handling for different backup scenarios.

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 • You can choose to truncate transaction logs after any VM backup to save disk on storage.
• You can choose to truncate logs after successful VM backup only. With this option
selected, if backup of a VM fails, you will be able to restore the database to any point in
time between the last successfully performed backup and a failed backup job. To do so,
you will have to restore the database from a successful backup, get transaction logs from
the VM that failed to back up, and apply them to a restored database.
• You can choose not to truncate transaction logs at all. This option is recommended if,
together with Veeam Backup & Replication, you are using another backup tool to perform
guest-level backup, and this tool maintains consistency of the database state. In this case,
truncation of logs with Veeam Backup & Replication will break the guest-level backup
chain and cause it to fall out of sync.

Integration with Traditional Backup

One of the major questions that organizations may have when choosing a backup solution is
whether this new solution will fit into the existing data protection strategy. Implementing a new
solution and introducing changes in the established scheme may seem to be a risky point.
Veeam Backup & Replication provides a possibility to integrate with the functioning backup
scheme. This may be very useful, for example, for organizations using traditional backup
technology — tape. For such organizations, Veeam Backup & Replication offers the option of
performing post-backup activities. With this option, you may choose to execute necessary
actions once the backup procedure is complete. One of the most common scenarios in such case is
to run a custom script that will write a ready backup file to tape as soon as the backup process is
finished. At that, a desired post-backup activity may be performed once after a set of backup job
runs, which will protect against redundant load on the virtual environment.

VeeamZIP
With Veeam Backup & Replication, you can quickly perform backup of one or several VMs with
VeeamZIP.
VeeamZIP is similar to full VM backup. The VeeamZIP job always produces a full backup file (.vbk)
that acts as an independent restore point. You can store the backup file to a backup repository, to
a local folder on the Veeam Backup server or to a network share. The VeeamZIP job is not
registered in the database used by Veeam Backup & Replication, and the backup file produced
with it is not available under the Backups node in the Backup & Replication view. To be able to
restore data from such file, you will need to import it to Veeam Backup & Replication. For import,
you can simply double-click the necessary backup file on the machine where Veeam Backup &
Replication is installed.
When you perform backup with VeeamZIP, you do not have to configure a backup job and
schedule it; instead, you can start the backup process for selected VMs immediately. This type of
backup requires minimum settings — you should only select the backup destination, choose the
necessary compression level and enable or disable application-aware image processing if
necessary.

Data Recovery
Veeam Backup & Replication offers a number of recovery verification options for various disaster
recovery scenarios:
• Instant VM Recovery enables you to instantly start a VM directly from a backup file without
retrieving it to the production storage.
• Full VM recovery enables you to recover a VM from a backup file to its original or another
location.
• VM file recovery enables you to recover separate VM files (virtual disks, configuration files
and so on).

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 • Windows file-level recovery enables you to recover individual Windows guest OS files (FAT
and NTFS file systems) from backups and replicas.

Veeam Backup & Replication uses the same image-level backup for all data recovery operations.
You can restore VMs, VM files and individual guest OS files to the most recent state or to any
available restore point.

Instant VM Recovery
With Instant VM Recovery, you can immediately restore a VM into your production environment by
running it directly from the compressed and deduplicated backup file. Instant VM Recovery helps
improve recovery time objectives, minimize disruption and downtime of production VMs. It’s like
having a “temporary spare” for a VM: users remain productive while you can troubleshoot an issue
with the failed VM.
In the Hyper-V environment, Instant VM Recovery is performed in the following way:
1. Veeam Backup & Replication reads the VM configuration from the backup file in the
repository and creates a dummy VM with the same settings and empty disks on the
destination host.
2. Veeam Backup & Replication initiates creation of a protective snapshot for the dummy
VM, and the VM is started. If the Instant VM Recovery process fails for some reason, the
protective snapshot guarantees no data is lost.
3. On the backup repository and on the destination host, Veeam Backup & Replication
deploys a pair of agents that are used to mount the VM disks from the backup file to the
dummy VM.
4. On the destination host, Veeam Backup & Replication starts a proprietary Veeam driver.
The driver redirects requests to the file system of the recovered VM (for example, when a
user accesses some application) and reads necessary data from the backup file on the
backup repository via the pair of agents which maintain the disk mount.
To finalize the VM recovery, you can migrate the VM to the production storage. When you begin
the migration process, Veeam Backup & Replication starts another pair of agents on the backup
repository and on the destination host. The second pair of agents copies data of the recovered VM
from the backup repository to the destination host in the background, and populates disks of the
VM started on the destination host.

The driver on the destination host knows which data has already been restored permanently and
does not redirect requests to such data, reading it directly from the disks of the restored VM. Thus,
performance of the instantly recovered VM will increase as more of the data is copied. When the
VM is restored completely, all Veeam agents are stopped.
If you do not perform VM migration, all operations on the file system of the recovered VM will be
carried out via the disk mount connection. This can be helpful if you will only need the instantly
recovered VM for a short period of time, to perform one or two tasks (for example, look up for
some information stored on the backed up VM).
Instant VM Recovery supports bulk processing so you can immediately restore multiple VMs at
once. If you perform Instant VM Recovery for several VMs, Veeam Backup & Replication uses the
resource scheduling mechanism to allocate and use optimal resources required for Instant VM
Recovery. For details, see the Resource Scheduling section.

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Important! Before you start the Instant VM Recovery, make sure that Changed Block Tracking is enabled for a
host to which you plan to restore a VM. If Changed Block Tracking is disabled for the host, the
driver required for work of Instant VM Recovery will be disabled. To learn more, see the
Configuring Connected Volumes section.

Full VM Recovery
With Veeam Backup & Replication, you can restore an entire VM from a backup to the latest state or
to any good to know point in time if the primary VM fails.
Full VM restore requires you to fully extract the VM image to the production storage.
Veeam Backup & Replication pulls the VM data from the backup repository to the selected storage,
registers the VM on the chosen Hyper-V host and, if necessary, powers it on.
A VM can be restored to its original location or to a new location. When you restore a VM to its
original location, the primary VM is automatically turned off and deleted before the restore. This
type of restore ensures the quickest recovery and minimizes the number of mistakes which can be
potentially caused by changes in VM settings.
When you restore a VM to a new location, you need to specify new VM settings such as a new VM
name, a host and volume where the VM will reside, and network properties.
Veeam Backup & Replication will change the VM configuration file and store the VM data to the
location of your choice.

VM File Recovery
Veeam Backup & Replication can help you to restore specific VM files - .vhd, .xml and others, if any
of these files becomes deleted or the volume gets corrupted. This option provides a great
alternative to full VM restore, for example, when your VM configuration file is missing and you
need to bring it back. Instead of pulling the whole VM image to the production storage, you can
restore a specific VM file only.
When you perform VM files restore, VM files are restored from regular image-level backups. Veeam
agents deployed on the backup repository and the Hyper-V host or the offhost backup proxy
retrieve VM data from the backup file and send it to the original VM location, or a new location
specified by the user.

Guest OS File Recovery

With Veeam Backup & Replication, you can recover an individual file from a backup or a replica to
the most recent state or to any point in time in just a few seconds. Veeam Backup & Replication
does not require you to extract VM image to the local drive or to start up the VM prior to restore –
you can recover files directly from a regular image-level backup (or replica).
When you perform file-level recovery, the content of a backup file is mounted directly to the
Veeam Backup server and displayed in the inbuilt Veeam Backup Browser. After that you can copy
necessary files and folders to your local machine drive, save them anywhere within the network or
simply point any applications to the files and use them normally. The backup file (or replica)
remains in the read-only state no matter what you do.

Replication
To ensure the most efficient and reliable data protection in your virtual environment,
Veeam Backup & Replication complements image-based backup with image-based replication.
Replication is a process of copying a VM from its primary location (source host) to a destination
location (redundant target host). Veeam Backup & Replication creates an exact copy of a VM
(replica), registers it on the target host and maintains it in synch with the original VM.
Replication provides the best recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO)
values as you actually have a copy of your VM in a ready-to-start state. That is why replication is
commonly recommended for the most critical VMs (which run tier 1 applications) that need close-

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 to-zero RTO. Veeam Backup & Replication provides means to perform both onsite replication for
high-availability scenarios and remote (offsite) replication for disaster recovery scenarios. To
facilitate replication over WAN or slow connections, Veeam Backup & Replication optimizes traffic
transmission – it filters out unnecessary data blocks (such as duplicate data, zero-data blocks or
blocks of swap files) and compresses replica traffic. Veeam Backup & Replication also allows you to
apply network throttling rules to prevent replication jobs from consuming the entire bandwidth
available in your environment.
Replication is a job-driven process – one replication job can be used to process one or more VMs.
You can start the job manually every time you need to copy VM data or, if you want to run
replication unattended, create a schedule to start the job automatically. Scheduling options for
replication jobs are similar to those for backup jobs.
To replicate Hyper-V VMs, Veeam Backup & Replication uses an approach that is similar to reversed
incremental backup. During the first run of a replication job, Veeam Backup & Replication copies a
VM running on the source host and creates its full replica on the target host. The replica is stored
uncompressed, in a native Hyper-V format. All subsequent replication jobs are incremental –
Veeam Backup & Replication copies only those data blocks that have changed since the last
replication cycle. To keep track of changed data blocks for Hyper-V VMs,
Veeam Backup & Replication uses its proprietary changed block tracking mechanism.
At every incremental job run, Veeam Backup & Replication “injects” changes into the replica to
rebuild it to the most recent state of the original VM. It also creates a rollback file to store data
blocks that were replaced when the full replica was rebuilt.
Thus, for every replicated VM, Veeam Backup & Replication produces a full replica and a chain of
rollbacks. The replica mirrors the latest state of the original VM, while rollback files serve as restore
points – if you need to restore a replica to a particular point in time, Veeam Backup & Replication
will apply the required rollback files to get you to that point in time. As well as for backup jobs, for
replication jobs you can define a retention period. Veeam Backup & Replication will keep only the
specified number of points, removing any rollbacks that breach the retention policy. For details,
see the Retention Policy section.
All files of a single VM replica are stored in a dedicated folder on the target volume.
Veeam Backup & Replication creates and maintains the following types of replica files:
• Full VM replica (a set of VM configuration files and virtual disks);
• Replica rollback files (.vrb);
• Replica metadata (.vbk) used to store replica change IDs. Veeam Backup & Replication
uses this file to quickly detect changed blocks of data between two replica states. For
details, see the Changed Block Tracking section.

Replication Architecture
The replication infrastructure in the Hyper-V environment comprises the following components:
• Source and target hosts with associated volumes
• Optional offhost backup proxy
The source host and the target host produce two terminal points between which VM data is
moved. The role of a target can be assigned to a single Hyper-V host or to a Hyper-V cluster.

Note Assigning a Hyper-V cluster as a target ensures uninterrupted replication even if one of the cluster
hosts fails. At the first run of the replication job, the VM replica is registered on one of cluster
nodes. At every subsequent job run, Veeam Backup & Replication looks up the replica VM in the
cluster. If the host is not reachable and the replica cannot be found, it will be registered on another
available cluster node.

Replicated data is collected, transformed and transferred with the help of Veeam agents.
Veeam Backup & Replication uses two-agent architecture – one agent interacts with the source
host, and the other one interacts with the target host. The agents communicate with each other
and maintain a stable connection. All replication infrastructure components engaged for the job
make up a data pipe. VM data is moved over this data pipe block by block; processing of a single
VM includes multiple processing cycles.

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When a new replication session is started, the target-side agent obtains the job instructions and
communicates with the source-side agent to begin data collection.
1. After a VSS snapshot is created, the source-side agent copies VM data from the volume
shadow copy. While copying, the source-side agent performs additional processing – it
consolidates content of virtual disks by filtering out overlapping snapshot blocks, zero-
data blocks and blocks of swap files. During incremental job runs, the agent retrieves
only those data blocks that have changed since the previous job run (note that with
changed block tracking enabled, the speed of incremental replication dramatically
increases). Copied blocks of data are compressed and moved from the source-side agent
to the target-side agent.
2. The target-side agent decompresses replica data and writes the result to the
destination volume.
Veeam Backup & Replication supports two replication scenarios – on-host replication and off-host
replication. Both the scenarios are applicable for onsite replication and replication to a remote DR
site.

On-Host Replication
During on-host replication, the source-side agent runs on the source host, while the target-side
agent runs on the target host. Replica data can be transferred over LAN or WAN. In this scenario, no
additional infrastructure components are required. Note, however, that the source-side agent may
cause additional overhead on the source host.

Off-Host Replication
During off-host replication, an additional proxy server should be deployed in the source site. The
source-side agent runs on the proxy server, while target-side agent runs on the target host. All the
necessary data transformations (such as compression, block filtering) are performed on the proxy
server which helps reduce unwanted overhead on the source Hyper-V host during replication.
Replication data between the backup proxy and target host can be transferred over LAN or WAN.

Replica Seeding
If you replicate a VM to a remote DR site, you can use replica seeding. Replica seeding helps
significantly minimize the amount of traffic going from the production site to the disaster recovery
site over WAN or slow LAN links.
With replica seeding, you do not have to transfer all of VM data from the source host to the target
host across the sites when you perform initial replication. Instead, you can use a VM backup

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created with Veeam Backup & Replication as a replica “seed”. When the replication job starts,
Veeam Backup & Replication will use the seed to build a VM replica.
Replica seeding includes the following steps:
1. As a preparatory step for replica seeding, you need to create a backup of a VM that you
plan to replicate.
2. The created backup should then be copied from the backup repository in the production
site to the backup repository in the DR site.

3. When you create a replication job, you should point it to the backup repository in the DR
site. During the first run of a replication job, Veeam Backup & Replication accesses the
repository where the seed (the backup of a VM to replicate) is located, and restores the
VM from the backup. The restored VM is registered on the replication target host in the DR
site. Files of the restored VM are placed to the location you specify as the replica
destination storage.
Virtual disks of a replica restored from the backup preserve their format – in case the
original VM uses dynamically expanding disks, virtual disks of the VM replica are restored
as dynamically expanding.
4. Next, Veeam Backup & Replication synchronizes the restored VM with the latest state of
the original VM. After successful synchronization, in the Backup & Replication view of
Veeam Backup & Replication, under Replicas node you will see a VM replica with two
restore points. One point will contain the state of the VM from the backup file; the other
point will contain the latest state of the original VM you want to replicate.
5. During all subsequent runs of the replication job, Veeam Backup & Replication transfers
only incremental changes in a regular manner.

Replica seeding dramatically reduces traffic sent over WAN or slow connections.
Veeam Backup & Replication does not send full contents of a VM image – it has to transmit only
differential data blocks. You can use replica seeding at any stage of replication. For example, you
may want to use replica seeding to replace the first run of a replication job. You may also use

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 replica seeding if you add new VMs to a replication job, and you already have backups of these
VMs.
For a detailed description of the seeding configuration procedure, refer to the Configuring Replica
Seeding section.

Replica Mapping
To replicate VMs over WAN and slow connections, you can use replica mapping. Similar to replica
seeding, replica mapping helps reduce traffic sent to the target host. Replica mapping can be a
valuable option when you need to reconfigure or recreate backup jobs – for example, if you need
to split one replication job into several jobs.
When configuring a new replication job, you can map an original VM in the production site to an
already existing VM in the DR site. For example, this can be a replica VM created with a previous
replication job or a VM restored from a backup on a DR target host.
Replication to a mapped VM is performed in the following way:
1. During the first run, the replication job will calculate the differences between the original
and mapped VM. Instead of copying and transferring the whole of the original VM, the
first replication job will transfer only increments to synchronize the state of the mapped
VM with the state of the original VM. After successful synchronization, in the Backup &
Replication view of Veeam Backup & Replication, under Replicas node you will see a VM
replica with two restore points. One point will contain the latest state of the mapped VM
(the VM located on the target host); the other point will contain the latest state of the
original VM on the source host.
2. All subsequent runs of the replication job will transfer only increments as well.

Important! The mapped VM (the VM on the target host) should not have any snapshots – otherwise, replica
mapping will not be performed.

For a detailed description of the mapping configuration procedure, refer to the Configuring
Replica Mapping section.

Network Mapping and Re-IP

If you use different network and IP schemes in the production and DR site, in the common case you
would need to change the network configuration of a VM replica before starting it. To eliminate
the need for manual replica reconfiguration and ensure minimum failover downtime,
Veeam Backup & Replication offers possibilities of network mapping and automatic IP address
transformation.
With Veeam Backup & Replication, a replicated VM uses the same network configuration as the
original VM. If the network in your DR site does not match the production network, you can create
a network mapping table for a replication job. The table maps source networks to target networks.
During every job run, Veeam Backup & Replication checks the network configuration of an original
VM against the mapping table. If the original VM network matches any source network in the table,
Veeam Backup & Replication updates the replica configuration file to replace the source network

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with the target one. The VM replica is then re-registered. Thus, network settings of a VM replica are
always kept up to date with the DR site requirements. In case you choose to fail over to a VM
replica, it will be connected to the “correct” network.
For Windows-based VMs, Veeam Backup & Replication also automates reconfiguration of VM IP
addresses. If the IP-addressing scheme in the production site differs from the DR site scheme, you
can create a number of Re-IP rules for a replication job.
When you fail over to a replica, Veeam Backup & Replication checks if any of the specified Re-IP
rules apply to the replica. If a rule applies, Veeam Backup & Replication console mounts image-
based disks of a replica and changes its IP address configuration via the Windows registry. The
whole operation takes less than a second. If failover is undone for any reason or if you fail back to
the original location, replica IP address is changed back to the pre-failover state.

Replica Failover and Failback

In case of software or hardware malfunction, you can quickly recover a corrupted VM by failing
over to its replica. When you perform failover, a replicated VM takes over the role of the original
VM. You can fail over to the latest state of a replica or to any of its good known restore points.
In Veeam Backup & Replication, failover is a temporary intermediate step that should be further
finalized. Veeam Backup & Replication offers the following options for different disaster recovery
scenarios:
• You can perform permanent failover to leave the workload on the target host and let the
replica VM act as the original VM. Permanent failover is suitable if the source and target
hosts are nearly equal in terms of resources and are located on the same HA-site.
• You can perform failback to recover the original VM on the source host or in a new
location. Failback is used in case you failed over to a DR site that is not intended for
continuous operations, and would like to move the operations back to the production site
when the consequences of a disaster are eliminated.
Veeam Backup & Replication supports failover and failback operations for one VM as well as for a
number of VMs. In case one or several hosts fail, you can use batch processing to restore
operations with minimum downtime.

Failover
Failover is a process of switching over from the original VM on the source host to its VM replica on
the target host.
During failover, Veeam Backup & Replication rolls back the replica to the required restore point and
recovers a fully functional VM on the target host. To protect the replica from altering, a protective
snapshot is taken. The VM replica is then powered on. All changes made while the VM replica runs
in the failover state are written to the snapshot differential file. Virtually, the snapshot acts as a
restore point and saves the pre-failover state of a replica to which you can return afterwards.

As a result of failover, the state of the replica is changed from Normal to Failover.
Veeam Backup & Replication temporarily puts replication activities for the original VM on hold until
its replica is returned to the Normal state.

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 In Veeam Backup & Replication, the actual failover is considered a temporary stage that should be
further finalized. That is, after you test the VM replica and make sure the VM runs stable, you
should take another step to perform permanent failover. However, while the replica is still in the
Failover state, you also have an option to undo failover or perform failback.

Important! If possible, avoid powering on a replica manually, as it may disrupt further replication operations or
cause loss of important data. It is strongly recommended to use Veeam Backup & Replication
functionality to perform failover operations.

Permanent Failover
To confirm failover and finalize recovery of a VM replica on the target host, you need to perform
permanent failover. As a result of permanent failover, the VM replica ceases to exist as a replica
and takes on the role of the original VM.
As part of permanent failover, Veeam Backup & Replication removes replica restore points from the
list of replicas in the Veeam Backup & Replication console and clears associated files from the
volume. The protective failover snapshot of the replica VM is deleted to unlock the original disk
files. Changes made while the replica was in the failover state will be committed to disk files when
the VM is restarted.

To protect the VM replica from corruption after performing a permanent failover,

Veeam Backup & Replication reconfigures the replication job and adds the original VM to the list of
exclusions. When the replication job that processes this VM starts, the VM will be skipped from
processing, and no data will be written to the working VM replica.

Undo Failover
To switch back to the original VM, revert replication operations and discard changes made to the
working VM replica, you can undo failover.
When failover is undone, the replica reverts to its pre-failover state, and the protective failover
snapshot is deleted. As a result of the undo failover operation, the state of a replica changes back
to Normal – this means that during the next run, the replication job will process the original VM
and create a new replica restore point.

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Note During failover, the state of the original VM on the source host is not affected in any way. Basically,
if you need to test the replica and its restore points for recoverability, you can perform actual
failover as a background process, while the original VM is running. After all necessary tests, you can
undo failover and go back to the normal mode of operation.

Failback
Veeam Backup & Replication streamlines and automates disaster recovery by providing replica
failback capabilities. Failback is the process of switching from the VM replica to the production VM.
During failback, Veeam Backup & Replication uses the working replica to recover the original VM
and switch back to it.
If you managed to restore operation of the source host, you can switch back to the original VM on
the source host. However, if the source host is not available, you can restore the original VM to a
new location and switch back to it. Veeam Backup & Replication offers three failback options:
• Fail back to a VM in the original location on the source host
• Fail back to a VM that has been restored up-front from a backup in a new location
• Fail back to an entirely new location by transferring all replica files to the selected
destination
The first two options help you decrease recovery time and use of the network traffic, as
Veeam Backup & Replication will transfer only differences between the two VMs. The third option
is used in cases when there is no way to use the original VM or restore the VM before performing
failback.
During failback, Veeam Backup & Replication protects a running VM replica with a failback
snapshot. The snapshot acts as a restore point and saves the pre-failback state of a replica to which
you can return afterwards.

Veeam Backup & Replication uses the VM replica to restore the original VM in the selected location.
• When the VM replica is failed back to an existing VM (either the original VM on the source
host or a VM restored from backup in a new location), Veeam Backup & Replication
calculates the differences and synchronizes the original VM with the VM replica.

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 • When the VM replica is failed back to an entirely new location, all of its files are transferred
to the target host.
After failover, the VM replica is running; changes stored in the snapshot differential file are locked.
During failback, Veeam Backup & Replication transfers replica data to the target destination in two
stages.
1. First, Veeam Backup & Replication updates the restored VM to the replica failover state.
The VM replica is then stopped, and a failback protective snapshot is taken. The replica
stays stopped until the moment when failback is committed or undone.
2. Next, Veeam Backup & Replication transfers all the changes made after failover (that is,
changes made in the interval between the failover and failback protective snapshots).

The state of the replica is changed from Failover to Failback. Replication activities for the recovered
VM are put on hold.
In Veeam Backup & Replication, failback is considered a temporary stage that should be further
finalized. That is, after you test the recovered original VM and make sure it is running correctly, you
should take another step to commit failback. However, while the replica is still in the failback state,
you also have an option to undo failback and return the replica back to the failover state.

Commit Failback
To confirm failback and finalize recovery of the original VM, you need to commit failback. As a
result of failback commit, Veeam Backup & Replication removes the protective snapshots and
unlocks replica disk files. The state of the replica is changed from Failback to Normal.
Further operations of Veeam Backup & Replication depend on the location to which the VM is
failed back:
• If the VM replica is failed back to a new location, Veeam Backup & Replication additionally
reconfigures the replication job and adds the former original VM to the list of exclusions.
The VM restored in the new location takes the role of the original VM, and is included into
the replication job instead of the excluded VM. When the replication job starts,
Veeam Backup & Replication will skip the former original VM from processing, and will
replicate the newly restored VM instead.
• If the VM replica is failed back the original location, the replication job is not reconfigured.
When the replication job starts, Veeam Backup & Replication will process the original VM
in the normal mode.

Undo Failback
If the VM to which you failed back from a replica is non-operational or corrupted, you can undo
failback and switch the replica back to the failover state.

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 When failback is undone, the replica deletes the protective failback snapshot. Changes made while
the VM replica was in the failback state are committed to replica disk files. As a result of the undo
failback operation, the state of a replica reverts from Failback to Failover.

File Copy
As an added benefit, Veeam Backup & Replication provides file copy possibilities. File copying is
the most natural way to deliver image files to hosts, make a backup copy of an existing VM,
exchange VMs and templates between servers or move backups across repositories. Using
Veeam Backup & Replication, you can copy files and folders between and within servers connected
to the Veeam Backup Server.

Note When file copy destination is located on a server managed by Veeam Backup & Replication, traffiс
compression can be used to minimize network bandwidth and improve performance of file copy
activities.

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PLANNING AND PREPARATION
This section describes the planning and preparation steps that you should take before the
Veeam Backup & Replication deployment.

Prerequisites
• Veeam Backup & Replication requires .NET Framework 2.0 SP1. If it is not available, the
Veeam Backup & Replication setup will install it on your computer.
• Veeam Backup & Replication uses SQL Server instance installed either locally or remotely.
In case it is not installed, the Veeam Backup & Replication setup will install SQL Server
2005 Express SP4 on your computer. If an SQL Server instance has already been installed
by the previous version, Veeam Backup & Replication will connect to the existing
database, upgrade it (if necessary) and use it for work.

Requirements
This section covers the list of system requirements to the Hyper-V Infrastructure,
Veeam Backup & Replication console, virtual machines and backup targets, necessary rights and
permissions, as well provides information on ports used by Veeam Backup & Replication.

System Requirements
To ensure successful usage of Veeam Backup & Replication, the following system requirements
should be met:

Virtual Infrastructure

Platform Microsoft Hyper-V

Hosts Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or later with the Hyper-V
role enabled
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1 or later
Hyper-V Infrastructure Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1
or later
Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

Virtual Machines

Hardware All types and versions of virtual hardware are supported.

Pass-through virtual disks and disks connected via in-guest iSCSI
initiator are not supported and are skipped from processing
automatically.
OS Any OS supported by Hyper-V.
Windows file-level restore option is supported on NTFS, FAT and
FAT32 file systems.
Software Hyper-V Integration Services

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 Veeam Backup & Replication Console

Hardware CPU: modern x86/x64 processor (minimum 2 cores

recommended).
Memory: 2 GB for remote Microsoft SQL Server installation, 4 GB
for local Microsoft SQL Server installation.
Hard disk space: 300MB for product installation. 1 GB per 500 VM
for guest file system catalog folder (persistent data). Sufficient
free disk space for Instant VM Recovery cache (non-persistent
data, at least 10GB recommended).
Network: 1 Gbps LAN for on-site backup, 1 Mbps or faster WAN
for off-site backup and replication. High latency links are
supported, but TCP/IP connection must not drop.
OS Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the following operating
systems are supported:
• Microsoft Windows XP SP3
• Microsoft Windows 2003 SP2
• Microsoft Windows Vista SP2
• Microsoft Windows 2008 SP2
• Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 SP1
• Microsoft Windows 7 SP1
Software Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 SP1 (included in the setup)
Microsoft PowerShell 2.0.
SCVMM Admin UI (required only if you plan to add SCVMM
servers to the list of servers managed by
Veeam Backup & Replication).
SQL Database Local or remote installation of the following versions of
Microsoft SQL Server are supported:
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (SQL 2005 SP4 Express
Edition is included in the setup)
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Offhost Backup Proxy

Hardware CPU: any modern x64 processor (minimum 2 cores

recommended)
Memory: 2 GB
Hard disk space: 200 MB free disk space
Network: 1 Gbps LAN for on-site backup, 1 Mbps or faster WAN
for off-site backup and replication. High latency links are
supported, but TCP/IP connection must not drop.
OS 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with
the Hyper-V role enabled.

Backup Repository

Hardware CPU: any modern x86/x64 processor

Memory: 1 GB
Hard disk space: 200 MB for Veeam Backup & Replication
components and sufficient disk space to store backup files and
replicas (high-RPM drives and RAID10 configuration
recommended)
Network: 1 Gbps LAN for on-site backup, 1 Mbps or faster WAN
for off-site backup and replication. High latency links are
supported, but TCP/IP connection must not drop.
OS Any Microsoft Windows OS
Any major Linux distribution

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Required Permissions
The accounts used for installing and using Veeam Backup & Replication should have the following
permissions:

Account Required Permission

Setup Account Local Administrator permissions on the

Veeam Backup & Replication console to install
Veeam Backup & Replication.
Target/Source Local Administrator permissions on the source Hyper-V server.
Host Permissions Root (or equivalent) permissions on the target Linux host.
Write permission on the target folder and share.
SQL Server The user account must have database owner rights for the
Veeam Backup & Replication database on the SQL Server
instance.

Hardware Recommendations
• Using faster processors configuration on the Veeam Backup & Replication console
generally improves the backup performance. We recommend installing
Veeam Backup & Replication on powerful computers with multi-core processors (Intel
Core Duo/Quad, AMD Phenom X2/X4).
• You can additionally improve the backup speed by ensuring that a backup file is saved to
the fast storage (high-RPM hard drives, RAID10 configurations).

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Used Ports
This section covers typical connection settings for the Veeam Backup & Replication infrastructure
components.

Veeam Backup Server Connections

The following table describes network ports that must be opened to ensure proper
communication of the Veeam Backup server with other infrastructure components.

From To Protocol Port Notes

Default VMM Administrator

Console to VMM server port
SCVMM WCF 8100
required by the Veeam Backup
Service.
135, Ports required for deploying
TCP 137- Veeam Backup & Replication
UDP 139, components.
445
Default port used by the Veeam
TCP 6160
Installer Service.
Hyper-V
Default port used by the Veeam
server TCP 6162 Transport Service.
Default range of ports used as
Veeam Backup transmission channels for jobs. For
2500-
server TCP every TCP connection that a job
5000
uses, one port from this range is
assigned.
Default SSH port used as a control
Linux
TCP 22 channel from the console to the
server
target Linux server.
135, Ports required for deploying
TCP 137- Veeam Backup & Replication
UDP 139, components.
Windows 445
server Default port used by the Veeam
TCP 6160
Installer Service.
Default port used by the Veeam
TCP 6162 Transport Service.
Default range of ports used as
transmission channels for jobs
Linux Veeam Backup 2500-
TCP writing to Linux target. For every
server server 5000
TCP connection that a job uses, one
port from this range is assigned.
Default range of ports used as
transmission channels for jobs
Windows Veeam Backup 2500- writing to Windows target. For
TCP
server server 5000 every TCP connection that a job
uses, one port from this range is
assigned.

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Backup Proxy Connections
The following table describes network ports that must be opened to ensure proper
communication of backup proxies with other infrastructure components.

From To Protocol Port Notes

Communication with Veeam Backup Server

Veeam Backup Offhost Backup Default port used by the Hyper-V

TCP 6163 Integration Service.
server Proxy

Communication with Backup Repositories

Hyper-V server/ Port used as a control channel from

Linux
Offhost Backup TCP 22 the backup proxy to the target Linux
server
Proxy host.
135,
Hyper-V server/ Ports used as a transmission channel
Shared folder TCP 137-
Offhost Backup from the backup proxy to the target
CIFS (SMB) share UDP 139,
Proxy CIFS (SMB) share.
445
Default range of ports used as
Hyper-V server/ transmission channels for backup
Linux 2500-
Offhost Backup TCP jobs. For every TCP connection that a
server 5000
Proxy job uses, one port from this range is
assigned.
Default range of ports used as
Hyper-V server/ transmission channels for backup
Windows 2500-
Offhost Backup TCP jobs. For every TCP connection that a
server 5000
Proxy job uses, one port from this range is
assigned.

Communication with Backup Proxies

Default range of ports used as

Hyper-V server/ transmission channels for replication
Hyper-V 2500-
Offhost Backup TCP jobs. For every TCP connection that a
server 5000
Proxy job uses, one port from this range is
assigned.

Job Planning
To ensure sufficient use of resources and faster jobs performance, it is important to plan your
backup, replication and copying jobs in a proper way. This section contains a number of
recommendations that may be helpful in organizing and scheduling jobs.

Organizing Jobs Content

Consolidate VMs created on the basis of one or similar template in the same job for the best
deduplication space savings. Balance this amount with the manageability of your backup job (the
more VMs you include in the job, the longer the job will take in case you need to restart it).

Configuring Jobs Settings

Use of compression decreases the size of created backup files, but may affect the duration of the
backup procedure. You may try backing up VMs using different compression levels to define the
best ratio between the size of the result backup file and the time of the backup procedure.

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Running Multiple Jobs at Once
• Avoid having parallel backup jobs sharing the same sources and targets. During backup,
Veeam Backup & Replication temporarily locks processed VMs; therefore, same VM cannot
be backed up with two jobs simultaneously.
• If your backup window is not enough to back up all your VMs, consider using hardware
VSS providers. For details, see the Choosing a VSS Provider section.

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DEPLOYMENT
The Veeam Backup & Replication setup package comprises the following components:
• Veeam Backup & Replication itself.
• Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager, allowing you to manage multiple
Veeam Backup & Replication installations from a single web console.
• Veeam Backup Search, enabling advanced search functionality in Veeam Backup
Enterprise Manager.
All components can be installed on the same machine, either physical or virtual, or can be set up
separately. This guide covers installation of Veeam Backup & Replication only. To learn about
installation of other components, see corresponding documents available at
www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-backup/resources.html.
Before you begin the installation process, take the following steps to prepare for deployment:
• Check platform-specific and system requirements. Make sure the computer on which
Veeam Backup & Replication is to be installed meets the system requirements. For details,
see the System Requirements section.
• Check account permissions. Make sure all accounts you will be using have sufficient
permissions. You will not be able to use Veeam Backup & Replication successfully if the
accounts do not have required permissions. For details, see the Required Permissions
section.
• Check available ports. Communication between components requires a number of ports
to be open. Carefully plan your backup strategy and infrastructure layout. For details, see
the Used Ports section.
• Make sure you have a license file. When installing Veeam Backup & Replication, you will
be asked to provide a license file. You receive a trial license file when you register at the
Veeam Software web site and download the product, or a full commercial license file
when you purchase the product. Without a license file, you will not be able to install
Veeam Backup & Replication. For information about obtaining a license file, see the
Veeam Backup & Replication Licensing section.

Installing Veeam Backup & Replication

This section will guide you through the Veeam Backup & Replication installation process.

Step 1. Launch the Setup Wizard

Download the latest version of Veeam Backup & Replication from:
http://www.veeam.com/downloads/. Unpack the downloaded archive and run the
Veeam_B&R_Setup_xx.exe setup file.
The setup wizard will be started to guide you through the installation process of
Veeam Backup & Replication.

Step 2. Accept the License Agreement

To install Veeam Backup & Replication, you must accept the license agreement. Read the license
agreement, select the I accept the terms in the license agreement option and click Next.

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Tip You can click Print to print the text of the license agreement for later reference.

Step 3. Install a License

You can install Veeam Backup & Replication with a trial license that was sent to you after
registration, a purchased full license or without any license at all. In the latter case, Veeam Backup
& Replication will be run in the free functionality mode.
To install a license, click Browse and select a valid license file for Veeam Backup & Replication.

To learn about obtaining a license file, see the Veeam Backup & Replication Licensing section.

Step 4. Choose Destination for Installation

During installation, the setup installs the management console (Veeam Backup & Replication itself),
the Veeam Backup Catalog component responsible for indexing VM guest OS files, and the Veeam
Backup PowerShell snap-in for automating backup and replication activities via scripts.
Specify the installation folder for each component. Note that at least 250 MB is required to install
Veeam Backup & Replication, at least 55 MB to install Veeam Backup Catalog, and at least 1MB to
install Veeam Backup PowerShell Snap-in.

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Note The Veeam Backup PowerShell component is disabled by default. To be able to install it, you need
to install the Windows Management Framework Core package first.

Step 5. Choose or Install SQL Server

At this step, you should select an SQL Server instance on which the Veeam Backup & Replication
database should be created or choose to install a new SQL Server instance.
• If the SQL Server is already installed, select the Use existing instance of SQL Server
option. Enter the instance name in the HOSTNAME\INSTANCE format and specify the name
of the database to be used in the Database field.
• If the SQL Server is not installed, select the Install new instance of SQL Server option.
The user account under which the installation is being performed should have sufficient rights to
log on to the selected SQL Server instance using Windows integrated authentication and create a
database on the selected instance.

In case the Veeam Backup & Replication database already exists on the SQL Server instance (that is,
it was created by the previous installations of Veeam Backup & Replication), a warning message
notifying about it will be displayed. Click the Yes button to connect to the detected database. If
necessary, the existing database will be upgraded to the latest version.

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Step 6. Specify Service Credentials
Enter the administrative credentials of the account under which you want to run the Veeam
Backup Service. The user name should be specified in the DOMAIN\USERNAME format.
The user account must have database owner rights for the Veeam Backup & Replication database
on the SQL Server instance and full control NTFS permissions on the VBRCatalog folder where
index files are stored. The Log on as service right will be automatically granted to the specified user
account.
If necessary, change the number of TCP port. By default, the Veeam Backup & Replication service
uses port 9392.

Step 7. Specify Catalog Options

Specify the name and destination for the catalog folder where index files should be stored. By
default, the catalog is located at C:\VBRCatalog. If necessary, change the number of port to be used
by Veeam Backup Catalog components. By default, port 9393 is used.

vPower NFS is used for VMware environments only. If you plan to use Veeam Backup & Replication
to protect both Hyper-V and VMware VMs, specify vPower NFS options.
In the vPower NFS section, specify the folder where instant VM recovery write cache will be stored.
Please note that the selected volume should have at least 10 GB of free disk space.

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Step 8. Install Veeam Backup & Replication
By default, the setup wizard creates the Veeam Backup & Replication shortcut on your desktop. If
you do not want this shortcut to be created, clear the Create shortcut on desktop check box.
You can go back, review and modify previous steps using the Back button. If you are sure that all
settings are configured correctly, click Install to begin the installation.

When the installation completes, click Finish to exit the setup wizard. You can now start
Veeam Backup & Replication.

Uninstalling
To uninstall Veeam Backup & Replication, from the Start menu, select Control Panel > Add or
Remove Programs > Veeam Backup & Replication and click Remove.
The SQL database instance installed and used is not removed at the uninstall process. All jobs data
stored in the database remains as well.

Veeam Backup & Replication Licensing

Veeam Backup & Replication is licensed per CPU socket ("CPU Socket") for each managed server.
Managed Server is defined as a Hyper-V server that is backed up, recovered, collected data from or
otherwise managed by the software. CPU Socket means a single, physical chip that houses not
more than six (6) processor cores on the managed server. Note that Veeam Backup & Replication
uses the common license for VMware and Hyper-V servers.
After downloading the product at: http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-backup/download.html,
you will receive a trial license key. The trial license is valid for 30 days from the moment of
registration.
To obtain a full license key for the desired number of sockets, refer to www.veeam.com/buy-end-
user.html.
The full license includes a one-year maintenance plan. To renew your maintenance plan, please
contact Veeam Customer Support at: support@veeam.com.

Installing Veeam Backup & Replication License

When installing Veeam Backup & Replication, you will be asked to specify the license file that was
sent to you after registration. If you do not have a license, Veeam Backup & Replication will be run
in the free functionality mode.

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To view information on the currently installed license, select Help > License from the main menu.
To change the license, click Install License and browse to the necessary .lic file.

If Veeam Backup & Replication servers are connected to Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager, Veeam
Backup Enterprise Manager collects information about all licenses installed on backup servers
added to it. You can so manage and activate licenses for the whole of the backup infrastructure
from Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager and thus reduce administration overhead. For detailed
information, refer to Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager documentation.

Revoking Hyper-V Servers from the License

Veeam Backup & Replication offers you a possibility to revoke unused Hyper-V servers from the
license. When you run a job that uses a specific host, a license is applied to it. However, you may
want to revoke the license applied by this host and re-use it for some other host. Revoking a host
from the license may be required if the server to which the license is applied does not need backup
or replication anymore – for example, in case it is no longer used.
To revoke a server, select Help > License from the main menu. In the displayed window, click the
Licensed Hosts button — as a result, the list of hosts using the license will be displayed.
The Licensed Hosts list displays all hosts to which the license is applied. When you start
Veeam Backup & Replication for the first time, the list will be empty. After you run a backup or
replication job targeted at some virtual infrastructure objects, this section will display the list of
servers that were engaged in the job, with the number of sockets per each.
To revoke a specific server, select it in the list and click the Revoke button. Licensed sockets used
by it will be freed and will become available for use by other servers.

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Product Editions
Veeam Backup & Replication is available in Standard and Enterprise editions. The Enterprise edition
includes additional features to accommodate the requirements of large enterprise environments.
The differences in features for Standard and Enterprise editions are described in the table below.

Feature Standard Edition Enterprise Edition

File system indexing Restricted Not restricted

You can browse and search for You can browse and search for
files in backups which are files in both current and archived
currently on disk. backups (for example, backups
which have been moved to tape
storage).
1-click file restore via Not available Available
web UI You can restore files directly via
the Veeam Backup Enterprise
Manager web UI either to the
original location or by
downloading them locally.
Job cloning and editing Not available Available
via web UI You can clone existing jobs and
edit their settings directly via the
Veeam Backup Enterprise
Manager web UI.
Both editions use the same setup file, however, the extra functionality becomes available only after
installing a full license for the Veeam Backup & Replication Enterprise Edition. The license is
installed during the setup process. You can also change the type of license used after the product
is installed.

Full and Free Functionality Modes

Veeam Backup & Replication can operate in two functionality modes — full mode and free mode.
• When you run Veeam Backup & Replication in the full functionality mode, you get a
commercial version of the product that provides access to all Veeam Backup & Replication
functionality.
• When you run Veeam Backup & Replication in the free functionality mode, you get a free
version of the product that offers limited capabilities: you can back up single VMs (create
VeeamZIP files), recover VM data from backups, perform file copy operations and migrate
VMs. The free mode is intended for small virtual environments with few VMs. It can also be
used in medium and large-scale environments – if your license has expired, you can
switch to the free functionality mode and perform backup and restore of the most
important VMs. This way, you will be able to protect your mission-critical data up to the
moment your license is renewed.
If you have a valid license installed, Veeam Backup & Replication operates in the full functionality
mode. As soon as your license expires, you will be offered to install a new license or switch to the
free functionality mode. To switch to the free mode, select View > Free functionality only from
the main menu.
To switch back to the full mode, do either of the following:
• Install a valid license — select Help > License from the main menu. In the displayed
window, click the Install License button and select the necessary license file.
• Select View > Full functionality (advanced) from the main menu. Note that if you do not
have a valid license installed, you will not be able to use the functionality provided by the
full mode.

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Veeam Backup & Replication User Interface
The user interface of Veeam Backup & Replication is designed to let you quickly find commands
you need and perform necessary data protection and disaster recovery tasks. This section will
familiarize you with elements of the application user interface.

Main Menu
The main menu in Veeam Backup & Replication contains commands related to general application
settings. You can perform the following operations using the main menu:
• Update components installed on connected servers
• Start PuTTy
• Set up user roles
• Configure traffic throttling rules
• Switch between full and free functionality modes
• Define general application options
• View program help, work with licenses and program logs
• Exit Veeam Backup & Replication

Navigation Pane
The navigation pane, located on the left side of the window, provides centralized navigation and
enables you to easily access Veeam Backup & Replication items organized in views.
The navigation pane is made up of two areas:
• The upper, or the inventory pane, displays a hierarchy or a list of all items relevant for a
specific view. The content of the inventory pane is different for different views. For
example, in the Infrastructure view, the inventory pane displays a list of backup
infrastructure components — virtual infrastructure servers, backup proxies, backup
repositories, application groups and virtual labs. In the Virtual Machines view, the
inventory pane displays a list of servers connected to Veeam Backup & Replication.
• The lower pane contains a set of buttons that enable you to quickly switch between
Veeam Backup & Replication views.

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 Ribbon and Tabs
Operation commands in Veeam Backup & Replication are organized into logical groups and
collected together under tabs on the ribbon. The ribbon is displayed at the top of the main
application window; it contains the Home tab that is always present, and context-sensitive tabs.
• The Home tab provides quick access to the most commonly performed operations. It
enables you to create different types of jobs, perform restore operations and import
backups. This tab is always displayed, no matter which view is currently opened.
• Context-sensitive tabs contain commands specific for certain items and appear when
these items are selected. For example, if you open the Backup & Replication view and
select a backup job in the working area, the Jobs tab containing buttons for operations
with jobs will appear on the ribbon. In a similar manner, if you open the Files view and
select a file or folder, the File tab containing buttons for operation with files will appear
on the ribbon.

Note Commands for operations with items in Veeam Backup & Replication are also available from the
shortcut menu.

Views
Veeam Backup & Replication displays its items in views. When you click the button of a specific
view in the navigation pane, its content is displayed in the working area of Veeam Backup &
Replication.

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Veeam Backup & Replication offers the following views:
• The Backup & Replication view is used to work any kind of jobs (backup, replication and
file copy). It also displays a list of created backups and replicas that can be used for various
restore operations, and provides statistics on recently performed jobs.
• The Virtual Machines view displays the inventory of your virtual infrastructure. The
inventory can be presented from different perspectives – Hosts, Categories and Storage.
You can use the Virtual Machines view to work with inventory objects and quickly add
them to Veeam Backup & Replication jobs.
• The Files view displays a file tree for servers connected to Veeam Backup & Replication,
and can be primarily used for file copying operations.
• The Infrastructure view displays a list of all backup infrastructure components — virtual
infrastructure servers, backup proxies and backup repositories. This view is used to set up
the backup infrastructure that will be used for various data protection and disaster
recovery tasks.
• The History view displays statistics on operations performed with Veeam Backup &
Replication. You can use this section for viewing statistics on performed tasks and
reporting.

Working Area
The working area of Veeam Backup & Replication displays a list of items relevant to a specific view.
The working area looks different depending on the view that is currently opened. For example, if
you open the History view, the working area will display a list of job sessions and restore tasks
performed with Veeam Backup & Replication. If you open the Virtual Machines view, the working
area will display a list of virtual machines that reside on servers connected to Veeam Backup &
Replication.

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ADMINISTRATION
This section describes all types of administration tasks performed to implement your disaster
recovery strategy with Veeam Backup & Replication: setting up the backup infrastructure, creating
backup, replication, file copy jobs, performing restore, accomplishing replica failover and failback,
importing backups, reporting and logging.

Setting Up the Backup Infrastructure

Before creating backup and replication jobs, you need to plan and set up your backup
infrastructure. Though the architecture may vary depending on the virtual infrastructure and data
protection requirements, a typical Veeam Backup deployment comprises the following
components:
• Backup server
• Offhost backup proxy servers
• Backup repositories
• Virtual infrastructure servers –Hyper-V hosts used as source and target servers for backup
and replication, as well as servers used for various types of restore operations.
To learn more about the purpose of each Veeam Backup & Replication infrastructure component,
see the Solution Architecture section.
In general, the procedure of infrastructure setup includes the following steps:
1. Adding servers. First of all, you need to connect to the Veeam Backup server all servers
that you targeted as offhost backup proxy servers, backup repositories, virtual
infrastructure servers.
2. Assigning proxy and repository roles. After you have connected servers, you need to
assign roles of offhost backup proxies and backup repositories to the appropriate servers.
A newly deployed Veeam Backup server can performs the role of a repository in addition to its
primary functions. That is why the Veeam Backup server is also added to the lists of managed
servers and repositories. Hyper-V hosts, by default, perform the role of backup proxies, in addition
to their primary functions.
Essentially, this means that immediately after the Veeam Backup & Replication installation, you can
connect virtual infrastructure servers, configure and run required jobs. The
Veeam Backup & Replication server will be used as the backup server and repository at the same
time, and Hyper-V hosts will be used both as virtual infrastructure components and as backup
proxies .
Such scenario, however, is acceptable only if you plan to protect a small number of VMs or perform
pilot testing. For a full-fledged backup infrastructure, you need to configure offhost backup proxies
and backup repositories. Components in such Veeam Backup deployment will be organized
around the Veeam Backup server which will function as the point of control for job processing.
Data processing tasks will be offloaded to backup proxies and backup repositories.

Adding Servers
In Hyper-V environments, Veeam Backup & Replication supports the following types of managed
servers:
• Hyper-V Server
• Windows Server
• Linux Server
Managed servers are physical or virtual machines used as source and target hosts, offhost backup
proxies, repositories and other servers included into the backup infrastructure. The table below

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 describes which roles can be assigned to the different types of servers managed by
Veeam Backup & Replication.

Offhost
Server Backup
Source Target Backup
Type Repository
Proxy

Hyper-V Server
(standalone Hyper-V
YES YES NO NO
Server, SCVMM
or Hyper-V cluster)
Windows Server NO NO YES YES
Linux Server NO NO NO YES

Note Any Hyper-V Server is also a Windows server. For this reason, Hyper-V hosts can be added both as
virtualization servers and standard file servers, depending on the roles which you want to assign
for them. Note that if you plan to use the same host as a Hyper-V server and Windows server, you
should add it to Veeam Backup & Replication twice.

Adding Hyper-V Servers

Veeam Backup & Replication allows you to connect standalone Hyper-V hosts, Hyper-V clusters or
SCVMM servers.
Before adding Hyper-V servers, check the following prerequisites:
1. Make sure that SCVMM Admin UI is installed on the Veeam Backup & Replication server.
Otherwise, you will not be able to add SCVMM servers to Veeam Backup & Replication. For
details, see the System Requirements section.
2. On every connected Hyper-V server, Veeam Backup & Replication deploys a set of
components – Veeam Installer Service, Veeam Transport Service and Hyper-V Integration
Service. Ensure that File and Printer Sharing is enabled in the network connection
settings of the server; otherwise, the components will not be installed.
To add Hyper-V servers, follow the next steps.

Step 1. Launch the New Hyper-V Server Wizard

To launch the New Hyper-V Server wizard, do one of the following:
• Open the Infrastructure view, select the Managed servers node in the inventory pane
and click Add Server on the toolbar or right-click the Managed servers node and select
Add server. In the Add Server window, select Microsoft Hyper-V.
• Open the Virtual Machines view, select the Microsoft Hyper node in the inventory pane
and click Add Server on the toolbar or right-click the Microsoft Hyper node in the
inventory tree and select Add Server.
• Open the Virtual Machines or Files view, right-click anywhere in the inventory pane and
select Add server. In the Add Server window, select Microsoft Hyper-V.

Step 2. Specify Server Name or Address

Enter a full DNS name or IP address of the standalone Hyper-V Server, SCVMM or Hyper-V cluster.
Provide a description for future reference. The default description contains information about the
user who added the server, as well as the date and time when the server was added.

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Step 3. Specify Server Type
Select what type of server you want to add:
• Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). Select this option if you
are using SCVMM to manage multiple Hyper-V servers. Veeam Backup & Replication will
pull information about the Hyper-V hosts and clusters managed by SCVMM to add them
to the console as part of the SCVMM hierarchy.
• Microsoft Hyper-V Cluster. Select this option if you want to add a Hyper-V cluster not
managed by SCVMM. Adding a Hyper-V cluster instead of separate cluster nodes allows
for greater flexibility at work.
• Microsoft Hyper-V Server (standalone). Select this option to add a standalone Hyper-V
server that is not a part of a Hyper-V cluster and is not managed by SCVMM.

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 Step 4. Specify Credentials
Specify credentials for the user account with local administrator privileges on the server you are
adding. The user name should be specified in the DOMAIN\USERNAME format.
Veeam Backup & Replication will use provided credentials to deploy its components on the added
server (Veeam Installer service, Veeam Transport service and Hyper-V Integration service). If you are
adding SCVMM, the same credentials will be applied to all managed hosts.

Note Keep in mind that if any host uses its own credentials different from those you provide, no
components will be deployed on this host. In this case, you will need to provide credentials for
such hosts separately. After you connect SCVMM, expand it to see the list of managed servers,
right-click the required node, select Properties from the shortcut menu and use the Edit Hyper-V
Server wizard to specify credentials.

To customize network ports used by Veeam Backup & Replication components, click Ports.
• Veeam Installer Service is responsible for deploying and updating other Veeam
components on the Hyper-V host. By default, the Veeam Installer Service uses port 6160.
• Veeam Transport Service is responsible for managing Veeam agents during backup and
replication processes. By default, the Veeam Transport Service uses port 6162.
• Hyper-V Integration Service is responsible for snapshot operations and deploying a
driver that handles changed block tracking for Hyper-V. By default, the Hyper-V
Integration Service uses port 6163.

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In the Data transfer options section of the Network Settings window, specify connection
settings for file copying operations. Provide a range of ports to be used as transmission channels
between the source host and the target host (one port per task), and define the size of transmitted
packets. By default, the port range is set to 2500-5000. However, depending on your environment,
you can specify a smaller range of ports – for example, 2500-2510 to be able to run 10 concurrent
jobs at a time.
If the Hyper-V host is deployed outside NAT, select the Run the server on this side check box in
the Preferred TCP connection role section. In the NAT scenario, the outside client cannot initiate
a connection with the Veeam Backup server on the NAT network. Therefore, services that require
the initiation of connection from outside can be disrupted. With this option selected, you will be
able to overcome this limitation and initiate a “server-client” connection, that is, a connection in
the direction of the Hyper-V host.

Step 5. Review Components

At this step, you can review the list of components to be installed on the Hyper-V server.

If you add a SCVMM server, Veeam Backup & Replication will check every managed Hyper-V host to
install or update the components. You can clear check boxes next to hosts that will not be used for
Veeam Backup & Replication operations. No components will be deployed or updated on the
excluded hosts, although such hosts will be available in the SCVMM hierarchy. Later on, you can

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add Veeam Backup & Replication components to a host that was initially excluded. To do so, right-
click the host in the hierarchy and choose Properties from the shortcut menu.

If you add a standalone Hyper-V host, in the Max concurrent tasks field, specify the number of
tasks the Hyper-V host can handle in parallel. If this value is exceeded, the Hyper-V host will not
start a new task until one of the current tasks is finished. Limiting the number of concurrent tasks
may be necessary if you plan to work in the onhost backup mode (where the Hyper-V host
performs the role of the default backup proxy), and want to balance the workload in your backup
infrastructure. To learn more, refer to the Limiting the Number of Concurrent Tasks section.

Hyper-V hosts with multi-core CPUs can handle more concurrent tasks. For example, for 4-core
CPU, it is recommended to specify maximum 2 concurrent tasks, for 8-core CPU – 4 concurrent
tasks. However, when defining the number of concurrent tasks, you should keep in mind the
network traffic throughput in your virtual infrastructure.

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Note In the New Hyper-V Server wizard, the Max concurrent tasks field is available only for standalone
Hyper-V hosts. To limit the number of tasks for SCVMM or Hyper-V cluster, you need to set this
value in properties of each Hyper-V host in the SCVMM hierarchy or cluster separately. To do that,
open the Infrastructure view, select the added SCVMM or Hyper-V cluster in the inventory pane,
right-click the necessary Hyper-V host in the working area and select Properties.

Step 6. Assess Results

At this step of the wizard, Veeam Backup & Replication will install the components on the added
Hyper-V server(s). You will see real-time processing results for each server which is being added to
the list of managed servers. Wait for the required operations to be performed. At the end, you can
assess the results of processing and click Next to continue.

Step 7. Finish Working with the Wizard

Review the configuration information and click Finish to exit the wizard.

Step 8. Configure Connected Volumes

After you have added a Hyper-V server, you can configure settings for volumes connected to the
server. Right-click the server in the management tree and select Manage Volumes from the
shortcut menu. As a result, a window with the list of volumes connected to the server will be
displayed.
Veeam Backup & Replication automatically rescans the list of volumes managed by the server once
a day. You can also start the rescan operation manually:
1. Open the Infrastructure view.
2. Click the Managed Servers node in the inventory tree.
3. Select the necessary server in the working area and click Manage Volumes on the
toolbar. Alternatively, you can right-click the necessary server in the working area and
select Manage Volumes.
Veeam Backup & Replication will retrieve information about newly connected and disconnected
volumes, update the list of volumes and write this information to the Veeam Backup & Replication
database.
By default, Veeam Backup & Replication enables changed block tracking for processing all Hyper-V
VMs. To disable changed block tracking on volumes managed by the host, clear the check box at
the bottom of the Manage Volumes window.

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In addition to settings common for all connected volumes, you can also define volume-specific
settings, such as VSS provider. To take a VSS snapshot of a specific volume,
Veeam Backup & Replication uses one of VSS providers available for the volume. To explicitly
define a VSS provider that should be used on a particular volume, select the necessary volume in
the list, click Edit and choose a provider from the list in the displayed window. If a provider is not
set explicitly, Veeam Backup & Replication scans the list of available providers and selects the most
appropriate one automatically. For details, see the Choosing a VSS Provider section.

Adding Windows Servers

Before adding Hyper-V servers, check the following prerequisites.
On every connected Windows server, Veeam Backup & Replication deploys a set of components –
Veeam Installer service and Veeam Transport service. Make sure the File and Printer Sharing is
enabled in the network connection settings of the server; otherwise, the components will not be
installed.
To add a Windows server, follow the next steps.

Step 1. Launch the New Windows Server Wizard

To launch the New Windows Server wizard, do one of the following:
• Open the Infrastructure view, select the Microsoft Windows node in the inventory tree
and click Add Server on the toolbar.
• Open the Infrastructure or Files view, right-click the Microsoft Windows node in the
inventory tree and select Add Server.
• Open the Virtual Machines or Files view, right-click anywhere in the inventory pane and
select Add server. In the Add Server window, select Microsoft Windows.

Step 2. Specify Server Name or Address

Enter a full DNS name or IP address of a Microsoft Windows server. Provide a description for future
reference. A default description contains the time at which the server was added and the user who
added it.

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Step 3. Specify Credentials
Specify credentials for the user account with local administrator privileges on the server you are
adding. The user name should be specified in the DOMAIN\USERNAME format.
Veeam Backup & Replication will use provided credentials to deploy its components on this server.

To customize network ports used by these components, click the Ports button.
• Veeam Installer Service is responsible for deploying and updating other Veeam
сomponents on the Windows server. By default, the Veeam Installer Service uses port
6160.
• Veeam Transport Service is responsible for managing Veeam agents during backup and
replication processes. By default, the Veeam Transport Service uses port 6162.
In the Data transfer options section of the Network Settings window, specify connection settings
for file copying operations. Provide a range of ports to be used as transmission channels between
the source host and the target host (one port per job), and define the size of transmitted packets.
By default, the port range is set to 2500-5000. However, depending on your environment, you can

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specify a smaller range of ports – for example, 2500-2510 to be able to run 10 concurrent jobs at a
time.
If the Windows server is deployed outside NAT, select the Run the server on this side check box in
the Preferred TCP connection role section. In the NAT scenario, the outside client cannot initiate a
connection with the Veeam Backup server on the NAT network. Therefore, services that require the
initiation of connection from outside can be disrupted. With this option selected, you will be able
to overcome this limitation and initiate a server-client connection, that is, a connection in the
direction of the Windows server.

Step 4. Review Components

At this step, you can review the list of components to be installed on the Windows server. If some
of them are missing, Veeam Backup & Replication will automatically install them.

Step 5. Assess Results

At this step of the wizard, Veeam Backup & Replication will install the components on the added
server in the real-time mode. Wait for the operation to complete and assess the results of server
processing.

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Step 6. Finish Working with the Wizard
Review the configuration information and click Finish to exit the wizard.

Adding Linux Servers

To add a Linux server, follow the next steps.

Step 1. Launch the New Linux Server Wizard

To launch the New Linux Server wizard, do one of the following:
• Open the Infrastructure view, select the Managed servers node in the inventory tree
and click Add Server on the toolbar or right-click the Managed servers node and select
Add server In the Add Server window, select Linux.
• Open the Virtual Machines or Files view, right-click anywhere in the inventory pane and
select Add server. In the Add Server window, select Linux.

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 Step 2. Server Specify Name or Address
Enter a full DNS name or IP address of a Linux server. Provide a description for future reference. A
default description contains the time at which the server was added and the user who added it.

Step 3. Specify Credentials and SSH Port

Specify credentials for the user account with root permissions on the Linux server. If you want to
use these credentials only during the current Veeam Backup & Replication session, clear the Save
password check box. After you close and start the console next time, you will be asked to enter
these credentials when a job addresses this server.
If you choose to use non-root account that does not have root permissions on the Linux server, you
can use the Non-root account section to grant sudo rights to this account. Select the Elevate
specified account to root check box to provide a non-root user with access to the added server.
You can add the account to sudoers file automatically by selecting the Add account to the
sudoers file automatically check box. If you do not select this check box, you will have to
manually add the user to the sudoers file.

Note Make sure that in the sudoers file the NOPASSWD:ALL option is enabled for the user account you
want to elevate to root. Otherwise, jobs addressing the server will be failing, as sudo will request
the password.

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Click Advanced to configure advanced SSH settings.
In the Service console connection section, specify the SSH port to be used, and SSH timeout. By
default, SSH uses port number 22.
In the Data transfer options section of the SSH Settings window, specify a range of ports to be
used as transmission channels between the source host and the target host (one port per task),
and define the size of transmitted packets. By default, the port range is set to 2500-5000. However,
depending on your environment, you can specify a smaller range of ports – for example, 2500-
2510 to be able to run 10 concurrent jobs at a time.
If the Linux server is deployed outside NAT, select the Run the server on this side check box in the
Preferred TCP connection role section. In the NAT scenario, the outside client cannot initiate a
connection with the Veeam Backup server on the NAT network. Therefore, services that require the
initiation of connection from outside can be disrupted. With this option selected, you will be able
to overcome this limitation and initiate a ‘server-client’ connection, that is, a connection in the
direction of the Linux server.

Step 4. Finish Working with the Wizard

Review the configuration information and click Finish to exit the wizard.

Managing Servers
You can edit settings of added servers, update components installed on servers, and remove
servers from Veeam Backup & Replication.

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Updating Server Components
Every time you launch Veeam Backup & Replication, it automatically checks if the components
installed on managed servers are up to date. If a later version of a component is available (this can
happen when you upgrade Veeam Backup & Replication), the Components Update window will
be displayed, prompting you to update components on managed servers.
You can also open the Components Update window if you select Upgrade from the main menu.
If components on all managed servers are up to date, the menu item will be disabled.
The Components Update section lists servers that have outdated components deployed. To see
the current and the latest available versions for deployed components, select a server in the list
and click Details. Select check boxes next to servers for which you want to upgrade components
and click Next.

You can also update components on every managed server separately.

Veeam Backup & Replication displays a warning icon next to Windows server icons in the
management tree to alert you when components on a server require updates. To update
components, open the Infrastructure view, select the Managed Servers node in the inventory
pane, select the necessary server in the working area and click Upgrade on the toolbar.
Alternatively, you can open the Infrastructure view, select the Managed Servers node in the
inventory pane, right-click the necessary server in the in the working area and select Upgrade.

Editing Server Settings

To edit settings of an added server:
1. Open the Infrastructure view.
2. Select the Managed Servers node in the inventory tree.
3. Select the necessary server in the working area and click Edit Server on the toolbar or
right-click the necessary server in the working area and select Properties.
You will follow the same steps as you have followed when adding the server. For details, see the
description of the corresponding wizard under Adding Servers.

Removing Servers
To remove a server from the backup infrastructure:
1. Open the Infrastructure view.
2. Select the Managed Servers node in the inventory tree.

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 3. Select the necessary server in the working area and click Remove Server on the toolbar or
right-click the necessary server in the working area and select Remove.

Note A server that has any dependencies cannot be deleted. For example, you cannot delete a server
that is referenced by a backup or replication job, or that performs the role of an offhost backup
proxy or backup repository. To remove such a server, you will need to delete all referencing jobs or
objects first.

When you remove a server that was used as a target host or as a repository, actual backup files
(.vbm, .vbk, .vrb and .vib) and replica files (.vhd, .vrb and .vbk) remain on the server. You can easily
import these files later to the Veeam Backup & Replication console for restore operations if needed.

Adding Offhost Backup Proxies

If you plan to perform backup or replication operations in the offhost mode, you should add
Hyper-V offhost backup proxies. In the backup infrastructure, a backup proxy acts as a “data
mover”. While the backup server fills the role of the job manager, the offhost backup proxy actually
performs main data handling – it retrieves VM data from the source storage, processes it and
transfers to the target destination. Use of offhost backup proxies enables you to take the job
processing off the source Hyper-V host.
Proxy deployment recommendations depend on a particular configuration of your virtual
infrastructure. To learn about different deployment scenarios, see the Backup Architecture section.
To add an offhost backup proxy to your backup infrastructure, you should assign this role to a
Windows server that is already added to the list of managed servers. When deploying an offhost
backup proxy, make sure that you meet the following requirements:
1. The role of an offhost backup proxy can be assigned only to a Microsoft Windows 2008
Server R2 machine with Hyper-V role enabled.
2. The source Hyper-V host and the offhost backup proxy must be connected (through a
SAN configuration) to the shared storage that supports VSS hardware providers.
3. To create and manage volume shadow copies on the shared storage, you must install a
VSS hardware provider that supports transportable shadow copies on the offhost proxy
and Hyper-V host. The VSS hardware provider is usually distributed as a part of client
components supplied by the storage vendor.
4. If you plan to perform offhost backup for a Hyper-V cluster with CSV, make sure you
deploy an offhost backup proxy on a host that is not a part of a Hyper-V cluster. If the
offhost backup proxy is deployed on a node of a Hyper-V cluster, the cluster will fail
during backup and replication.
For details, see the Offhost Backup Proxy and Backup Modes section.
To add a Hyper-V offhost backup proxy, follow the next steps.

Step 1. Launch the New Hyper-V Offhost Backup Proxy Wizard

To launch the New Hyper-V Offhost Backup Proxy wizard, do one of the following:
• Open the Infrastructure view, select the Backup Proxies node in the inventory pane,
click Add Proxy on the toolbar and select Hyper-V.
• Open the Infrastructure view, right-click the Backup Proxies node in the inventory pane
and select Add Hyper-V Offhost Backup Proxy.

Step 2. Choose a Server

From the Choose server list, select a Windows server added to Veeam Backup & Replication. If the
server is not yet added, you can click Add New to open the New Windows Server wizard. In the
Proxy description field, provide a description for future reference.
In the Connected volumes field, specify from which volumes the offhost backup proxy should be
able to retrieve VM data. By default, Veeam Backup & Replication automatically detects all volumes
accessible by the offhost backup proxy. You can also define the list of volumes yourself – for

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example, if you want a particular offhost backup proxy to work with specific volumes. To that end,
click Choose on the right and specify the list of volumes from which VM data should be retrieved.
In the Max concurrent tasks field, specify the number of tasks the offhost backup proxy should
handle in parallel. If this value is exceeded, the offhost backup proxy will not start a new task until
one of the current tasks is finished. To learn more, refer to the Limiting the Number of Concurrent
Tasks section.
Offhost backup proxies with multi-core CPUs can handle more concurrent tasks (for example, for 4-
core CPU, it is recommended to specify maximum 2 concurrent tasks, for 8-core CPU – 4
concurrent tasks). However, when defining the number of concurrent tasks, you should bear in
mind the network traffic throughput in your virtual infrastructure.

Step 3. Configure Traffic Throttling Rules

At this step of the wizard, you can configure throttling rules to limit the outbound traffic rate for
the offhost backup proxy. Throttling rules will help you manage bandwidth usage and minimize
the impact of backup jobs on network performance. To learn more, see the Creating Network
Traffic Throttling Rules section.
The list of throttling rules contains only those rules that are applicable to the offhost backup proxy
you are adding. The rule is applied to the offhost backup proxy if its IP address falls under the
source or target IP range of the rule. To view the rule settings, select it in the list and click View on
the right.

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You can also open global throttling settings and modify them directly from the wizard – to that
end, click the Manage network traffic throttling rules link at the bottom of the window.

Step 4. Review Components

At this step, Veeam Backup & Replication will display the list of components required for work of
the Hyper-V offhost backup proxy – the Veeam Transport Service and the Hyper-V Integration
Service. If any of them are missing, Veeam Backup & Replication will automatically install them on
the offhost backup proxy.

Step 5. Assess Results

At this step of the wizard, Veeam Backup & Replication will install necessary components on the
offhost backup proxy in the real-time mode. Wait for the operation to complete and assess the
results of the backup proxy processing.

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Step 6. Finish Working with the Wizard
Review the configuration information. Then click Finish to exit the wizard.

Configuring Advanced Options for Offhost Backup Proxies

When Veeam Backup & Replication automatically chooses an offhost backup proxy for the job, it
checks to which volumes offhost backup proxies have access. Once a day a service job of hosts
rescan creates a static topology scheme of available connections. When a backup or replication job
is performed, Veeam Backup & Replication uses this scheme to assign the necessary offhost backup
proxy to the job.
In some cases, however, the static topology scheme may not be enough. In some storage
subsystems (for example, iSCSI SAN), the VSS hardware provider configures connections to volume
snapshots on the fly. When a volume snapshot is taken, the VSS hardware provider on the storage
subsystem automatically creates a new target for the volume snapshot, or enables a connection to
the volume snapshot for an offhost backup proxy. In this situation, the mechanism of automatic
proxy detection will not work properly.
You can overcome this situation if you manually specify connected volumes for the offhost backup
proxy and assign the necessary offhost backup proxy to the job.

Presenting Volumes to Offhost Backup Proxies

To check if the topology scheme of connections is correct:
1. Open the Infrastructure view.
2. Select the Backup Proxies node in the inventory pane.
3. Select the necessary proxy in the working area and click Edit Proxy on the toolbar or
right-click the proxy in working area and select Properties.
4. At the Server step of the wizard, click Choose next to the Connected volumes field.

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 1. In the Connected Volumes window, choose the Manual selection option and click
Populate.

2. Veeam Backup & Replication will display a list of detected volumes. If the offhost backup
proxy has access to the volume but the volume is not in the list, you can add it manually.
To do that, click Add and select the necessary volume.

Assigning Offhost Backup Proxies to Jobs

In case automatic proxy detection works incorrectly, you can manually assign the offhost backup
proxy to the job:
1. Open the Backup & Replication view.
2. Select the Jobs node in the inventory pane.
3. Right-click the necessary job in the working area and select Properties.

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 4. At the Storage step of the wizard, click Choose next to the Backup proxy field.

5. Select the Use the following backup proxy servers only check box. Then select check
boxes next to the offhost backup proxies you want to use for the job.

When a job is performed, Veeam Backup & Replication will check the topology scheme of
connections for offhost backup proxies in the list. If none of these proxies matches, Veeam Backup
& Replication will choose an offhost backup proxy from the list at random. In this case, Veeam
Backup & Replication will only check if a VSS hardware provider is installed on the Hyper-V host,
and if this VSS hardware provider supports volumes where VMs are located.

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 Managing Offhost Backup Proxies
To edit settings of an offhost backup proxy:
5. Open the Infrastructure view.
6. Select the Backup Proxies node in the inventory pane.
7. Select the necessary proxy in the working area and click Edit Proxy on the toolbar or
right-click the proxy in working area and select Properties.
Then edit the backup proxy settings as required.
You can temporarily disable a backup proxy – in this case, it will not be used by any job.
1. Open the Infrastructure view.
2. Select the Backup Proxies node in the inventory pane.
3. Select the proxy in the working area and click Disable Proxy on the toolbar or right-click
the proxy in the working area and select Disable proxy. To enable a backup proxy, click
Disable Proxy on the toolbar or right-click the proxy in the working area and select
Disable proxy once again.
To remove a backup proxy:
1. Open the Infrastructure view.
2. Select the Backup Proxies node in the inventory pane.
3. Select the proxy in the working area and click Remove Proxy on the toolbar or right-click
the proxy in the working area and select Remove.
When you remove a backup proxy, Veeam Backup & Replication unassigns the proxy role from the
server, so it is no longer used as a backup proxy. The actual server remains connected to Veeam
Backup & Replication.

Note You cannot remove an offhost backup proxy that is explicitly selected in any backup or replication
job. To remove such a proxy, you need to delete all job references to it first.

Adding Backup Repositories

Backup repositories are locations for storing backup data and auxiliary files on the target side. You
can assign the role of a backup repository to any Windows or Linux server added to the list of
managed servers in Veeam Backup & Replication, or to any shared SMB folder, to which the backup
server has access.
To add a backup repository, follow the next steps.

Step 1. Launch the New Backup Repository Wizard

To launch the New Backup Repository wizard, do either of the following:
• Open the Infrastructure view, select the Backup Repositories node in the inventory
pane and click Add Repository on the toolbar.
• Open the Infrastructure view, right-click the Backup Repositories node in the inventory
pane and select Add Backup Repository.

Step 2. Specify Name and Description

Specify the desired name for the repository and a description for future reference. A default
description contains the time at which the backup repository was created and the user who
created it.

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Step 3. Choose Type of Repository
Select the type of repository you would like to add:
• Microsoft Windows Server with local or directly attached storage. In this case,
Veeam Backup & Replication will deploy a Veeam agent on the Windows server connected
to the storage system. The agent is responsible for data processing tasks, enabling
efficient backups over slow connections.
• Linux Server with local, directly attached or mounted NFS storage.
Veeam Backup & Replication will start a Veeam agent on the Linux server connected to
the storage system every time when the repository is addressed by a job. The agent is
responsible for data processing tasks, enabling efficient backups over slow connections.
• Shared folder using CIFS (SMB) protocol. This type of storage cannot run a Veeam
agent. If you select a shared folder as a backup repository in the off-site backup scenario
(that is, the shared folder is located off-site) and your connections for sending VM data are
slow, it is recommended to deploy a backup proxy closer to the backup repository.

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Step 4. Specify Server or Share
This step depends on the type of backup repository you selected at the previous step.
Microsoft Windows Server or Linux Server
From the Repository server list, select the necessary Windows or Linux server to be used as a
backup repository. The Repository servers list contains only those servers that have been added
to Veeam Backup & Replication beforehand. You can also click Add New on the right to add a new
server to be used as the repository.
Click the Populate button to see a list of volumes connected to the selected server, their capacity
and free space.

Windows Share (CIFS)

In the Shared folder field, specify the UNC path to the shared folder you want to use as a backup
repository. Enter credentials of an account with administrative privileges on the share.
Specify the way in which VM data should be written to the shared folder:
• If you are using fast connections, select the Directly from backup proxy server option to
write VM data directly from the source-side backup proxy to the repository.
• If you are planning to perform off-site backup over WAN connections, select the Through
the following proxying server option and specify an additional Windows-based
proxying server on the target side you are planning to use for moving data to the backup
repository.

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Step 5. Configure Path and Load Control Settings
In the Location section, specify the path to the folder to which backup files should be stored. Click
Populate to see the capacity and available free space on the selected volume.
In the Load control section, set the necessary values to limit the number of concurrent tasks for
the repository. If the specified threshold has been reached, a new task using this repository will not
start. To learn more, refer to the Limiting the Number of Concurrent Tasks section.
You can also limit data ingestion rate to restrict the total speed of writing data to the repository
disk. Limiting the number of concurrent tasks and data ingestion rate will help you control the load
on the repository and prevent possible timeout of storage I/O operations.

If you plan to use a deduplicating storage appliance, click Advanced to configure additional
repository settings:
• For storage systems using fixed block size, select the Align backup file data blocks check
box. Veeam Backup & Replication will align VM data saved to a backup file to a 4Kb block
boundary. This option provides better deduplication across backup files, but can result in

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 greater amount of unused space on the storage device and a higher level of
fragmentation.
When you enable compression for a backup job, VM data is compressed at the source side
before it is transmitted to the target. However, compressing data prior to writing it to
deduplicating storage appliance results in poor deduplication ratios as the number of
matching blocks decreases. To overcome this situation, you can select the Decompress
backup data blocks before storing check box. If data compression is enabled for a job,
Veeam Backup & Replication will compress VM data, transmit it over LAN, uncompress
data on the target side and write raw VM data to the storage device to achieve a higher
deduplication ratio.

Step 6. vPower NFS

This step of the wizard is not applicable for Hyper-V environments. Skip it and proceed to the
following step.

Step 7. Review Properties and Components

After the wizard checks for existing components, you can review the repository properties and
installed components.
Select the Import existing backups automatically check box. Veeam Backup & Replication will
scan the repository folder for existing backup files and automatically add them to the
Veeam Backup & Replication console under the Backups node. If the repository folder contains
guest file system index files that were previously created by Veeam Backup & Replication, select
the Import guest file system index check box. The index files will be imported along with
backups, so you will be able to search for guest OS files inside the imported backups.

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 Step 8. Finish Working with the Wizard
You will see real-time processing results in the log. Wait for the required operations to be
performed. When the wizard completes adding the backup repository, you can review the log
information. Click Finish to exit the wizard.

Managing Backup Repositories

To edit settings of an added backup repository:
1. Open the Infrastructure view.
2. Select the Backup Repositories node in the inventory pane.
3. Select the necessary backup repository in the working area and click Edit Repository on
the toolbar or right-click the repository in working area and select Properties.
Then edit the repository settings as required.
To update information on backups stored on a repository, you can perform repository rescan.
Rescanning can be required if you have moved backups from repository to tape or if you have
copied backups to the repository. To make sure that the Veeam Backup & Replication database
stores up-to-date information about the backups that the repository hosts, open the
Infrastructure view, click the Backup Repositories node in the inventory pane, right-click the
necessary repository in the working area and select Rescan repository.
To remove a backup repository:
1. Open the Infrastructure view.
2. Select the Backup Repositories node in the inventory pane.
3. Select the necessary backup repository in the working area and click Remove Repository
on the toolbar or right-click the repository in working area and select Remove.
When you remove a backup repository, Veeam Backup & Replication unassigns the repository role
from the server, so it is no longer used as a backup destination. The actual server remains
connected to Veeam Backup & Replication.

Note You cannot remove a backup repository that is selected in any backup or replication job. To
remove such a repository, you need to delete all job references to it first.

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Managing Network Traffic
If you plan to perform off-site backup or replicate VMs to a remote DR site, you can manage
network traffic by applying traffic throttling rules or limiting the number of data transfer
connections. To learn more about network traffic management possibilities, see the Network
Traffic Throttling and Multithreaded Data Transfer section.

Creating Network Traffic Throttling Rules

Network throttling rules are applied to limit the maximum throughput of traffic going between
servers on the source and target side. To work with throttling rules, select Traffic Throttling from
the main menu.
1. To create a new rule, in the Global Network Traffic Throttling section click Add.
2. In the Source IP address range section, specify a range of IP addresses for servers
(offhost backup proxies or source Hyper-V hosts) from which backup data will be
transferred over network.
3. In the Target IP address range section, specify a range of IP addresses for servers
(backup repositories or target hosts) to which transferred backup data will be targeted.
4. In the Throttle network traffic to section, specify the maximum speed that can be used
to transfer traffic from source servers to target servers.
5. In the Apply this rule section, specify the period during which the rule should be
enforced. You can select to use throttling rules all the time, or schedule traffic throttling
for specific time intervals – for example, for business hours to minimize the impact of job
performance on the production network.

For example, to manage network traffic during business and non-business hours, you can create
two throttling rules:
• Limit the speed to 1 Mbps Monday through Friday from 7 AM to 7 PM
• Limit the speed to 10 Mbps at the weekend and from 7 PM to 7 AM on week days

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 In this case, Veeam Backup & Replication will limit the transfer speed to 1 Mbps during business
hours, while during non-business hours the speed will be limited to 10 Mbps.

Note If you create several traffic throttling rules for the same range of IP addresses, make sure that time
intervals when these rules are enabled do not overlap.

Network traffic throttling rules that apply to a specific backup proxy can be viewed at the Traffic
step of the backup proxy wizard.

Note that several network traffic rules applied to the same backup proxy or source host may cover
the same range of target IP addresses. In case two throttling rules use the same target IP address
range, but have different speed limits, the rule with the lowest transfer speed will have the
precedence.
For example, there is a 4-Mbps throttling rule for a server with the 192.168.0.12 IP, and a 1 Mbps
rule for the 192.168.0.1-192.168.0.30 IP range. While both rules apply to the server with the
192.168.0.12 IP address, Veeam Backup & Replication will use the lowest transfer speed for the
192.168.0.12 server - that is, 1 Mbps.

Managing Data Transfer Connections

By default, for every backup or replication session, Veeam Backup & Replication uses
multithreaded data transfer. VM data from source to target is transferred over 5 TCP/IP
connections. However, when several backup jobs are scheduled to run at the same time, the load
on the network may be heavy. If the network capacity is not sufficient to support multiple data
transfer connections, you can configure network traffic throttling rules or disable multithreaded
data transfer.
To disable multithreaded data transfer, select Traffic Throttling from the main menu. In the
Global Network Traffic Throttling section, clear the Use multiple TCP/IP connections per job
check box. With this option disabled, Veeam Backup & Replication will use only 1 TCP/IP transfer
connection for every job session.

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Managing Jobs
Any backup or replication operation performed with Veeam Backup & Replication is a job-driven
process. A job is a specific task that can be accomplished immediately after its creation, saved for
future or scheduled to run automatically, at a specific time. Every job belongs to one of the
following types: Backup, Replication and File Copy. To create a job, you should run a corresponding
wizard and complete all wizard steps.
To view all created jobs, open the Backup & Replication view and select the Jobs node in the
inventory pane. The list of available jobs will be displayed in the working area. You can edit job
properties, start and stop jobs, restart failed jobs, view job statistics data and delete unnecessary
jobs. Commands for all listed operations are available from the shortcut menu.

Creating Backup Jobs

To perform backup of virtual machines, you should create a backup job by means of the New
Backup Job wizard. This section will guide you through all steps of the wizard and provide
explanation on available options.

Before You Begin

• Prior to creating a backup job, make sure you have set up all necessary backup
infrastructure components for the job. Open the Infrastructure view and check if the
source hosts are available under the Managed servers node in the inventory pane,
backup proxies and backup repositories are available under the Backup Proxies and
Backup Repositories nodes and properly configured. You will not be able to add backup
infrastructure components or change their configuration once the New Backup Job
wizard is launched. For detailed information on adding backup infrastructure components
see Setting Up Backup Infrastructure.
To estimate what infrastructure components you need for a backup job and learn more
about possible backup scenarios, refer to the Backup Architecture section.
• During every job run, Veeam Backup & Replication checks disk space on the destination
storage. If the disk space is below a specific threshold value, a report in the job session log
will be displayed. To specify the disk space threshold, select Options from the main menu.
On the Notifications tab, specify the amount of free disk space required in percent.
To create a backup job for Hyper-V virtual machines, follow the next steps.

Step 1. Launch the New Backup Job Wizard

To run the New Backup Job wizard, do one of the following:
• On the Home tab, click Backup Job and select Hyper-V.

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 • Open the Backup & Replication view, right-click the Jobs node and select Backup >
Hyper-V.
• Open the Virtual Machines view, select one or several VMs in the working area, click Add
to Backup on the toolbar and select New job. Alternatively, you can right-click one or
several VMs in the working area and select Add to Backup Job > New job. In this case,
the selected VMs will be automatically included into the backup job. You can add other
VMs to the job when passing through the wizard steps.
You can quickly include VMs to already existing jobs. To do that, open the Virtual Machines view,
right-click necessary VMs in the working area and select Add to Backup Job > name of a created
job.

Step 2. Specify Job Name and Description

At the first step of the wizard, enter a name and description for the job. By default, the following
description is initially provided for the job: time when the job was created and name of the user
who created the job.

Step 3. Select Virtual Machines to Back Up

At this step, you should select an individual VM, multiple VMs or VM containers (Hyper-V hosts,
clusters, SCVMM ) you want to back up. Jobs with VM containers are dynamic in their nature: if a
new VM is added to the container after a backup job is created, the job will be automatically
updated to include the added VM.
Click Add button to browse to VMs and VM containers that should be backed up. In the displayed
tree, select the necessary object and click the Add button.
To facilitate objects selection, you can use a search field at the bottom of the window: click the
button to the left of the field and select the necessary type of object to search for (Everything,
Folder, Host Group, SCVMM, Cluster, Host or VM), enter an object’s name or a part of it and click Start
search on the right.

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To remove an object from the list, select it and click Remove on the right.
The initial size of VMs and VM containers added to a backup job is displayed in the Size column in
the list. The total size of backed up objects is displayed in the Total size field. Use the Recalculate
button to refresh the total size value after you add a new object to the job.

Step 4. Exclude Objects from Backup Job

After you have added VMs and VM containers to the list, you can specify which objects should be
excluded from backup. Veeam Backup & Replication allows excluding the following types of
objects: VMs from VM containers, as well as specific VM disks.
To select which objects should be excluded, click Exclusions on the right.
• To exclude VMs from a VM container (for example, if you need to back up the whole
Hyper-V host excluding several VMs running on this host), click the VMs tab. Click Add on
the right and select VMs that should be excluded.
To display all Hyper-V hosts and clusters added to Veeam Backup & Replication, select the
Show full hierarchy check box.
• By default, Veeam Backup & Replication includes into backup all IDE and SCSI disks of a
VM. To select what VM disks you want to exclude from backup, click the Disks tab, select
the necessary VM in the list and click Edit. If you want to exclude disks of a VM added as
part of a container, use the Add button to include the VM in the list as a standalone
instance. You can choose to process all disks or select custom disks.
To change default inclusion settings, choose Selected disks only. In the IDE disks
section, clear check boxes next to IDE disks you want to exclude. In the SCSI disks section,
make up a list of SCSI disks that will be included into backup. You can identify disk names
explicitly or use wildcard characters – asterisk (*) and question mark (?). For example, to
include all SCSI disks, enter *; to include all .vhd disks whose name starts with ‘Disk1’, enter
Disk1*.

Step 5. Define VM Backup Order

If you want to back up specific VMs first, you can define the order in which the backup job must
process VMs. The VM backup order can be helpful if you want to ensure that backup of a VM does
not overlap with other scheduled activities, or that backup is completed before a certain time.
To set the VM backup order, select the necessary VMs and move them up or down the list using the
Up and Down buttons on the right. In the same manner, you can set the backup order for
containers in the backup list. Note, however, that if you choose to back up a container, VMs inside

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a container will be processed at random. To ensure that VMs are processed in the defined order,
you should add them as standalone VMs, not as part of a container.

Step 6. Specify Backup Storage Settings

At this step of the wizard, you should select backup infrastructure components (offhost backup
proxies and backup repository) and define backup storage settings.
Click Choose next to the Backup Proxy field to select the backup mode and backup proxies for
the job.
• If you choose the On-host backup mode, during backup the source Hyper-V host will
combine the roles of a source host and a backup proxy. In the on-host backup mode, the
Veeam agent runs directly on the source host, which helps streamline data retrieval
operations but puts additional overhead onto the host.
• If you choose the Off-host backup mode, the Veeam agent will be started on a dedicated
backup proxy server. In this mode, all backup processing operations are moved to the
proxy, and the source host is offloaded.
By default, if the off-host backup mode is selected for the job, but there are no proxy
servers available when the job starts, Veeam Backup & Replication will automatically fail
over to the on-host backup mode. To disable failover, clear the Failover to on-host
backup mode if no suitable offhost proxies available check box. Note, however, that
the job will not be able to run without available backup proxies.
To perform offhost backup, Veeam Backup & Replication analyzes the current load on
proxies, and proxy settings (such as limitations on the number of allowed tasks,
connectivity to the source volumes) to select the most appropriate backup proxy for the
job automatically. However, you can also explicitly point out backup proxies that the job
can use. To do so, select the Use the following backup proxy servers only check box
and choose allowed backup proxies from the list. It is recommended to select at least two
backup proxies to ensure that the backup job will be performed should one of job proxies
fail or lose its connectivity to the source volumes.
From the Backup repository list, select a repository where the created backup should be stored.
Make sure you have enough free space on the storage device. When you select a repository,
Veeam Backup & Replication checks how much free space is available on the backup repository.

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You can map the job to a specific backup stored in a repository. Mapping can be used if you
moved backup files to a new repository, and you want to point the job to an existing backup on a
new repository. Note that before configuring the mapping settings, you need to rescan the
repository to which you moved backups. Otherwise, Veeam Backup & Replication will not be able
to recognize the backups. For details on rescanning repositories, see the Managing Backup
Repositories section.
Mapping can also be helpful if you need to reconfigure an existing backup job, or if the
Veeam Backup & Replication configuration database is corrupted, so it is necessary to recreate the
jobs. To set up job mapping, click the Map backup link and point to the necessary backup in the
repository. Backups stored in a repository can be easily identified by job names. To facilitate search,
you can also use the search field at the bottom of the window.
In the Retention policy section, specify the number of restore points that should be kept on disk.
If this number is exceeded, the earliest restore point will be deleted. Please keep in mind that such
retention policy mechanism works for reversed incremental backup; for incremental backup
another mechanism is applied. To learn about the retention policy for incremental backup, see the
Retention Policy section.

Step 7. Specify Advanced Backup Settings

Click Advanced to specify advanced options for the backup job.
Backup settings
Select the method you want to use to back up VMs – Reversed incremental or Incremental. To
learn about these backup methods, see the Backup Methods section.

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 If you choose the Incremental method, you must select to periodically create a full synthetic
backup or perform active full backups.
• To create a full synthetic backup, select the Enable synthetic fulls (forever-incremental)
check box and click the Days button to select necessary days. You can additionally choose
to transform all previous full backup chains to the reversed incremental backup sequence.
To do so, select the Transform previous full backup chains into rollbacks check box.
Veeam Backup & Replication will leave only one full backup on the disk, and all .vib files
will be transformed to .vrb files. Keep in mind that .vbk files that were created manually
via the shortcut menu or using the Perform active full backups periodically option will
not be transformed or deleted.
The transformation option allows you to keep only one full backup on disk and so reduce
the amount of space required to store backups. At the same time, it takes more time than
simply creating a full synthetic backup.
• To perform full backups regularly, select the Perform active full backups periodically
check box and define scheduling settings. The created full backup will be used as an initial
point for subsequent increments.
Note that if the active full backup and transformation to the reversed incremental backup
are scheduled on the same day, only full backup will be performed – transformation will
not be performed.

Tip Before you select to perform periodic full backup, make sure you have enough free space on the
backup destination. As an alternative, you can perform full backup manually: right-click a backup
job in the list and select Perform Full Backup from the shortcut menu.

Storage settings
On the Storage tab, specify deduplication, compression and optimization settings for backup files
that the job will provision.

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By default, Veeam Backup & Replication performs deduplication before storing retrieved VM data
to a backup repository. Deduplication provides a smaller size of a resulting backup file but may
reduce backup performance. You can disable deduplication at all by clearing the Enable inline
data deduplication check box.
You can disable deduplication at all by clearing the Enable inline data deduplication check box.
By disabling this option, you also change the mechanism of incremental backup. If Changed Block
Tracking is enabed for the job, Veeam Backup & Replication will save all data block CBT has marked
as new to the destination storage, without performing additional check or using Veeam’s filtering
mechanism. This will result in faster incremental backup. To learn more, see the Changed Block
Tracking section.
In the Compression section, specify a compression level for the created backup: None, Low,
Optimal or Best. To learn more, see the Compression and Deduplication section.
In the Storage section, select the type of backup target you are planning to use. Depending on the
chosen option, Veeam Backup & Replication will use data blocks of different size to optimize the
size of backups and job performance:
• Local target. This option is recommended if you are planning to use SAN, DAS or local
storage as a target. The SAN identifies larger blocks of data and therefore can process
larger quantities of data at a time. This option provides the fastest backup job
performance but reduces the deduplication ratio — the larger is a data block, the lower is
the chance to find an identical block.
• LAN target. This option is recommended for NAS and on-site replication. It provides a
better deduplication ratio and reduces the size of an incremental backup file.
• WAN target. This option is recommended if you are planning to use WAN for off-site
backup. Veeam Backup & Replication uses small data blocks, which involves significant
processing overhead but results in the maximum deduplication ratio and the smallest size
of increment files.
Notifications settings
Use the Notifications tab if you want to be notified when the backup is completed.

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 • Select the Send e-mail notifications to the following recipients check box if you want to
receive notifications by e–mail in case of job failure or success. In the field below, specify a
recipient’s e-mail address. You can enter several addresses separated by a semicolon.
E–mail notifications will be sent only if you have selected the Enable email notification
check box in the Options window and specified e–mail notification settings (select Tools
> Options from the main menu). To learn more, see the Specifying E-Mail Notification
Settings section.
• Select the Enable SNMP notification for this job check box if you want to receive SNMP
traps when a job is completed and a backup is created. SNMP traps will be sent if you
configure SNMP settings in Veeam Backup & Replication and on the recipient’s computer.
To learn more, see the Specifying SNMP Settings section.
Hyper-V settings
In the Incremental backup section, specify if changed block tracking should be enabled. By
default, this option is selected. Changed block tracking dramatically reduces resources and time
required to perform incremental backups. To learn more, see the Changed Block Tracking section.

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In the Linux VM Backup section, specify what backup method will be used to prepare the guest
OS for backup in case the Hyper-V online backup method is not applicable. By default,
Veeam Backup & Replication uses its own techniques to prepare the guest OS and creates a crash-
consistent image of a VM. If you want to use the saved state method for quiescing guest OS, clear
the Take crash consistent backup instead of suspending VM check box. To learn more about
backup methods applicable to Hyper-V VMs, see the Backup Process section.
Advanced settings
On the Advanced tab, specify miscellaneous advanced settings for the job.

• Select the Enable automatic backup integrity checks check box if you want
Veeam Backup & Replication to periodically check a full backup file. An automatic backup
check allows you to verify integrity of a backup file and avoid a situation when a full
backup is corrupted, making all further increments corrupted, too.
A backup check is performed every time the job is started, and a full backup file is re-built
to include new incremental changes. If the check determines a full backup file to be
corrupted (for example, some parts of the backup storage are unreadable), a notification
message will be displayed, prompting you to perform full backup anew. During such full
backup, no integrity check will be performed.
• In the File selective image processing section, define whether you want to exclude
blocks of Windows pagefiles from the backup. During backup, Veeam Backup &
Replication checks the NTFS MTF file on Windows-based VMs to identify blocks of the
Windows pagefile, and excludes these blocks from processing. Windows pagefiles are
dynamic in their nature and change intensively between backup job runs, even if VMs do
not change much. Therefore, pagefile processing results in reduced backup performance
and increased size of backup increments.
Clear the Exclude swap file blocks from processing check box if Windows pagefiles
should be processed during backup.
• In the Synthetic full section, specify the number of days to keep backup data for deleted
VMs. When a backup job starts, Veeam Backup & Replication checks the list of VMs
included into the job. If a VM is no longer available (for example, it was deleted or moved
to another location), Veeam Backup & Replication will keep its data in the backup for the
period you specify in the Deleted VMs data retention period field. When this retention
period is over, data of the deleted VM will be removed from backup files.

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 The retention period for deleted VMs is particularly useful if the job is configured to create
synthetic full backups and you want to make sure that the full backup does not include
redundant data.
• Select the Run the following command check box if you want to execute post-backup
actions, for example, to launch a script recording the resulting backup file to tape. Use the
Browse button to select an executable file.
You can select to execute post-backup actions after a number of backup cycles or on
specific week days. If you select the Run every... backup cycle option, specify the number
of a backup cycle after which the file should be executed. If you select the Run on
selected days only option, click Days and specify week days when actions should be
performed.

Step 8. Enable Application-Aware Image Processing and Indexing

At the Guest Processing step of the wizard, you can enable guest file indexing and select to create
a transactionally consistent backup.

• If you want to create a transactionally consistent backup ensuring successful recovery of

VM applications without any data loss and specify advanced application-aware image
processing settings, select the Enable application-aware image processing check box.
To learn about application-aware image processing, see the Transaction Consistency
section.
• If you want to index guest files in a VM you back up, select the Enable guest file system
indexing check box. Veeam Backup & Replication will perform file indexing and enable
you to perform fast and accurate search for VM guest OS files via the Veeam Backup
Enterprise Manager web UI, and restore these files with 1 click. To learn more about
indexing, refer to Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager documentation.
To coordinate proper indexing and VSS activities, Veeam Backup & Replication deploys a small
agent inside a VM. The agent is installed only during VSS quiescence and indexing procedure and
removed immediately after the processing is finished (depending on the selected option, during
the backup job or after it is finished), thus producing low impact on VM performance and stability.
In the Guest OS credentials section, specify an account with local administrative privileges for
deploying the agent. Please note that the user name must be supplied in the DOMAIN\USERNAME
format. The guest OS credentials you provide will be used for all VMs included into the backup job.

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Click Advanced to specify advanced options for Veeam VSS and indexing processing. The
Advanced Options window contains a list of VMs that will be processed with Veeam VSS and
indexing tools.

By default, for all VMs in the list Veeam Backup & Replication uses common credentials you
provided in the Guest OS credentials section. If a different account should be used to deploy the
agent inside a specific VM, select the VM in the list, click Set User and enter custom guest OS
credentials. To discard custom credentials for a VM, select it in the list and click Default.
If you want to define custom settings for a VM added as part of a container, include the VM in the
list as a standalone instance. To do so, click Add VM and choose a VM whose settings you want to
customize. Next, select the VM in the list and define the necessary custom settings. To discard
custom settings of a VM, select the VM in the list and click Remove.
To provide granular quiesencing and indexing options for a VM or a container, select it in the list
and click Edit.
In the Applications section on the Applications tab, specify the VSS behavior scenario:
• Select Require successful application processing if you want
Veeam Backup & Replication to stop backup of a VM if any VSS errors occur.
• Select Ignore application processing failures if you want to continue backing up a VM
even if VSS errors occur. This option is recommended to guarantee completion of the job.
The created backup image will be not transactionally consistent, but crash consistent.
• Select Disable application processing if you do not want to enable quiescencing for a
VM.
Use the Transaction logs section to define the scenario of transaction log handing:
• Select Truncate logs on successful backup only if you want Veeam Backup & Replication
to trigger truncation of logs only after the job is finished successfully. In this case, the
Veeam agent will wait for the backup to complete, and then will trigger truncation of
transaction logs. If truncation of transaction logs is not possible for some reason, the logs
will remain untouched in the VM guest OS till the next start of the Veeam agent.
• Select Truncate logs immediately if you want Veeam Backup & Replication to trigger
truncation of logs in any case, no matter whether the job finishes successfully or fails.
• Select Do not truncate logs if you do not want to truncate logs at all. This option is
recommended if, together with Veeam Backup & Replication, you are using another
backup tool to perform guest-level backup, and this tool maintains consistency of the
database state. In such scenario, truncation of logs with Veeam Backup & Replication will
break the guest-level backup chain and cause it to fall out of sync.

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Click the Indexing tab to specify the indexing option for a VM. Please keep in mind that file
indexing is supported for Windows-based VMs only.
• Select Disable indexing if you do not want to index guest OS files of a VM and enable the
search option.
• Select Index everything if you want to index all guest OS files inside a VM.
• Select Index everything except if you want to index all guest OS files except those
defined in the list. By default, system folders are excluded from indexing. You can add or
delete folders to exclude using the Add and Remove buttons on the right. You can use
any system environment variables, for example: %windir%, %ProgramFiles% and %Temp%.
• Use the Index only following folders option to select specific folders that you want to
index. To form a list of folders, use the Add and Remove buttons.

Step 9. Define Job Schedule

The Schedule step of the wizard allows you to specify scheduling settings for the job. You can
select to manually run the backup job, schedule the job to start at a specific time – for example, the
least busy hours to reduce impact on the virtual environment, – or define a schedule for the job to
run on a regular basis.

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 To specify the job schedule, select the Run the job automatically check box. If this check box is
not selected, the job is supposed to be run manually.
You can choose to perform the job at a specific time on defined week days, monthly and with
specific periodicity.
You can also select to back up a VM continuously. In this case, the next run of a backup job will be
started once the previous one is complete, maintaining your backup always in the most recent
state.

In the Automatic retry section, define whether Veeam Backup & Replication should attempt to run
a backup job again in case it fails for some reason. A repeatedly run job will include failed VMs only.
Enter the number of attempts to run the job and define time intervals between them. If you select
continuous backup, Veeam Backup & Replication will retry the job for the defined number of times
without any time intervals between the job runs.
In the Backup window section, determine a time interval within which the backup job must be
completed. The backup window prevents the job from overlapping with production hours and
ensures it does not provide unwanted overhead on your virtual environment. To set up a backup
window for the job, select the Terminate job if it exceeds allowed backup window check box
and click Window. In the Time Periods section, define the allowed window and prohibited hours
for backup. If the job exceeds the allowed window, it will be terminated.
To learn more, see the Scheduling section.

Note After you have created a scheduled job, you can temporarily disable it — hold it for some time
without changing the set time schedule. Right-click a job in the list and select Disable Job from the
shortcut menu. To enable the job schedule, right-click the job and deselect Disable Job in the
shortcut menu.

Step 10. Finish Working with Wizard

After you have specified scheduling settings, click Create. Select the Run the job when I click
Finish check box if you want to start the created job right after you complete working with the
wizard; then click Finish.

Creating Replication Jobs

To replicate of virtual machines, you should create a replication job by means of the New
Replication Job wizard. You can perform the created job immediately, schedule or save it. This

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section will guide you through all steps of the wizard and provide explanation on available
options.

Before You Begin

• Prior to creating a replication job, make sure you have set up all necessary backup
infrastructure components for the job. Open the Infrastructure view and check if the
source and target hosts are available under the Managed servers node in the inventory
pane, backup proxies and backup repositories are available under the Backup Proxies
and Backup Repositories nodes and properly configured. You will not be able to add
replication infrastructure components or change their configuration once the New
Replication Job wizard is launched. For detailed information on adding backup
infrastructure components see Setting Up Backup Infrastructure.
To estimate what infrastructure components you need for a replication job and learn
more about possible replication scenarios, refer to the Replication Architecture section.
• During every job run, Veeam Backup & Replication checks disk space on the destination
storage. If the disk space is below a specific threshold value, report in the job session log
will be displayed. To specify the disk space threshold, select Options from the main menu.
On the Notifications tab, specify the amount of free disk space required in percent.
To create a replication job for Hyper-V virtual machines, follow the next steps.

Step 1. Launch the New Replication Job Wizard

To run the New Replication Job wizard, do one of the following:
• On the Home tab, click Replication Job and select Hyper-V.
• Open the Backup & Replication view, right-click the Jobs node and select Replication >
Hyper-V.
• Open the Virtual Machines view, select one or several VMs in the working area, click Add
to Replication on the toolbar and select New job. Alternatively, you can right-click one or
several VMs in the working area and select Add to Replication Job > New job. In this
case, the selected VMs will be automatically included into the replication job. You can add
other VMs to the job when passing through the wizard steps.
You can quickly include VMs to already existing jobs. To do that, open the Virtual Machines view,
right-click necessary VMs in the working area and select Add to Replication Job > name of a
created job.

Step 2. Specify Job Name and Description

At the first step of the wizard, enter a name and description for the job. By default, the following
description is initially provided for the job: time when the job was created and name of the user
who created the job.

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If you plan to replicate to a DR site, you can use a number of advanced configuration settings for
the job:
• Select the Low connection bandwidth check box to enable the Seeding step in the
wizard. Replica seeding can be used if you plan to replicate to a remote site and want to
reduce the amount of traffic sent over the network during the first run of the replication
job. To learn more about seeding possibilities, see the Replica Seeding section.
• Select the Separate virtual networks check box to enable the Network step in the
wizard. If the network in a DR site does not mirror the production network, you can
resolve this mismatch by making up a network mapping table.
• Select the Different IP addressing scheme check box to enable the Re-IP step in the
wizard. Re-IP possibilities can be used to automate reconfiguration of replica IP addresses
for Windows-based VMs in case IP schemes in the DR and production sites do not match.
To learn more about network mapping and re-IP possibilities, see the Network Mapping
and Re-IP section.

Step 3. Select Virtual Machines to Replicate

At this step, you should select an individual VM, multiple VMs or VM containers (Hyper-V hosts,
clusters, SCVMM ) you want to replicate. Jobs with VM containers are dynamic in their nature: if a
new VM is added to the container after a replication job is created, the job will be automatically
updated to include the added VM.
Click Add to browse to VMs and VM containers that should be replicated. In the displayed virtual
infrastructure tree, select the necessary object and click Add.

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To facilitate objects selection, you can use the search field at the bottom of the window: click the
button on the left of the field to select the necessary type of object that should be searched for
(Everything, Folder, Host Group, SCVMM, Cluster, Host or VM), enter an object’s name or a part of it
and click the Start search button on the right.
To remove an object from the list, select it and click the Remove button on the right.
The initial size of VMs and VM containers added to a replication job is displayed in the Size column
in the list. The total size of objects is displayed in the Total size field. Use the Recalculate button
to refresh the total size value after you add a new object to the job.

Step 4. Exclude Objects from Replication Job

After you have added VMs and VM containers to the list, you can specify which objects should be
excluded from the replication job. Veeam Backup & Replication allows excluding the following
types of objects: VMs from VM containers, as well as specific VM disks.
To select which objects should be excluded, click Exclusions on the right.
• To exclude VMs from a VM container (for example, if you need to back up the whole
Hyper-V host excluding several VMs running on this host), click the VMs tab. Click Add on
the right and select VMs that should be excluded.
To display all virtual infrastructure objects added to Veeam Backup & Replication, select
the Show full hierarchy check box.
• By default, Veeam Backup & Replication includes into the replica all IDE and SCSI disks of a
VM. To select what VM disks you want to exclude from the replica, click the Disks tab,
select the necessary VM in the list and click Edit. If you want to exclude disks of a VM
added as part of a container, use the Add button to include the VM in the list as a
standalone instance.
You can choose to process all disks or select custom disks. To change default inclusion
settings, choose the Selected disks only option. In the IDE disks section, clear check
boxes next to IDE disks you want to exclude. In the SCSI disks section, make up a list of
SCSI disks that will be included into the replica. You can identify disk names explicitly or
use wildcard characters – asterisk (*) and question mark (?). For example, to include all
SCSI disks, enter *; to include all .vhd disks whose name starts with ‘Disk1’, enter Disk1*.

Step 5. Define VM Replication Order

If you want to replicate specific VMs first, you can define the order in which the replication job
must process VMs. The VM replication order can be helpful if you want to ensure that replication of

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a VM does not overlap with other scheduled activities, or that replication is completed before a
certain time.
To set the VM replication order, select the necessary VMs and move them up or down the list using
the Up and Down buttons on the right. In the same manner, you can set the replication order for
containers in the list. Note, however, that if you choose to replicate a container, VMs inside a
container will be processed at random. To ensure that VMs are processed in the defined order, you
should add them as standalone VMs, not as part of a container.

Step 6. Specify Replica Destination

At this step of the wizard, you should select destination for created replicas.

In the Host or cluster section, specify a destination host or cluster where replicas will be
registered. Click Choose and select a host or cluster in the virtual infrastructure hierarchy.
Assigning a cluster as a target ensures a more sustainable replication process – the replication job
will be performed until there remains at least one available host in the cluster. To facilitate
selection, use the search field at the bottom of the window: click the button on the left of the field

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to select the necessary type of object that should be searched for (SCVMM, Cluster or Host), enter an
object’s name or a part of it and click Start search on the right.
In the Path section, specify a path to a location where VM replica files will be stored. If all or a
majority of replicas will be stored in the same location, click Choose and point to the necessary
folder. To create a dedicated folder for storing VM replicas, use the New folder button at the
bottom of the window.
If you want to place replicas to different folders, click the Pick path for selected virtual disks link.
Click Add VM on the right and select VMs that should be stored to different folders. To map a VM
to a folder, select it in the Files location list and click Path at the bottom of the window. You can
select an existing folder or create a new one in the list.
Additionally, you can choose to store replica configuration files and disk files to different locations.
To do so, add a VM to the Files location list, expand it and select the required type of files. Click
Path at the bottom of the window and choose the destination for the selected type of files.

Step 7. Create a Network Map Table

This step is available if you have selected the Separate virtual networks option at the Name step
of the wizard.
At this step, you should create a table that maps production (source) networks to DR site (target)
networks. To add a network mapping entry, click Add. In the Source network field, define a
production network where original VMs reside. In the Target network field, define a name of a
network that will be substituted for the source network in the DR site.

Veeam Backup & Replication checks the network mapping table during every job run and updates
replicas’ configuration files in accordance with the mapping table.

Step 8. Configure Re-IP Rules

This step is available if you have selected the Different IP addressing scheme option at the Name
step of the wizard.
At this step, you should set up rules according to which Veeam Backup & Replication will
reconfigure IP addresses of Windows-based replicas when you perform failover. To add a re-IP
rule, click Add.

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 • In the Source VM section, describe an IP numbering scheme adopted in the source site.
To facilitate configuration, Veeam Backup & Replication detects an IP address and subnet
mask for the machine where it is installed and pre-populates these values.
You can specify an explicit IP address or define a range of IP addresses using the B, C, D
controls. Each of the controls substitutes for any number from 0 to 255. To switch a
substitute to a numeric value, click the control or press the Space key on the keyboard. To
switch a numeric value back to the substitute, clear the value, enter “0” in the field or press
the Space key on the keyboard.
• In the Target VM section, describe an IP numbering scheme adopted in the DR site –
specify an IP address, subnet mask and default gateway that will be used for VM replicas. If
necessary, define the DNS and WINS server addresses.
• In the Description field, enter a brief outline of the rule or any related comments.

Step 9. Specify Replication Job Settings

At this step of the wizard, you should assign replication infrastructure components for the job and
define replication job settings.
In the Data flow section, specify how VM data will be transferred from source to target. Click
Choose next to the Source proxy field to select the backup mode and backup proxies for the job.
• If you choose the On-host backup mode, during replication the source Hyper-V host will
combine the roles of a source host and a backup proxy. In the on-host backup mode, the
Veeam agent runs directly on the source host, which helps streamline data retrieval
operations but puts an additional overhead onto the host.
• If you choose the Off-host backup mode, the Veeam agent will be started on a dedicated
proxy server. In this mode, all backup processing operations are moved to the proxy, and
the source host is offloaded.
By default, if the off-host backup mode is selected for the job, but there are no proxy
servers available when the job starts, Veeam Backup & Replication will automatically fail
over to the on-host backup mode. To disable failover, clear the Failover to on-host
backup mode if no suitable offhost proxies available check box. Note, however, that
the job will not be able to run without available proxies.
To perform off-host replication, Veeam Backup & Replication analyzes the current load on
proxies, and proxy settings (such as limitations on the number of allowed tasks,
connectivity to the source volumes) to select the most appropriate proxy for the job
automatically. However, you can also explicitly point out proxies that the job can use. To

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 do so, select the Use the following backup proxy servers only check box and choose
allowed proxies from the list. It is recommended to select at least two proxies to ensure
that the replication job will be performed should one of job proxies fail or lose its
connectivity to the source volumes.

In the VM name suffix field, enter a suffix that will be appended to a name of the virtual machine
you are replicating. This name, with the suffix added, will be used to register the replicated virtual
machine on the target server.
In the Restore points field, specify the number of restore points that should be maintained by the
replication job. When this number is exceeded, the earliest restore point will be deleted.

Step 10. Specify Advanced Replica Settings

Click Advanced to specify advanced options for the created replication job:
Traffic settings
On the Storage tab, specify deduplication, compression and optimization settings for replication
files that the job will provision.

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In the Compression section, specify a compression level for replica traffic sent over the network:
None, Low, Optimal or Best. To learn more about compression levels, see the Compression and
Deduplication section.
Select the type of replication target you are planning to use. Depending on the chosen option,
Veeam Backup & Replication will use data blocks of different sizes to optimize the job
performance:
• Local target. This option is recommended if you are planning to use SAN, DAS or local
storage as a target. The SAN identifies larger blocks of data and therefore can process
larger quantities of data at a time. This option provides the fastest replication job
performance but reduces the deduplication ratio – the larger is a data block, the lower is
the chance to find an identical block.
• LAN target. This option is recommended for NAS and on-site replication. It provides a
better deduplication ratio and reduces the size of an incremental replication file.
• WAN target. This option is recommended if you are planning to use WAN for off-site
replication. Veeam Backup & Replication uses small data blocks, which involves significant
processing overhead but results in the smallest size of a replica file.
Notification settings
Use the Notifications tab if you want to be notified when the replication job is completed.

• Select the Send e-mail notifications to the following recipients check box if you want
to receive notifications by e–mail in case of job failure or success. In the field below,
specify a recipient’s e-mail address. You can enter several addresses separated by a
semicolon.
E–mail notifications will be sent only if you have selected the Enable email notification
check box in the Options window and specified e–mail notification settings (select Tools
> Options from the main menu). To learn more, see the Specifying E-Mail Notification
Settings section.
• Select the Enable SNMP notification for this job check box if you want to receive SNMP
traps when a job is completed and a VM replica is created. SNMP traps will be sent if you
configure SNMP settings in Veeam Backup & Replication and on the recipient’s computer.
To learn more, see the Specifying SNMP Settings section.
Hyper-V settings
In the Incremental Backup section, specify if changed block tracking should be enabled. By
default, this option is selected. Changed block tracking dramatically reduces resources and time

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required to perform incremental runs of a replication job. To learn more, see the Changed Block
Tracking section.

In the Linux VM Backup section, specify what replication method will be used to prepare the
guest OS for backup in case the Hyper-V online backup method is not applicable. By default,
Veeam Backup & Replication uses its own techniques to prepare the guest OS and creates a crash-
consistent image of a VM. If you want to use the saved state method for quiescing guest OS, clear
the Take crash consistent backup instead of suspending VM check box. To learn more about
backup methods applicable to Hyper-V VMs, see the Backup Process section.
Advanced settings
On the Advanced tab, specify miscellaneous advanced settings for the job.

• Select the Enable automatic replication integrity checks check box if you want
Veeam Backup & Replication to periodically check a full replica. An automatic replication
check allows you to verify integrity of a replica and avoid a situation when a replica is
corrupted, making all further increments corrupted, too.
A replication check is performed every time a job is started. If the check determines a

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 replica to be corrupted (for example, some parts of the backup storage are unreadable), a
notification message will be displayed, prompting you to perform full replication anew.
During such full replication, no integrity check will be performed.
• In the File selective image processing section, define whether you want to exclude
blocks of Windows pagefiles from the replica. During replication, Veeam Backup &
Replication checks the NTFS MTF file on Windows-based VMs to identify blocks of the
Windows pagefile, and excludes these blocks from processing. Windows pagefiles are
dynamic in their nature and change intensively between replication job runs, even if VMs
do not change much. Therefore, pagefile processing results in reduced replication
performance and increased size of increments.
Clear the Exclude swap file blocks from processing check box if Windows pagefiles
should be processed during replication.
• In the VM retention section, specify the number of days to keep replicated data for
deleted VMs. When a replication job starts, Veeam Backup & Replication checks the list of
VMs included into the job. If a VM is no longer available (for example, it was deleted or
moved to another location), Veeam Backup & Replication will keep its data for the period
you specify in the Deleted VMs data retention period field. When this retention period is
over, replicas and restore points of the deleted VM will be removed.
• Select the Run the following command check box if you want to execute post-
replication actions.
Use the Browse button to select an executable file.
You can select to execute post-replication actions after a number of replication cycles or
on specific week days. If you select the Run every... replication cycle option, specify the
number of a replication cycle after which the file should be executed. If you select the Run
on selected days only option, click Days and specify week days when actions should be
performed.

Step 11. Define Seeding and Mapping Settings

This step is available if you have selected the Low connection bandwidth option at the Name
step of the wizard.
Configuring Replica Seeding
If you plan to replicate to a remote DR site over WAN or low-bandwidth network, consider initial
replica seeding. To take advantage of replica seeding, you need to take a number of preparatory
steps before you configure the replication job:
1. Create a backup (seed) of VMs you plan to replicate. To do that, configure a backup job
that points to an onsite backup repository. Run the job to perform a full backup. For
details on configuring a backup job, refer to the Creating Backup Jobs section.
If you have previously created a backup containing all necessary VMs, there is no need to
configure and run a new backup job. The backup must include .vbk and .vbm files. If you
have a full backup and a chain of forward increments, you can use .vib files along with .vbk
and .vbm – in this case, Veeam Backup & Replication will restore VMs from the seed to the
latest available restore point.
2. Copy the backup from the backup repository in the production site to a backup repository
in the DR site. If you do not have a backup repository in a DR site, you will need to create
one. For details on creating backup repositories, refer to the Adding Backup Repositories
section.
You can move the backup using a file copy job (for details, refer to the Performing File
Copying Operations section) or any other appropriate method (for example, copy the
backup to a removable storage device, ship the device to the DR site and copy backups to
a backup repository in the DR site).
3. After the backup is copied to the backup repository in the DR site, perform rescan of this
repository. Otherwise, Veeam Backup & Replication might not be able to detect the new
backup. For details on the repository rescan, refer to the Managing Backup Repositories
section.

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 When the preliminary steps are completed, you can configure replica seeding settings for the job.
In the Initial seeding section, select the Get seed from the following backup repository check
box. From the list of repositories, select a DR-site repository to which the seed (the full backup) was
copied.

During the first run of the job, Veeam Backup & Replication will restore full VMs from the backup
and then additionally synchronize them with the original VMs. As a result of these operations, 2
restore points will be created for every seeded VM replica.
All subsequent incremental replication runs will be performed in the regular course.

Note If you select the Get seed from the following backup repository check box,
Veeam Backup & Replication will attempt to restore all VMs included in the job from the seed you
specified. If a VM is not found in the seed, it will be skipped from replication.
Within the same job, you configure both replica seeding and replica mapping – for example, if a
job includes 2 VMs, you can use seeding for one VM, and map the other VM to an existing replica.
Note that if the Get seed from the following backup repository check box is selected, all VMs in
the job must be covered with seeding or mapping – in case a VM is neither available in the seed,
nor mapped, it will be skipped from replication. And on the contrary, if the same VM is both
available in the seed and mapped to an existing replica, replication will be performed using replica
mapping – as mapping has precedence over seeding.

Configuring Replica Mapping

To reduce the amount of traffic sent over the network during replication, you can map the VM you
plan to replicate to its already existing replica. Veeam Backup & Replication will link the original VM
to the existing replica, and the replication job will use this replica in a regular replication course.
If there is no existing replica, you can restore a VM from the backup and map it to the original VM.
During the first pass of the job, Veeam Backup & Replication will compare the original VM to its
mapped copy and will transfer only differences between the two VMs to synchronize the restored
replica with the production VM.
To set up VM mapping, select the Map replicas to existing VMs check box and click Detect.
Veeam Backup & Replication will scan the destination location for existing replicas and will
populate the mapping table if any matches are found.
If Veeam Backup & Replication does not find a match, you can map a VM to a replica manually. To
do so, select a production VM from the list, click Edit and choose an existing replica. To facilitate
selection, use the search field at the bottom of the window.
To break a mapping association, select a VM in the list and click Remove.

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Note If you use replica seeding or mapping, make sure that you correctly set up replication
infrastructure components for the job (source-side backup repository for metadata and backup
proxies). It is recommended that you explicitly assign backup proxies in the production site and in
the DR site. For details, refer to Step 9 of the procedure.

Step 12. Enable Application-Aware Image Processing

If you want to create a transactionally consistent replica ensuring successful recovery of VM
applications without any data loss and specify advanced application-aware image processing
settings select the Enable application-aware image processing check box.
To coordinate proper VSS activities, Veeam Backup & Replication installs a small agent inside a VM.
The agent is installed only during VSS quiescence procedure and removed immediately after the
processing is finished (depending on the selected option, during the replication job or after it is
finished), thus producing low impact on VM performance and stability.
In the Guest OS credentials section, specify an account with administrative privileges for
deploying the agent. Please note that the user name must be supplied in the DOMAIN\USERNAME
format. The guest OS credentials you provide will be used for all VMs included into the replication
job.

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Click Advanced to specify advanced option for Veeam VSS processing. The Advanced Options
window contains a list of VMs that will be processed with Veeam VSS.

By default, for all VMs in the list Veeam Backup & Replication uses common credentials you
provided in the Guest OS credentials section. If a different account should be used to deploy the
agent inside a specific VM, select the VM in the list, click Set User and enter custom guest OS
credentials. To discard custom credentials for a VM, select it in the list and click Default.
If you want to define custom settings for a VM added as part of a container, include the VM in the
list as a standalone instance. To do so, click Add VM and choose a VM whose settings you want to
customize. Next, select the VM in the list and define the necessary custom settings. To discard
custom settings of a VM, select the VM in the list and click Remove.
To provide granular quiesencing and indexing options for a VM, select it in the list and click Edit.
In the Applications section on the Applications tab, specify the VSS behavior scenario:
• Select Require successful application processing if you want
Veeam Backup & Replication to stop replicating a VM if any VSS errors occur.
• Select Ignore application processing failures if you want to continue replicating a VM
even if VSS errors occur. This option is recommended to guarantee completion of the job.
The created replica will be not transactionally consistent, but crash consistent.
• Select Disable application processing if you do not want to enable quiescencing for a
VM.

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Use the Transaction logs section to define the scenario of transaction log handing:
• Select Truncate logs on successful backup only if you want Veeam Backup & Replication
to trigger truncation of logs only after the job is finished successfully. In this case, Veeam
agent will wait for the replication to complete, and then will trigger truncation of
transaction logs. If truncation of transaction logs is not possible for some reason, the logs
will remain untouched in the VM guest OS till the next start of the Veeam agent.
• Select Truncate logs immediately if you want Veeam Backup & Replication to trigger
truncation of logs in any case, no matter whether the job finishes successfully or fails.
• Select Do not truncate logs if you do not want to truncate logs at all. This option is
recommended if, together with Veeam Backup & Replication, you are using another tool
to perform guest-level replication, and this tool maintains consistency of the database
state. In such scenario, truncation of logs with Veeam Backup & Replication will break the
guest-level replication chain and cause it to fall out of sync.

Step 13. Define Job Schedule

The Schedule step of the wizard allows you to specify scheduling settings for the job. You can
select to manually run the created job or schedule performing the replication job for a specific
period of time — for example, the least busy hours to reduce impact on the virtual environment.
To specify the job schedule, select the Run the job automatically check box. If this check box is
not selected, the job is supposed to be run manually.
You can choose to perform the job at a specific time on defined week days, monthly and with
specific periodicity.
You can also select to replicate a VM continuously. In this case, the next run of a replication job will
be started once the previous one is complete, maintaining your replica always in the most recent
state.

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 In the Automatic retry section, select to repeat an attempt to run a replication job in case it fails
for some reason. A repeatedly run job will include failed VMs only. Enter the number of attempts to
run the job and define time intervals between them. If you select continuous replication,
Veeam Backup & Replication will retry the job for the defined number of times without any time
intervals between the job runs.
In the Backup window section, determine a time interval within which the replication job must be
completed. The backup window prevents the job from overlapping with production hours and
ensures it does not provide unwanted overhead on your virtual environment. To set up a backup
window for the job, select the Terminate job if it exceeds allowed backup window check box
and click Window. In the Time Periods section, define the allowed window and prohibited hours
for replication. If the job exceeds the allowed window, it will be terminated.
To learn more, see the Scheduling section.

Note After you have created a scheduled job, you can temporarily disable it — hold it for some time
without changing the set time schedule. Right-click a job in the list and select Disable Job from
the shortcut menu. To enable the job schedule, right-click the job and deselect Disable Job in the
shortcut menu.

Step 14. Finish Working with Wizard

After you have specified schedule settings, click Create. Select the Run the job when I click Finish
check box if you want to start the created job right after you complete working with the wizard;
then click Finish.

Creating VeeamZIP Files

With Veeam Backup & Replication, you can quickly perform backup of one or several VMs with
VeeamZIP.
To create a VeeamZIP file, follow the next steps:

Step 1. Select VMs to Back Up

Open the Virtual Machines view. In the infrastructure tree, click the Hyper-V host or a VM
container in which the VM you want to back up resides.

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In the working area, right-click one or several VMs you want to back up and select VeeamZIP. You
can also select the necessary VM(s), click the Virtual Machines tab and click the VeeamZIP button
on the toolbar.
To quickly find the necessary VM, type the VM name or a part of it in the search field at the top of
the working area and click the Start search button on the right or press Enter on the keyboard.

Step 2. Select Destination for the VeeamZIP File

In the Destination section, specify a location to which you want to store the VeeamZIP file.
• If you want to store the backup file to a specific backup repository, select the Backup
repository option and choose the necessary repository from the list.
• If you want to store the backup file to a local folder on the Veeam Backup server, select
the Local or shared folder option, click Browse on the right and select the folder to
which the backup file should be stored.
• If you want to store a backup file to a shared folder, select the Local or shared folder
option and type in the UNC name of the shared folder to which the backup file should be
stored. Keep in mind that the UNC name always starts with two back slashes (\\).
If the shared folder requires authentication, select the This share requires access
credentials check box and enter credentials of an account with administrative privileges
on the shared folder.

Step 3. Specify Backup Settings

To specify additional backup options, click More.
From the Compression level list, select a compression level for the created backup: None, Low,
Optimal or Best.
By default, Veeam Backup & Replication uses native Hyper-V mechanisms to create transactionally
consistent backups of VMs. You can disable this option by selecting the Disable guest quiescence
check box (for example, if you back up VMs running applications without VSS support).

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 Step 4. Run the VeeamZIP Job
Click OK. The VeeamZIP job will start immediately.
As the job runs, you can track the job performance in the real-time mode. To see the job results
once it completes, open the History view and click the Jobs node. Then double-click the job
session in the list.
As a result of the job processing, Veeam Backup & Replication will create a full backup file (.vbk)
and store it to the specified destination. The VM name, date and time of the file creation are
appended to the file name, so you can easily find the necessary VeeamZIP file afterwards.
To be able to restore data from a VeeamZIP file, you need to import it to Veeam Backup &
Replication. Alternatively, you can double-click the backup file in the file browser and select the
necessary restore option.

Tip Veeam Backup & Replication keeps settings of the latest VeeamZIP job. To quickly create a
VeeamZIP file with the same settings as the previous one and store it to the same location, right-
click the necessary VM and select VeeamZIP to from the shortcut menu. The VeeamZIP job with
the same settings as the previous job will start immediately.

Performing Restore
Veeam Backup & Replication offers a variety of data recovery facilities to protect your virtual
environment. If important data accidentally gets lost or corrupted, you can use
Veeam Backup & Replication to restore entire virtual machines and specific VM files from backups
or recover individual VM guest OS files and folders from backups and replicas.

Performing Instant VM Recovery

With Veeam Backup & Replication, you can immediately start a VM from a compressed and
deduplicated backup file stored in a regular backup repository. Instant VM recovery accelerates VM
restore, allowing you to improve recovery time objectives and decrease downtime of production
VMs.

Important! If you choose to restore a VM to the original location (to the host where the primary VM resides),
the primary VM will be deleted from disk.

This section will guide you through all steps of the Instant VM Recovery wizard and provide
explanation on available options.

Step 1. Launch the Instant VM Recovery Wizard

To launch the Instant VM Recovery wizard, do one of the following:

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 • On the Home tab, click Restore and select Hyper-V. In the Restore from backup section,
select Instant VM recovery.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Backups node in the inventory pane.
In the working area, expand the necessary backup job, select the VM(s) you want to
restore and click Instant VM Recovery on the toolbar.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Backups node in the inventory pane.
In the working area, expand the necessary backup, right-click the VM(s) you want to
restore and select Instant recovery.

Step 2. Select a Virtual Machine

At this step, you should select one or more VMs to restore. To add a VM or a VM container, click
Add VM and select where to browse for the machines:
• From Infrastructure — browse the virtual environment and select VMs or VM containers
to restore. If you choose a VM container, Veeam Backup & Replication will expand it to a
plain VM list.
To facilitate selection, use the search field at the bottom of the window: click the button to
the left of the field and select the necessary type of object to search for (Everything, Folder,
Host Group, SCVMM, Cluster, Host or VM), enter an object’s name or a part of it and click the
Start search button on the right.
Make sure that VMs you select from the virtual environment have been successfully
backed up at least once.
• From Backup – browse existing backups and select VMs under backup jobs. To quickly
find VMs, use the search field at the bottom of the window: enter a VM name or a part of
it and click the Start search button on the right.
To quickly find VMs, use the search field at the top of the wizard: enter a VM name or a part of it,
and Veeam Backup & Replication will display possible matches. If the VM is not in the list, click the
Show more link to browse the virtual infrastructure.

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Step 3. Select a Restore Point
At this step, you should select the necessary restore point for the virtual machine.
By default, Veeam Backup & Replication uses the latest good restore point to recover a VM.
However, if you want to restore a VM to an earlier state, select a VM in the Virtual machines to
restore list and click Point on the right. In the Restore Points window, select a restore point that
should be used to recover the VM.
If you have chosen to restore multiple VMs, you can select a different restore point for every VM
specifically.

Step 4. Select the Restore Mode

At this step of the wizard, you should select where you want to restore selected VMs.
• Select Restore to the original location if you want to restore VMs with their initial
settings and to their original location. If this option is selected, you will immediately pass
to Step 9 of the wizard.

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 • Select Restore to a new location, or with different settings if you want to restore VMs
to a different location and/or with different settings (such as VM location, network
settings, the format of restored virtual disks and so on). If this option is selected, the
Instant VM Recovery wizard will include additional steps for customizing VMs settings.

Step 5. Select a Destination Host

This step of the wizard is available if you have chosen to change the location and settings for
restored VMs.
To specify a destination host, select a VM in the list and click Host. From the virtual environment,
choose a standalone or clustered host where the selected VMs should be registered. You can select
multiple VMs and apply changes in bulk.
To facilitate selection, use the search field at the bottom of the window: click the button on the left
of the field to select the necessary type of object that should be searched for (SCVMM, Cluster or
Host), enter an object’s name or a part of it and press ENTER.

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Step 6. Select a Destination Datastore
This step of the wizard is available if you have chosen to change the location and settings for
restored VMs.
You can place an entire VM to a particular location or choose to store configuration files and disk
files of a restored VM in different locations.
To specify a destination location, select a VM in the list and click Path. You can select multiple VMs
and apply changes in bulk.

If configuration and disk files of a VM should be placed to different locations, expand the VM in the
list, select the necessary file type, click Path and point to the necessary folder. To create a
dedicated folder for storing files of the restored VM, use the Make New Folder button at the
bottom of the window.

Step 7. Specify Network Mapping

This step of the wizard is available if you have chosen to change the location and settings for
restored VMs.
For each VM, specify how virtual networks map between the source (original) and target (new)
locations. Veeam Backup & Replication will use the network mapping table to update
configuration files of VMs on the fly, during the restore process. You can select multiple VMs and
apply changes in bulk.
To change networks to which restored VMs will be connected, select one or more VMs in the list
and click Networks. If a VM is connected to multiple networks, expand the VM, select the network
to map and click Network. The Select Network section displays all networks to which the
destination host or cluster is connected. From the list of available networks, choose a network to
which selected VMs should have access upon restore. To facilitate selection, use the search field at
the bottom of the window: enter a network name or a part of it and press ENTER.
If you do not want to connect the restored VM to the virtual network, select the VM and click
Disconnect.

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Step 8. Change VM Name and UUID
This step of the wizard is available if you have chosen to change the location and settings for
restored VMs.
If necessary, change the name of each restored VM and select whether you want to preserve its
UUID. You can select multiple VMs and apply changes in bulk.
To change VM names, select one or more VMs in the list and click Name. In the Change Name
section, you can enter a new name explicitly or specify a change name rule by adding a prefix
and/or suffix to the regular VM name. Alternatively, you can change VM names directly in the list:
select a VM, click the New Name field and enter the name to be assigned to the restored VM.
To view or change VM identification settings, select one or more VMs in the list and click VM UUID.
It is recommended to specify a new name and generate a new UUID for a VM to prevent conflicts
in cases when you are using the restore process to clone the VM. This is not necessary if the original
VM no longer exists in your virtual environment (for example, if it was permanently deleted).

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Step 9. Specify Restore Reason
If necessary, enter the reason for performing restore of selected VMs. The information you provide
will be saved in the session history so that you can reference it later.

Step 10. Verify Recovery Settings

If you want to start the virtual machine after the work with the wizard is complete, select the
Power on VM after restoring check box under the list of restore points.
Check specified settings for full VM recovery of a VM and click Finish. Veeam Backup & Replication
will restore selected VMs in the specified destination.

All VMs restored with Instant VM Recovery are displayed in the Backup & Replication view, under
the Backups > Instant Recovery node.
To check the progress of instant VM recovery and view session details, right-click the necessary VM
in the working area and select Properties. Alternatively, you can open the History view, select the

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Instant Recovery node under Restore in the inventory pane and double-click the necessary
instant VM restore session.

Step 11. Finalize Instant VM Recovery

After the VM has been successfully restored, you can finalize Instant VM Recovery — remove a
restored VM or migrate the restored VM to production.
• To remove and unregister the recovered VM, right-click the necessary VM in the working
area and select Stop publishing.
• To migrate the restored VM to production, right-click the VM in the working area and
select Migrate to production. The migration process will start immediately.

Performing Full VM Recovery

With the Full VM Restore wizard, you can restore the entire VM and start it on the target host if
necessary.
This section will guide you through all steps of the Full VM Restore wizard and provide
explanation on available options.

Step 1. Launch the Restore Wizard

To launch the Hyper-V Restore wizard, do one of the following:
• On the Home tab, click Restore and select Hyper-V. In the Restore from backup section,
select Entire VM (including registration).
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Backups node in the inventory pane.
In the working area, expand the necessary backup job, select the VM(s) you want to
restore and click Entire VM on the toolbar.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Backups node in the inventory pane.
In the working area, expand the necessary backup job, right-click the VM(s) you want to
restore and select Restore entire VM.

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Step 2. Select a Virtual Machine
At this step, you should select one or more VMs to restore. To add a VM or a VM container, click
Add VM and select where to browse for the machines:
• From Infrastructure — browse the virtual environment and select VMs or VM containers
to restore. If you choose a VM container, Veeam Backup & Replication will expand it to a
plain VM list.
To facilitate selection, use the search field at the bottom of the window: click the button to
the left of the field and select the necessary type of object to search for (Everything, Folder,
Host Group, SCVMM, Cluster, Host or VM), enter an object’s name or a part of it and click the
Start search button on the right.
Make sure that VMs you select from the virtual environment have been successfully
backed up at least once.
• From Backup – browse existing backups and select VMs under backup jobs. To quickly
find VMs, use the search field at the bottom of the window: enter a VM name or a part of
it and click the Start search button on the right.

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Alternatively, you can use the search field at the top of the window: enter a VM name or a part of it
in the search field. Veeam Backup & Replication will search existing backups for the specified VM
and display matching results. To add a VM, double-click it in the list of search results. If a VM is not
found, click the Show more link to browse existing backups and choose the necessary VM.
To remove a VM from the list, select it and click Remove on the right.

Step 3. Select a Restore Point

At this step, you should select the necessary restore point for the virtual machine.
By default, Veeam Backup & Replication uses the latest good restore point to recover a VM.
However, if you want to restore a VM to an earlier state, select a VM in the Virtual machines to
restore list and click Point on the right. In the Restore Points window, select a restore point that
should be used to recover the VM.
If you have chosen to restore multiple VMs, you can select a different restore point for every VM
specifically.

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Step 4. Select a Restore Mode
At this step of the wizard, you should select where you want to restore selected VMs.
• Select Restore to the original location if you want to restore VMs with their initial
settings and to their original location. If this option is selected, you will immediately pass
to Step 9 of the wizard.
• Select Restore to a new location, or with different settings if you want to restore VMs
to a different location and/or with different settings (such as VM location, network
settings, the format of restored virtual disks and so on). If this option is selected, the Full
VM Restore wizard will include additional steps for customizing VMs settings.

Step 5. Select a Destination Host for Restored VMs

This step of the wizard is available if you have chosen to change the location and settings for
restored VMs. To specify a destination host, select one or more VMs in the list and click Host. From
the virtual environment, choose a standalone or clustered host where the selected VMs should be
registered.
To facilitate selection, use the search field at the bottom of the window: click the button on the left
of the field to select the necessary type of object that should be searched for (SCVMM, Cluster or
Host), enter an object’s name or a part of it and click Start search on the right.

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If you choose to register a restored VM on a host being a part of a Hyper-V failover cluster, you can
specify additional failover settings. Select a VM in the list and click Resource. Then select the
Register VM as a cluster resource option if the restored VM should be configured as a cluster
resource – in case the destination host is brought offline or fails for any reason, the VM will fail over
to another node in the cluster.

Step 6. Select a Destination Datastore

This step of the wizard is available if you have chosen to change the location and settings for
restored VMs. You can place an entire VM to a particular location or choose to store configuration
files and disk files of a restored VM to different locations.
To specify a destination location, select one or more VMs in the list and click Path. If configuration
and disk files of a VM should be placed to different locations, expand the VM in the list, select the
necessary file type, click Path and point to the necessary folder. To create a dedicated folder for
storing files of the restored VM, use the Make New folder button at the bottom of the window.

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Step 7. Select a Destination Network
This step of the wizard is available if you have chosen to change the location and settings for
restored VMs. If you plan to restore VMs to a new location – another site with a different set of
networks – you can map the source site networks to the target site networks.
Veeam Backup & Replication will use the network mapping table to update configuration files of
VMs on the fly, during the restore process.
To change networks to which restored VMs will be connected, select one or more VMs in the list
and click Networks. If a VM is connected to multiple networks, expand the VM, select the network
to map and click Network. The Select Network section displays all networks to which the
destination host or cluster is connected. From the list of available networks, choose a network to
which selected VMs should have access upon restore. To facilitate selection, use the search field at
the bottom of the window: enter a network name or a part of it and click Start search on the right.
To prevent the restored VM from accessing any network, select the VM or its network connections
in the list and click Disconnected.

Step 8. Specify VM Names and VM UUID Handling

This step of the wizard is available if you have chosen to change the location and settings for
restored VMs.
By default, Veeam Backup & Replication restores VMs with their original names. You can change
names of restored VMs – for example, if you restore a VM to its original location, you may need to
change its name to avoid confusion.
To change VM names, select one or more VMs in the list and click the Name button. In the Change
Name section, you can enter a new name explicitly or specify a change name rule by adding a
prefix and/or suffix to the initial VM name. Alternatively, you can change VM names directly in the
list: select a VM, click the New Name field and enter the name to be assigned to the restored VM.

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Additionally, you can specify how Veeam Backup & Replication should handle unique identifiers of
restored VMs. By default, a recovered VM is identified with the same UUIDs as the original VM. If
necessary, however, you can choose to assign a new UUID to a VM restored from the backup.

To view or change VM identification settings, select one or more VMs in the list and click VM UUID.
In the Unique VM ID section, choose one of the following options:
• Select Preserve virtual machine ID if the original VM was decommissioned, so the
restored VM will be used in place of the original one.
• Select the Generate new virtual machine ID if you perform VM recovery to clone the
original VM. Use this option to avoid UUID conflicts in cases when the original VM and its
duplicate will operate in parallel in the same location.

Step 9. Specify Restore Reason

If necessary, enter the reason for performing restore of selected VMs. The information you provide
will be saved in the session history so that you can reference it later.

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Step 10. Verify Recovery Settings
If you want to start the virtual machine after the work with the wizard is complete, select the
Power on VM after restoring check box under the list of restore points.
Check specified settings for full VM recovery of a VM and click Finish. Veeam Backup & Replication
will restore selected VMs in the specified destination.

Restoring VM Files
The Restore wizard allows you to restore specific VM files — .vhd, .xml and others. You can use
Veeam VM files recovery to replace deleted or corrupted VM files.
This section will guide you through all steps of the Hyper-V Restore wizard and provide
explanation on available options.

Step 1. Launch the Hyper-V Restore Wizard

To launch the Restore wizard, do one of the following:
• On the Home tab, click Restore and select Hyper-V. In the Restore from backup section,
select VM files (VHD, VSV, BIN, XML).
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Backups node in the inventory pane.
In the working area, expand the necessary backup job, click the VM(s) whose files you
want to restore and click VM Files > VM Files on the toolbar.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Backups node in the inventory pane.
In the working area, expand the necessary backup job, right-click the VM(s) whose files
you want to restore and select Restore VM files.

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Step 2. Select a Virtual Machine
Select the necessary virtual machine in the list of available jobs. To quickly find VMs in jobs, use the
search field at the bottom of the window.

Step 3. Select a Restore Point

Select the necessary restore point for the virtual machine.

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Step 4. Select VM Files and Destination
At this step of the wizard, you should select the VM files you want to restore and the destination
where the restored files should be stored. From the Server list, select where to store VM files: to
the local machine or any Hyper-V host, Hyper-V cluster, SCVMM or any Windows server connected
to Veeam Backup & Replication. Use the Details button to view or change connection settings of
the destination host or cluster. In the Path to folder section, specify the path to the folder where
files should be restored.
In the VM files to restore section, select check boxes next to files that should be restored. By
default, all VM files are selected.

Step 5. Specify Restore Reason

If necessary, enter the reason for performing VM file recovery. The information you provide will be
saved in the session history so that you can reference it later.

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 Step 6. Complete the Work with the Wizard
Click Finish to start restoring the VM files.

Restoring VM Guest Files

With the Hyper-V Restore wizard, you can restore individual guest OS files from any successfully
created backup or replica of a Windows-based VM.

Important! File-level restore has the following limitations:

- You cannot restore files from a running replica, or if the replication job with the necessary VM
is being performed.
- You cannot restore files from a backup created in the reversed incremental mode if the
backup job is being performed. However, if the backup is created in the incremental backup
mode and the backup job is being performed, you can restore files from any available restore
point.

This section will guide you through all steps of the wizard and provide explanation on available
options.

Step 1. Launch the Restore Wizard

To launch the Restore wizard, do one of the following:
• On the Home tab, click Restore and select Hyper-V. In the Restore from backup section,
select Guest files (Windows).
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Backups node in the inventory pane.
In the working area, expand the necessary backup job, select the VM(s) whose guest OS
files you want to restore and click Guest Files > Guest Files (Windows) on the toolbar.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Backups node in the inventory pane.
In the working area, expand the necessary backup job, right-click the VM(s) whose guest
OS files you want to restore and select Restore guest files (Windows).

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Step 2. Select a Virtual Machine
In the list of available jobs, select the necessary virtual machine. To quickly find VMs in jobs, use the
search field at the bottom of the window.

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Step 3. Select a Restore Point
Select the necessary restore point for the virtual machine.

Step 4. Specify Restore Reason

If necessary, enter the reason for performing VM guest file restore. The information you provide
will be saved in the session history so that you can reference it later.

Step 5. Complete the Work with the Wizard

Click Finish to start restoring files from a backup or replica. Once the restore process is completed,
Veeam Backup & Replication will open a file browser displaying the file system tree of the restored
VM. Please note that the names of the restored machine drives may differ from the original ones.

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Step 6. Save Restored Files
To save restored files or folders on the local machine or within the network, right-click the
necessary file or folder in the file system tree or in the details pane on the right and select Copy To
from the shortcut menu.
When restoring files and folders, you can choose to preserve their original NTFS permissions:
• Select the Preserve permissions and ownership check box to keep the original
ownership and security permissions for restored objects. Veeam Backup & Replication will
copy selected files and folders along with associated Access Control Lists, preserving
granular access settings.
• Leave the Preserve permissions and ownership check box cleared if you do not want to
preserve the original ownership and access settings for restored objects. In this case,
Veeam Backup & Replication will change security settings: the user who launched the
Veeam Backup & Replication console will be set as the owner of the restored object, while
access permissions will be inherited from the folder to which the restored object is copied.

In addition to copying files via the Veeam Backup browser, you can use Windows Explorer to work
with restored files. Click Explore on the toolbar in the Veeam Backup browser or right-click the
necessary folder and select Explore. Veeam Backup & Replication will launch Windows Explorer so
that you can browse to VM guest OS files.
You can also start Windows Explorer as usually and browse to the necessary files. VM disks are
mounted under the C:\veeamflr\<vmname>\<volume n> folder of the Veeam Backup server.

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Note You can browse to the VM guest OS files mounted to the Veeam Backup server only while the
Veeam Backup browser with the restored files is open. After the Veeam Backup browser is closed,
the VM disks will be unmounted from the Veeam Backup server.

Restoring VMs with the Extract Utility

Veeam Backup & Replication comes with an extract utility that can be used to recover VMs from a
backup file to the latest full restore point. The utility can be used as an independent tool on
Windows computers as it does not require any interaction with Veeam Backup & Replication.
The extract utility can be helpful, for example, if it is written to the tape next to backup files — in
this case, you get a possibility to recover VMs from backups at any moment of time even if backups
are removed from Veeam Backup & Replication or the application is uninstalled at all. Please keep
in mind that the extract utility always restores a VM to the latest full restore point.
The installation folder of Veeam Backup & Replication (by default,
%PROGRAMFILES%\Veeam\Veeam Backup & Replication) contains an executable file named
extract.exe. You can run the executable file and work with the utility in the interactive mode, or
start the utility from the command line.

Using the Extract Utility in the Interactive Mode

To start the extract utility in the interactive mode, run the Extract.exe file from the installation
folder of Veeam Backup & Replication.
You will have to sequentially enter the following arguments:
1. Path to the .vbk backup file from which VMs should be restored. After you enter the path,
the restore utility will display a list of all VMs included in the backup and their description.
2. Name of a VM(s) you want to restore. If there are more than one VM with the specified
name in the backup, you will be asked to specify the host on which the backed up VM
resides. If you want to restore all VMs from the backup, press ENTER on the keyboard.
3. Output directory to which VMs should be restored. If you want to restore VM(s) to the
current directory, press ENTER.

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 4. Press Y on the keyboard to restore a VM to the directory you selected. If you want to abort
the operation, press ENTER.

Using the Extract Utility from the Command Line

If you run the extract utility from the command line, you can perform the following actions:
• Run the extract utility in the interactive mode
• Display help information for the utility usage
• Display the list of all VMs in the .vbk backup file
• Restore all or selected VMs from the backup

Running the Extract Utility in the Interactive Mode

This command runs the extract utility in the interactive mode.
Syntax
extract.exe [pathtovbk]
Parameters

Parameter Description Required/Optional

pathtovbk Path to the .vbk backup file from which VM(s) Optional
should be restored

Displaying Help Information for the Utility Usage

This command prints all variants of the extract utility usage along with required and optional
parameters.
Syntax
extract.exe -help

Displaying the List of VMs in the Backup

This command displays the list of all VMs in the .vbk backup file from which you want to perform
restore.
Syntax
extract.exe -dir [-vm vmname] [-host hostname] pathtovbk
Parameters

Parameter Description Required/Optional

vm Name of a VM that you want to restore. Use this Optional
parameter to filter VMs in the backup job.
host Name of the host on which a backed up VM Optional
resides. This parameter is used if the vm
parameter is specified. Use this parameter to filter
VMs that have the same name but reside on
different hosts.
pathtovbk Path to the .vbk backup file from which VM(s) Required
should be restored.

Restoring VMs from Backup

This command restores all or selected VM files from the .vbk backup file.
Syntax
extract.exe -restore [-vm vmname] [-host hostname] pathtovbk [outputdir]
Parameters

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 Parameter Description Required/Optional
vm Name of a VM that you want to display. Use this Optional
parameter to filter VMs in the backup job.
host Name of the host on which a backed up VM Optional
resides. This parameter is used if the vm
parameter is specified. Use this parameter to filter
VMs that have the same name but reside on
different hosts.
pathtovbk Path to the .vbk backup file from which VM(s) Required
should be restored.
outputdir Path to the directory to which VM(s) should Optional
be restored. If this parameter is not specified,
VM(s) will be restored to the current directory.

Performing Replica Failover and Failback

With the virtual machine replica failover and failback possibilities, you can recover a corrupted
virtual machine in case of software or hardware malfunction. The failover option can be used for
any virtual machine replicas that were successfully created at least once.
The following operations can be performed as part of the failover and failback workflow:
• Failover
• Permanent failover
• Undo failover
• Failback
• Commit failback
• Undo failback
To learn more about the purpose of each operation and associated background processes, see the
Replica Failover and Failback section.

Performing Failover
Failing over replicas is performed by means of the Failover wizard. This section will guide you
through all steps of the wizard and provide explanation on offered options.

Step 1. Launch the Failover Wizard

To launch the Failover wizard, do one of the following:
• On the Home tab, click Restore. If you already have Hyper-V and VMware servers in the
list of managed servers, the Restore button will offer a choice of hypervisors. In the
Restore from replica section, select Failover to replica.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Replicas node. In the working area,
expand the necessary replication job, select the VM and click Failover Now on the
toolbar.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Replicas node. In the working area,
expand the necessary replication job, right-click the VM and select Failover Now.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select Ready under the Replicas node. In the
working area, select the necessary replica and click Failover Now on the toolbar or right-
click the replica and select Failover Now.

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Step 2. Select Virtual Machines
At this step, you should select one or more VMs that you want to fail over. To add a VM or a VM
container, click Add VM and select where to browse for the machines:
• From Infrastructure – browse the virtual environment and select VMs or VM containers
to fail over. If you choose a VM container, Veeam Backup & Replication will expand it to a
plain VM list.
To facilitate selection, use the search field at the bottom of the Select Objects window:
click the button to the left of the field and select the necessary type of object to search for
(Everything, Folder, Host Group, SCVMM, Cluster, Host or VM), enter an object’s name or a
part of it and click Start search on the right.
Make sure that VMs you select from the virtual environment have been successfully
replicated at least once.
• From Replica – browse existing replicas and select VMs under replication jobs. If you
select a replication job, all VMs from the job will be added to the list.
To quickly find VMs, use the search field at the bottom of the Select Objects window:
enter a VM name or a part of it and click the Start search button on the right

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Alternatively, you can use the search field at the top of the window: enter a VM name or a part of it
in the search field. Veeam Backup & Replication will search existing replicas for the specified VM
and display matching results. To add a VM, double-click it in the list of search results. If a VM is not
found, click the Show more link to browse existing replicas and choose the necessary VM.
To remove a VM from the list, select it and click Remove on the right.

Step 3. Select a Restore Point

At this step, you should select the necessary restore point to which you want to fail over.
By default, Veeam Backup & Replication uses the latest good restore point of a VM. However, if you
want to fail over to an earlier replica state, select a VM in the Virtual machines to failover list and
click Point on the right. In the Restore Points section, select a restore point that should be used to
fail over the VM.

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Step 4. Specify Failover Reason
If necessary, enter the reason for performing failover of selected VMs. The information you provide
will be saved in the session history so that you can reference it later.

Step 5. Review Summary and Complete the Work with the Wizard
Review the list of VMs to fail over and click Finish to start the failover procedure. Once the failover
is complete, the VM replicas will be powered on on the target hosts.

Performing Permanent Failover

The permanent failover option finalizes failover to a VM replica. As a result of permanent failover,
the VM replica on the target host ceases to exist as a replica and takes on the role of the original
VM.
To perform permanent failover, do either of the following:
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Replicas node. In the working area,
expand the necessary replication job, select the VM and click Permanent Failover on the
toolbar.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Replicas node. In the working area,
expand the necessary replication job, right-click the VM and select Permanent Failover.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select Active under the Replicas node. In the
working area, select the necessary replica and click Permanent Failover on the toolbar or
right-click the replica and select Permanent Failover.
In the displayed dialog box, click Yes to confirm the operation.

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Undoing Failover
The undo failover option allows powering off running VM replicas on target hosts and rolling back
to their initial state.
To undo failover, do either of the following:
• On the Home tab, click Restore and select Hyper-V. In the Restore from replica section,
select Undo previously performed failover.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Replicas node. In the working area,
expand the necessary replication job, select the VM and click Undo Failover on the
toolbar.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Replicas node. In the working area,
expand the necessary replication job, right-click the VM and select Undo Failover.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select Active under the Replicas node. In the
working area, select the necessary replica and click Undo Failover on the toolbar or right-
click the replica and select Undo Failover.
In the displayed dialog box, click Yes to confirm the operation.

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 Performing Failback
The failback option allows you to switch from a VM replica back to the original VM or restore a VM
from a replica in a new location. Failback is performed by means of the Failback wizard. This
section will guide you through all steps of the wizard and provide explanation on offered options.

Important! You can perform failback for a VM replica in the Failover state (the VM replica is put to the Failover
state when you fail over to it from the original VM). To see all VMs in the Failover state, open the
Backup & Replication view and select the Active node under Replicas in the inventory pane.

Step 1. Launch the Failback Wizard

To launch the Failback wizard, do one of the following:
 On the Home tab, click Restore. If you already have Hyper-V and VMware servers in the list
of managed servers, the Restore button will offer a choice of hypervisors.
In the Restore from replica section, select Failback to production.
 Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Replicas node. In the working area,
expand the necessary replication job, select the VM and click Failback to production on
the toolbar.
 Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Replicas node. In the working area,
expand the necessary replication job, right-click the VM and select Failback to production.
 Open the Backup & Replication view and select Active under the Replicas node. In the
working area, select the necessary replica and click Failback to production on the toolbar
or right-click the replica and select Failback to production.

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Step 2. Select VM Replicas to Fail Back
At this step, you should select one or more VM replicas from which you want to fail back. Click
Populate to display all existing replicas in the Failover state. Leave check boxes selected only for
those replicas from which you want to fail back.

Step 3. Select the Failback Destination

At this step of the wizard, you should select failback destination.
Veeam Backup & Replication supports three possible failback destination variants. Note that the
Failback wizard displays a different set of steps for every failback variant.
• Select Failback to the original VM if you want to fail back to the original VM residing on
the source host. In this case, Veeam Backup & Replication will restore the original VM to
the current state of its replica.
If this option is selected, you will only need to complete Step 9 of the wizard.

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 • Select Failback to the original VM restored in a different location if you have
recovered the original VM from a backup in a new location, and you want to switch to it
from the replica. In this case, Veeam Backup & Replication will restore the recovered VM to
the current state of the replica.
If this option is selected, you will only need to complete Steps 8-9 of the wizard.
• Select Failback to the specified location if you want to restore the original VM from a
replica – in a new location and/or with different settings (such as VM location, network
settings, virtual disk and configuration files path and so on).
If this option is selected, you will need to complete Steps 4-9 of the wizard.
Note that if you fail back to the original VM or to the original VM restored in a new location, only
differences between the existing virtual disks and their state will be transferred over to the original
VM. Veeam Backup & Replication will not transfer replica configuration changes, such as a different
IP address or network settings (if replica re-IP and network mapping were applied), new hardware
or virtual disks added while the replica was in the Failover state.
If you choose to perform advanced failback, the entire VM replica, including its configuration and
virtual disks content, will be restored in the selected location.

Step 4. Select a Failback Destination Host

This step of the wizard is only available if you have chosen to perform advanced failback. To specify
a destination host, select one or more VMs in the list and click Host. From the virtual environment,
choose a standalone or clustered host where the selected VMs should be registered.
To facilitate selection, use the search field at the bottom of the window: click the button on the left
of the field to select the necessary type of object that should be searched for (SCVMM, Cluster or
Host), enter an object’s name or a part of it and click Start search on the right.

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If you choose to register a restored VM on a host being a part of a Hyper-V failover cluster, you can
register it as a cluster resource. Select a VM in the list and click Resource. In the Cluster Resource
Settings section, choose Register VM as a cluster resource – in case the destination host is
brought offline or fails for any reason, the VM will fail over to another node in the cluster.

Step 5. Select a Failback Destination Datastore

This step of the wizard is only available if you have chosen to perform advanced failback. When
restoring a VM from a replica, you can place an entire VM to a particular location or choose to store
configuration files and disk files of a restored VM to different locations.
To specify a destination location, select one or more VMs in the list and click Path. If configuration
and disk files of a VM should be placed to different locations, expand the VM in the list, select the
necessary file type, click Path and point to the necessary folder. To create a dedicated folder for
storing files of the restored VM, use the Make New folder button at the bottom of the window.

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Step 6. Select a Destination Network
This step of the wizard is only available if you have chosen to perform advanced failback. If you
plan to fail back to VMs to a new location – another site with a different set of networks – you can
map the DR site networks to the production site networks. Veeam Backup & Replication will use
the network mapping table to update configuration files of VMs on the fly, during the restore
process.
To change networks to which restored VMs will be connected, select one or more VMs in the list
and click Networks. If a VM is connected to multiple networks, expand the VM, select the network
to map and click Network. The Select Network section displays all networks to which the
destination host or cluster is connected. From the list of available networks, choose a network to
which the original VMs should have access upon failback. To facilitate selection, use the search
field at the bottom of the window: enter a network name or a part of it and click Start search on
the right.
To prevent the original VM from accessing networks upon failback, select the VM or its network
connections in the list and click Disconnected.

Step 7. Specify VM Name and VM UUID Handling

This step of the wizard is only available if you have chosen to perform advanced failback.
When restoring VMs from replicas, Veeam Backup & Replication uses original VM names. You can
change names of restored VMs – for example, if you restore a VM to its original location, you may
need to change its name to avoid confusion.
To change VM names, select one or more VMs in the list and click Name. In the Change Name
section, you can enter a new name explicitly or specify a change name rule by adding a prefix
and/or suffix to the initial VM name. Alternatively, you can change VM names directly in the list:
select a VM, click the New Name field and enter the name to be assigned to the restored VM.

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Additionally, you can specify how Veeam Backup & Replication should handle unique identifiers of
restored VMs. By default, a new VM ID will be generated for the recovered VM. If necessary,
however, you can choose to preserve the existing VM ID.

To view or change VM identification settings, select one or more VMs in the list and click VM UUID.
In the Unique ID section, choose one of the following options:
• Select Preserve existing VM ID if the original VM was decommissioned, so the restored
VM will be used in place of the original one.
• Select the Generate new VM ID if you perform VM recovery to clone the original VM. Use
this option to avoid VM ID conflicts in cases when the original VM and its duplicate will
operate in parallel in the same location.

Step 8. Map the Replica to the Restored VM

This step of the wizard is only available if you have chosen to fail back to the original VM restored
in a different location. At this step, you should define how VM replicas map to VMs restored from
the backup.

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To create a mapping association, select a replica in the list and click Edit. Select the restored VM
from the virtual infrastructure. To facilitate selection, use the search field at the bottom of the
Select Objects window: click the button to the left of the field and select the necessary type of
object to search for (Everything, Folder, Host Group, SCVMM, Cluster, Host or VM), enter an object’s
name or a part of it and click Start search on the right.

Step 9. Review Summary and Complete the Work with the Wizard
If you want to start the original VM after the work with the Failback wizard is complete, select the
Power on VM after restoring check box.
Check specified settings for failback and click Finish. Veeam Backup & Replication will restore the
original VMs to the state of corresponding VM replicas.

Committing Failback
The commit failback option finalizes failback from the VM replica to the original VM.
To commit failback, do either of the following:
• On the Home tab, click Restore and select Hyper-V. In the Restore from replica section,
select Commit failback.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Replicas node. In the working area,
expand the necessary replication job, select the VM and click Commit Failback on the
toolbar.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Replicas node. In the working area,
expand the necessary replication job, right-click the VM and select Commit Failback.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select Active under the Replicas node. In the
working area, select the necessary replica and click Commit Failback on the toolbar or
right-click the replica and select Commit Failback.
In the displayed dialog box, click Yes to confirm the operation.

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Undoing Failback
The Undo failback option allows you to switch from the original VM back to the VM replica. The
protective failback snapshot is deleted, the VM replica returns to the Failover state.
To undo failback, do either of the following:
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Replicas node. In the working area,
expand the necessary replication job, select the VM and click Undo Failback on the
toolbar.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select the Replicas node. In the working area,
expand the necessary replication job, right-click the VM and select Undo Failback.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and select Active under the Replicas node. In the
working area, select the necessary replica and click Undo Failback on the toolbar or right-
click the replica and select Undo Failback.
In the displayed dialog box, click Yes to confirm the operation.

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Managing Backups & Replicas
Veeam Backup & Replication offers the following management options for your backups and
replicas: removing from backups/replicas, deleting from disks and viewing properties. All options
are available from the shortcut menu.
• The Remove from Backups or Replicas option is used when you want to remove records
about backup and replica files from the Veeam Backup configuration database. Please
note that all backup files (.vbk, .vib, .vrb, .vbm) will stay safe on the destination backup
storage, so you can easily import these files later to the Veeam Backup & Replication
console for restore operations if needed. As for replicas, all references will be removed
from the Veeam Backup & Replication console; however, all your replicated VMs will still
reside on your target hosts, so you can start them manually after the Remove from
replicas option is performed.
• In addition to removing records about backup and replica files from the Veeam Backup
configuration database, the Delete from disk option also removes actual backups and
replicas from the destination storage. Note that you should avoid deleting backup files
manually from your destination storage, otherwise all subsequent job sessions will be
failing. You can use this option for all VMs in the backup or replication job or for each VM
separately.
• The Properties option for backups is used to view summary information on backups you
made. It contains information on compression and deduplication ratios, available restore
points for a particular backup, as well as date, data size and backup file size.

Importing Backups
Importing backups can be useful in several cases: if you need to restore backups from tape or from
.vbk files of other Veeam Backup & Replication versions or instances, if you happened to delete the
server with which the backup was associated from the management tree, or in case the application
has been uninstalled. You can also use the import option to work with VeeamZIP files: if you have
created VeeamZIP files, you can import them to the Veeam Backup & Replication console and use
them for data restore as usual backups.
To import backups to Veeam Backup & Replication:
1. On the Home tab, click Import Backup.
2. From the Computer list, select the host on which the backup you want to import is
stored.
3. Click Browse and select the necessary .vbm or .vbk file. Note that the import process is
notably faster if you select the .vbm file. Therefore, it is recommended to use the .vbk files
for import only if no corresponding .vbm file is available (for example, if you need to
import backups created with Veeam Backup & Replication v5).
4. By default, index data of the guest OS file system is not imported with the backup file to
speed up the import process. However, if it is necessary, select the Import guest file
system index check box.
5. Click OK to import the selected backup. The imported backup will become available in the
Backup & Replication view, under the Backups > Imported node in the inventory pane.
Backups are imported using the original name of the backup job with the _imported suffix
appended.

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Note To be able to perform any restore operation for previous points in time (rollbacks) for your backed
up VM, before importing a full backup file to the Veeam Backup & Replication console, make sure
that you have all required increments (either forward or reverse) in the same folder.

Specifying Veeam Backup & Replication Options

This section provides a detailed description about general Veeam Backup & Replication options.

Specifying E-Mail Notification Settings

With Veeam Backup & Replication you can select to receive e-mail messages in case of success or
failure of a created backup or replication job. To be able to receive e-mail notifications, you should
configure general e-mail notification settings and select to receive a notification when creating a
corresponding job.

Tip To be able to receive e-mail notification about all performed jobs at once, use Veeam Backup
Enterprise Manager. To learn more, see the Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager Guide.

Configuring General E-Mail Notification Settings

To configure general e-mail notification settings, select Options from the main menu. Select the
Enable e-mail notification check box and specify e–mail notification settings:
1. In the SMTP Server field, enter the DNS name or IP address of the SMTP server that will be
used for sending e–mail messages.
2. Use the Advanced button to specify user credentials and connection options — port
number and connection timeout. Additionally, you can select the Connect using SSL
check box to use the secure SSL connection for email operations.
3. In the From field, specify the e–mail from which e-mail notifications should be sent.
4. In the To field, specify the recipient address(es). Use semicolon to enter multiple
addresses. Recipient(s) specified in this field will receive notification about every job
managed by the Veeam Backup server. You can leave the field empty if required.
For every particular job, you can also specify additional recipients (for details, see the
Configuring Job Notification Settings section).

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 5. In the Subject field, specify the subject for a sent message. You can use the following
variables in the subject: %JobName%, %JobResult%, %VmCount% (the number of VMs in
the job) and %Issues% (the number of VMs in the job that have been processed with the
Warning or Failed status).
6. Select the Notify on success, Notify on warning and/or Notify on failure check boxes to
receive e-mail notification in case a job is run successfully, not successfully or with a
warning.

Veeam Backup & Replication allows sending a test e-mail to check if all settings have been
configured correctly: click the Test Message button to receive a test e-mail.

Configuring Job Notification Settings

To configure job notification settings:
1. At the step of specifying storage settings for the job, click Advanced.
2. On the Notifications tab, select the Send email notifications to the following
recipients check box.
3. In the field below enter an e-mail to which a notification should be sent. To enter several
e-mails, use semicolon.

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Specifying SNMP Settings
Veeam Backup & Replication provides a possibility to monitor execution of backup and replication
jobs using SNMP traps. You can select receive SNMP notifications once each job is completed and
backup or replica is created. SNMP traps can be used to feed data into other popular system
monitors, such as CA Unicenter, BMC Patrol, IBM Tivoli or HP OpenView.
To be able to receive SNMP traps, you should:
• Configure general SNMP settings in Veeam Backup & Replication
• Configure SNMP service properties on the trap recipients’ computers
• Select to receive SNMP settings for a specific job

Configuring General SNMP Settings

To configure general SNMP settings:
1. Select Options from the main menu of Veeam Backup & Replication.
2. Click the SNMP Settings tab.
3. In the Receiver field, specify an IP address of the SNMP recipient.
4. In the field on the right, enter the port number to be used.
5. In the Community String field, enter the community identifier.
Trap notifications can be sent to 5 different destinations.

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Configuring SNMP Service Properties
To configure SNMP service properties on the trap recipients’ computers:
1. Install standard Microsoft SNMP agent from the Windows distribution.
2. From the Start menu, select Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services.
3. Double-click SNMP Service to open the SNMP Service Properties window.
4. Click the Traps tab.
5. Add the public string to the Community name list and the necessary host name — to the
Trap destinations list.
6. Click the Security tab.
7. Make sure the Send authentication trap option is selected.
8. Add the public string to the Accepted community names list.
9. Select the Accept SNMP packets from any hosts option.
10. Click OK to accept changes.

Specifying SNMP Settings for Jobs

To be able to receive SNMP traps with results for a specific job:
1. At the step of specifying storage settings for the job, click Advanced.
2. On the Notifications tab, select the Enable SNMP notifications for this job check box.

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Specifying Storage Space Notification Settings
When a job is run, Veeam Backup & Replication checks disk space on the backup storage and on
production datastores. If the disk space is below a specific value, Veeam Backup & Replication will
display a warning message in the job session details.

To specify the disk space threshold:

1. Select Options from the main menu.
2. Click the Notifications tab.
3. In Backup storage and Production datastores sections, select the Warn me if free disk
space is below … percent/GB options and specify a desired disk space threshold.

Specifying Advanced Settings

Using advanced settings of Veeam Backup & Replication, you can specify session history settings.

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 1. Select Options from the main menu.
2. Click the Advanced tab.
3. In the sessions section, specify the number of sessions to display in the History list and
the number of sessions to keep in the database.

Reporting
When a job is being run, jobs statistics and operation data is written to
Veeam Backup & Replication database. Veeam Backup & Replication allows viewing realtime
statistics on a performed job and generating reports with statistics on a job or a separate job
session.

Realtime Statistics
To view real-time statistics for a job that is being run, do one of the following:
• Open the Backup & Replication view and click the Jobs node. Double-click the necessary
job in the working area.
• Open the Backup & Replication view and click the Jobs node. Right-click the job in the
working area and select Statistics.

A report generated for a job contains detailed data on job sessions: job progress, duration,
processing rate, performance bottlenecks, the amount of data processed, read and transferred,
and details of the session performance (for example, errors that have occurred in the process of
operation). To learn more about bottleneck detection, see the Detecting Performance Bottlenecks
section.
In addition to overall job statistics, the statistics contains detailed data on each object processed
within the frames of a job (that is, a virtual machine). To view backup progress for a specific VM,
select it in the list on the left.

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 Veeam Backup & Replication also allows you to view detailed statistics on every past job session.
To view statistics for a selected job session, do either of the following:
• Open the History view, click the Jobs node and double-click the necessary session in the
working area.
• Open the History view, click the Jobs node, right-click the session and select Details.

Tip To switch between past job sessions in the Statistics window, use left and right arrow keys on the
keyboard.

Session Report
The session report contains data on a single job session:
• Cumulative session statistics – session duration details, details of the session performance,
amount of read, processed and transferred data, backup size, compression and
deduplication ratios.
• Detailed statistics for every VM processed within the session – processing duration details,
backup data size, the amount of read and transferred data, the list of warnings and errors
(if any).
To generate a report:
1. Open the History view.
2. Click the Jobs node.
3. Right-click the necessary session in the working area and select Report.

Job Report
The job report contains data on all sessions initiated for a specific job. To generate a job report:
1. Open the Backup & Replication view.
2. Click the Jobs node.
3. Right-click the necessary session in the working area and select Report.

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 Users and Roles
There are four levels of security that can be granted to users who work with
Veeam Backup & Replication:
• Veeam Restore Operators
• Veeam Backup Viewers
• Veeam Backup Operators
• Veeam Backup Administrators
A security scheme in Veeam Backup & Replication is mainly used for work with Veeam Backup
Enterprise Manager. To learn more about security settings in Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager,
see the Configuring Security Settings section of Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager Guide.
In Veeam Backup & Replication, security settings are checked for managing (starting and stopping)
jobs and performing the restore operations.

Role Operations

Veeam Backup Viewer Has the “read-only” access to Veeam Backup & Replication –
can view existing and performed jobs and review the job
session details.
Veeam Restore Operator Can perform restore operations using existing backups and
replicas.
Veeam Backup Operator Can start and stop existing jobs.
Veeam Backup Administrator Can perform all administrative activities in
Veeam Backup & Replication.
To specify user security settings:
1. Select Users and Roles from the main menu.
2. Click Add.
3. In the User name field, enter the name of a user or group in the DOMAIN\Username
format.
4. From the Role list, select the necessary role to be assigned.

Tip By default, during installation the Veeam Backup Administrator role is assigned to users listed in
the local Administrators group.

Logging
Veeam Backup & Replication provides detailed logging of performed activities, initiated jobs,
Backup Agent work and so on. On the Veeam Backup & Replication server, log files are stored in
the following folder:
• For Windows XP and Windows Server 2003: %allusersprofile%\Application
Data\Veeam\Backup
• For Windows Vista and later: %allusersprofile%\Veeam\Backup
Veeam Backup & Replication keeps a separate log file for each of its components: Veeam Shell,
Veeam Backup Service, Veeam Indexing Service, Veeam vPower NFS Service, Veeam Installer, Veeam
Proxy, Veeam Agents, Veeam Manager and performed jobs.
In addition to logs stored on the Veeam Backup & Replication server, log files are also stored on all
servers managed by Veeam Backup & Replication:
• On Linux servers and ESX hosts, logs are stored in the following directory:
/var/log/VeeamBackup/

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 • On Windows servers and Hyper‑V hosts, logs are stored as follows:
o For Windows XP and Windows Server 2003: %allusersprofile%\Application
Data\Veeam\Backup
o For Windows Vista and later: %allusersprofile%\Veeam\Backup
To browse to the log files, select Help > Support Information from the main menu. As a result, the
Export Logs wizard will be launched.

Exporting Logs
Use log files to submit a support ticket. It is recommended that you send the whole content of the
logs folders to ensure that overall and comprehensive information is provided to the support
team.
To aggregate all log files in the same location, you can use the Export Logs wizard. To launch the
wizard, select Help > Support Information from the main menu.

Step 1. Select Managed Servers

At this step of the wizard, you can select servers from which you want to collect logs. Note that
selected servers must be running and reachable over the network.

Step 2. Specify Destination Folder

At this step of the wizard, you should specify the destination folder to which the logs will be
exported. To create an archive with exported logs, which is generally required by Veeam support,
select the Prepare logs package for technical support check box.

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Step 3. Review the Results
When the export completes, review the results and click the Open folder link to browse to
exported log files and log package.

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PERFORMING FILE COPY OPERATIONS
As an added benefit, Veeam Backup & Replication provides you with a possibility to perform file
copying operations.
File copying is the most natural way to deliver an ISO file to an ESX(i) host or make a backup copy
of an existing virtual machine or exchange virtual machines and templates between ESX(i),
Windows and Linux hosts. Veeam Backup & Replication ensures security by using a one-time
password feature, and works over 6 times faster than SCP.

Adding Servers and Folders

To take advantage of managing files with Veeam Backup & Replication, you should first add
VirtualCenter, ESX(i), Linux or Windows servers you are going to work with. To learn more, see the
Adding Servers section.
You can also add folders to the management tree, which will help you to better organize your
work.
To add a server or a folder:
1. Open the Files view.
2. Right-click on the blank area in the inventory pane and select Add New Folder or Add
Server.

Copying and Moving Files and Folders

Using Veeam Backup & Replication, you can copy files and folders between and within ESX(i),
Windows and Linux hosts:
1. Open the Files view.
2. Expand the file tree in the inventory pane.
3. Right-click the item you want to copy and select Copy. In the inventory pane, right-click a
destination folder and select Paste. You can also copy files and folders with drag-and-
drop operations.
To move a folder or file:
1. Open the Files view.
2. Expand the file tree in the inventory pane.
3. Press and hold the SHIFT key on the toolbar. Drag the necessary file or folder and drop it
onto the destination folder.
You can also automate or postpone the copy job. For details, see Creating File Copy Jobs.

Creating File Copy Jobs

To schedule a copying process of files and folders, you should create a copy job by means of the
New File Copy Job wizard. You can perform the created job immediately, schedule or save it. This
section will guide you through all steps of the New File Copy Job wizard and provide explanation
on the offered options.
To copy files and folders, follow the next steps.

Step1. Launch the New File Copy Job Wizard

To run the New File Copy Job wizard, on the Home tab, click File Copy.

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Step 2. Specify Job Name and Description
At the first step of the wizard, enter the name and description of the job. By default, the following
description is initially provided for the job: time at which the job was created and user who created
the job.

Step 3. Select Files and Folders to Be Copied

At this step, you should select files and folders that you want to copy. From the Host list, choose a
host on which the necessary file or folder resides. Click Add to browse to the file or folder that
should be copied. The selected item will be added to the list. To remove a file or folder from the
list, select it and click Remove.

Step 4. Select Destination for Copying

Select a destination host and location to which source files or folders should be copied. Click
Details to the right of the Server field to view or edit the properties of the server.

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Click Browse next to the Path to folder field to browse to a folder where copied items should be
stored. To create a dedicated folder for copied files or folders, use the Make New Folder button at
the bottom of the Select Folder window.

Step 5. Define Job Schedule

The Schedule step of the wizard allows you to specify scheduling settings for the job. You can
select to manually run the file copy job, schedule the job to start at a specific time – for example,
the least busy hours to reduce impact on the virtual environment, – or define a schedule for the
job to run on a regular basis.
To specify the job schedule, select the Run the job automatically check box and choose to
perform copying job at specific time on defined days or with specific periodicity. If this option is
not selected, the job is supposed to be run manually.

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Step 6. Finish Working with the Wizard
After you have specified the schedule settings, click Create. Select the Run the job when I click
Finish check box if you want to start the created job right after you complete working with the
wizard; then click Finish.

Changing Server Connection Settings

The server connection properties are defined when you add a server. To view or change the server
connection properties, use the server properties option:
1. Open the Infrastructure or Files view.
2. Right-click the server and select Properties.
3. Navigate the tabs and configure the connection settings as desired.
The available settings vary depending on the server type (Hyper-V server, Windows server, Linux
server). The settings and their default values are listed below.

Server Connection
Default Value Comments
Type Property/ Option

Hyper-V Data channel port 2500–5000 Only 1 port is required for data transfer.
Linux range
Windows Packet size (Kb) 64 Adjust this option if you have any stability issues
when copying.
Run server on this Unmarked Check the option to copy files to the Hyper-V
side for copying server behind the NAT or router.
between servers

Editing Linux File Attributes

If necessary, you can change user (owner), group, and other read, write and execute permissions
for Linux files and folders directly from Veeam Backup & Replication:
1. Open the Files view.
2. Click the necessary ESX(i) or Linux file or folder and click Properties on the toolbar or
right-click the ESX(i) or Linux folder or file and select Properties.
3. Change the permission settings as necessary.

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