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  • 1.  Raw backup of a server

    Posted May 03, 2016 10:37 AM

    Hello,

    I have migrated all my servers to VMware system.

    I am playing with Veeam backup and replication to test how could I manage the backups of the important servers, I have a free license.

    How could I make a raw backup of my important servers to a USB disk?

    I want to be sure to have a copy if I have some fail.

    Need I to power off the servers?

    Thanks and regards.



  • 2.  RE: Raw backup of a server



  • 3.  RE: Raw backup of a server

    Posted May 05, 2016 06:37 AM

    Thanks!

    Is it possible to go to datastorage and copy all files to a USB to get a RAW copy?

    Best regards.



  • 4.  RE: Raw backup of a server

    Posted May 05, 2016 08:47 AM

    You need to copy all files from backup storage to maintain chains so that you can restore it easily.

    I have been using veeam but never moved backup to other location.

    I would suggest you to copy backup storage data to USB, then restore it to new disk location and try to restore that data VM again.

    With this you can test whether this process works well or not.



  • 5.  RE: Raw backup of a server

    Posted May 05, 2016 02:20 PM

    Probably some clarification would be good in terms of why do you want a RAW backup (I guess you mean flat copies of VM files as they are on datastore).

    I'm going to make a wild guess - you are trying to prepare for the "smoking hole" scenario when almost everything is destroyed. After disaster you have set up a new piece of infrastructure, some ESXi servers and some storage space. Now you do have your Veeam backups available (.vbk and .vib/.vrb files) and need to restore a couple of critical VMs ASAP. Your new infrastructure does not have a Veeam Backup Server yet so you can't read the contents of the backups and provisioning a new Veeam server / proxies takes too much time to fit within RTO for your critical VMs.

    If this is the case, you could use the extract utlity that allows extracting RAW VM files directly from .vbk (no need to have any Veeam products installed). Here is some more info: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/hyperv/extract_utility.html

    Extract the files from backup, copy to datastore, register the VM and power on.

    Just one gotcha - extract utility only retrieves data from .vbk files - full backups. It would not be able to apply increments (.vib's or .vrb's). Therefore if you are preparing for this scenario, probably would make sense going with reverse incremental backup method for VMs in scope.

    Alternatively you could set up a replication of some kind, either Veeam's or vSphere Replication, however in this case you would need to replicate to a Datastore.

    Hope this helps.