>>> READ FIRST : [FAQ] FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS v5 <<<

[Gostev]

Table of Content

General
Licensing
Upgrade
System Requirements

vStorage API
vStorage API & Changed Block Tracking
Direct SAN Access Mode
Virtual Appliance Mode
Network Mode
Legacy Modes

Basics
Job Types
Backup
Replication
Deduplication
Application-Aware Image Processing

File Level Recovery
Instant File Level Recovery
Guest File System Indexing ad Search

vPower
vPower Engine
Virtual Lab

Instant VM Recovery
Instant VM Recovery
Manual Recovery Verification

SureBackup (Recovery Verification)
Application Groups
SureBackup Jobs
On-Demand Sandbox

Universal Application Item Recovery (U-AIR)
U-AIR Workflow
Universal AIR (Oracle, MySQL, etc)
Active Directory AIR
Exchange AIR
SQL AIR
User-Directed Recovery

Additional Information
Recorded Live Demo
Walkthroughs and Guides

Advanced
How to Setup Internet Access from Virtual Labs

[Gostev]

Licensing

Q: Do I need new license file to be able to install v5?
A: Yes, you need to obtain new license file for version 5.x. Your existing 4.x license file will not work.

Q: Is v5 a free upgrade from v4?
A: With VEEAM, all upgrades are "free" for customers on maintenance. All new license purchases include 1 year of maintenance. If you bought Veeam Backup more than 1 year ago, but did not extend your maintenance after 1st year, you need to fix this with your Veeam sales representative first.

Q: I am current customer on maintenance, how do I get the license file for v5?
A: Please use License Management Portal in the product download area to get your new license file, or email licensing@veeam.com for assistance.

Q: Which v5 edition do I get a free upgrade to?
A: All customers with active maintenance agreements in effect will receive the upgrade to v5 Standard Edition. In addition, customers who had maintenance agreements in effect as of June 18, 2010 are also be eligible for a free upgrade to v5 Enterprise Edition. We also had a few promo programs in Q3 2010 which allowed new customers to get free upgrade to v5 Enteprise Edition. If you are not sure of your eligibility, please contact your Veeam sales representative for more information about eligibility.

Q: Looks like I am eligible to free upgrade to v5 Enterprise. Will I be upgraded automatically?
A: No, you need to claim your free upgrade option within 3 months after v5 release. We do not upgrade everyone automatically, because upgrading to Enteprise Edition incurs increase in your maintenance costs, and we cannot make this decision for you.

Q: How do I claim free upgrade to v5 Enterprise Edition?
A: Please use License Management Portal in the product download area to get your license key, or email licensing@veeam.com for assistance. Note that you must be registered with Veeam as license administrator for your company in order to be able to perform this operation using the portal.

Q: What are the feature differences between the Enterprise and Standard versions?
A: Please see the Standard vs. Enterprise Edition comparison document on product page under Resources tab.

Q: I am using multiple different v4 licenses. How do I deal with centralized licensing feature in v5?
A: Please use License Management Portal in the product download area to get a consolidated license key, or email licensing@veeam.com for assistance.

Q: Can I install multiple v5 servers across multiple sites without any extra fees, using the same license file?
A: Yes, you can install any amount of backup servers across any amount of sites, and federate them with the Enterprise Manager server for centralized management/reporting/search. This is very typical deployment for many of our customers today. With v5, Enterprise Manager will ensure that you are in compliance by consolidating actual socket usage across all backup servers.

[Gostev]

Upgrade

Q: Do I need to perform clean install and re-create all jobs, or can v5 upgrade my existing Veeam Backup install?
A: We support seamless, in-place upgrade from version 4.x. If you are running older versions, please contact our support for assistance with performing an upgrade.

Q: Can I restore backup made with v4 using v5? Can all new functionality be used with backups made by v4?
A: Yes.

Q: Can v4 and v5 be installed on the same server?
A: No. You can however run v4 and v5 in parallel backing up the same VM, but they must be installed on different servers. This is what most customers choose to do for POC/testing new version before upgrading production v4 deployment.

Q: Does Enterprise Manager v5 support Veeam Backup 4.x servers?
A: No. Enteprise Manager v5 cannot collect data from v4 Backup Server, and Enteprise Manager v4 cannot collect data from v5 Backup Server, so you need to upgrade everything at once. Alternatively, you can deploy new (separate) Enteprise Manager v5 install, and connect new v5 Backup servers to it as you upgrade your backup servers, while disconnecting upgraded backup servers from Enteprise Manager v4.

Q: After upgrade, can I change my jobs to newly added backup modes?
A: We recommend that you create new jobs if you want to switch to new backup modes. In all cases, job mode change require full backup to be performed. However, changing backup mode for existing jobs may result in future issues with importing backups (as documented in the Known Issues section of the Release Notes).

[Gostev]

System Requirements

Q: What are the system requirements and supported configurations for Veeam Backup server, and for protected VMs?
A: Please refer to the System Requirements section of the Release Notes document that comes with your download, and available on product page under Resources tab.

Q: Is vSphere 4.1 fully supported?
A: Yes.

Q: Is ESXi fully supported?
A: Yes, licensed (paid-for) ESXi is fully supported since version 3.0 released in February 2009.

Q: What about free ESXi, also known as vSphere Hypervisor?
A: Free ESXi is not supported, because it has vStorage API for Data Protection and other management APIs locked down specifically to prevent ISVs from being able to backup/manage such hosts.

Q: Is vCenter Server presence required?
A: No, standalone ESX(i) hosts are supported as well.

Q: What is the minimum VMware licensing required?
A: vSphere Essentials.

Q: What are the benefits of using the 64-bit version of Veeam Backup over 32-bit version?
A: Using 64-bit version does not provide any significant benefits.

Q: Is running a backup server in a VM supported?
A: Yes, we fully support this, moreover we provide “Virtual Appliance” processing mode that is specifically optimized for this scenario.

Q: How typical is it to run Veeam Backup in a VM among existing customers?
A: This is typical for smaller, non-24/7 or low consolidation ratio environments, which have most ESX resources unused during the night. Larger, 24/7 shops with high consolidatio ratio prefer using physical servers and direct-from-SAN backups to completely offload backup processing activities from production ESX hosts.

Q: Where can the best performance be gained? With Veeam Backup installed as a physical or virtual server?
A: About same. Performance mostly depends on actual Veeam Backup server performance (number of CPU cores, and memory throughput). Veeam Backup running in VM on modern ESX host hardware is often faster than one running on older physical server.

Q: Does the product support backup directly from FC and iSCSI SAN?
A: Yes.

Q: Are there any TCP/IP ports required to communicate from the Veeam Backup server to the VMs in order to successfully back up the VM?
A: No.

Q: What storage does Veeam support for backup targets?
A: Any local or remote storage the Veeam Backup server can read/write files from, plus remote Linux servers. For a complete list, see the System Requirements section of the Release Notes document that comes with your download, and available on product page under Resources tab.

Q: If the Veeam Backup server is running as a virtual machine, is there a 2TB limit backup target for each backup server?
A: No, there is no such limit in the product. Limit solely depends on your chosen backup target.

Q: Is v5 compatible with Windows 2000 Server, and 2000 Pro guests?
A: Yes, we support any OS supported by VMware.

Q: Is processing of VMware vCloud Director provisioned virtual machines supported?
A: Yes. We tested B&R 5.0.1 with vCloud Director 1.0, and did not observe any compatibility issues on B&R side. Likewise, when restoring VM to original location over the existing VM, vCloud Director continues to work with the restored VM normally. No special settings or steps are required for either product, the combination works out of box (but please note DVS limitation described below).

Q: Is DVS (distributed virtual switch) supported?
A: For vPower virtual labs, DVS is fully supported starting version 5.0.1. However, DVS support is limited for full VM restore. If DVS is in use, it is advisable to check network settings after a full VM restore is done. To do that, select restored VM in vSphere Client, click Edit virtual machine settings, verify that Network Connection setting is correct and adjust if required by choosing the correct network settings.

Q: What are the minimum privileges for the service account?
A: Please refer to the following topic: vCenter Server Granular Permissions (v5)

[Gostev]

vStorage API & Changed Block Tracking

Q: Does v5 support vStorage API and Change Block Tracking?
A: Yes, Veeam was the first 3rd party vendor to support starting from version 4.0 released in October 2009.

Q: Does vStorage API support ESX(i) 3.x, or it is for ESX(i) 4.x only?
A: Yes, vStorage API supports ESX(i) 3.x and later hosts.

Q: Does changed block tracking work with ESX(i) 3.x hosts?
A: No, this functionality requires ESX(i) 4 and hardware version 7 virtual machines. Until you upgrade to ESX(i) 4 and version 7, you can continue using legacy, Veeam's proprietary changed block tracking mechanism for incremental backup and replication. However, fast incremental backup and replication do require changed block tracking.

Q: Will the changed block tracking "break" if I backup and replicate the same VM? Or, if backup the same VM with different jobs, or from different backup servers, or with different backup products or scripts?
A: There will be no issues, as changed block tracking is designed to handle such usage scenarios.

[Gostev]

Direct SAN Access Mode

Q: How does it work?
A: Veeam Backup retrieves source VM data directly from production storage over SAN fabric, thus providing LAN-free data retrieval mechanism that does not affect production ESX(i) hosts or management network.

Q: How to configure the new Veeam Backup server for direct SAN access?
A: Disable automount (done automatically by v5 setup), install and configure SAN HBA card (or iSCSI Software Initiator), give Veeam Backup server access and read permission on VMFS LUNs (if applicable to your SAN), and ensure that you are seeing your VMFS volumes in the Windows Disk Management snap-in. Refer to the following thread for more information specific to certain SAN makes and models: Configuring new VEEAM Backup Server for SAN.

Q: I have FC SAN and running Veeam Backup in a VM. Can I use direct SAN access mode via NPIV?
A: No. VMware supports NPIV for RDM disks in physical mode only. Veeam Backup does not support backing up pRDM disks, because VMware does not support snapshotting such disks. You can, however leverage NPIV to mount LUN to VM as pRDM disk, format it with NTFS and use as target for your backups, thus making you backups completely LAN-free.

Q: I have iSCSI SAN and running Veeam Backup in a VM. Can I use direct SAN access mode?
A: Yes, you need to configuring direct SAN access using Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator bundled with Windows. Our customers report best results with Windows 2008 R2. If your Veeam Backup is installed on Windows 2003, be sure to review the corresponding known issue in the Release Notes document that comes with your download, and also available on product page under Resources tab.

Q: I have never configured Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator, settings seem too complex.
A: See the following step-by-step guide: The Mission Manual Part 1: Veeam B & R Direct SAN Backups (courtesy of Justin Paul)

Q: Any tips on improving iSCSI network throughtput on Windows 2008?
A: See the following guide: Improving direct-from-SAN backup speed with iSCSI SAN (courtesy of our iSCSI guru joergr). If this does not help, you may want to try some other settings mentioned in this discussion Poor vStorage iSCSI SAN speed after Windows 2008 Upgrade

Q: Can I use SAN mode with NFS storage?
A: No, only block level access storage (FC and iSCSI) is supported for SAN mode. For NFS storage, consider the Virtual Appliance mode instead.

Q: What is the expected backup performance for SAN mode?
A: Typical full backup performance is around 45-90MB/s for iSCSI SAN (dedicated 1Gb Ethernet), and 75-150MB/s for FC SAN (4Gb Fibre Channel) for a single job. Lower performance is most oftenly caused by underpowered Veeam Backup (check CPU load while backup is running), issues with multipathing software, or backup target performance.

[Gostev]

Virtual Appliance Mode

Q: How does it work?
A: Veeam Backup uses SCSI HotAdd capability of VMware to attach disks of backed up VM directly to Veeam Backup server. As a result, data is retrieved from directly from storage via ESX(i) storage stack (bypassing network stack), which results in significantly better performance. Coupled with new, rewritten iSCSI initiator in ESX(i) 4.0 (I have tested and confirmed significant improvements personally), this allows to dish out very decent numbers.

Q: How do I configure VM for Virtual Appliance mode? What host should I run the VM on?
A: No special configuration is needed for VM. Host running Veeam Backup VM must have all datastores where processed VMs reside connected to it.

Q: What is the expected backup performance for Virtual Appliance mode?
A: Similar to direct SAN access mode. Can be 10-20% faster on 4 vCPU Veeam Backup VM comparing to average physical server, only because ESX hosts typically have better hardware (faster memory and more CPU resources).

Q: Can I use Virtual Appliance mode with any type of storage, including local storage?
A: Yes. Any storage is supported, as long as it is connected to the ESX host running Veeam Backup VM.

Q: Can I use Virtual Appliance mode with NFS storage?
A: Yes. In fact, it is the single best mode to use if your production storage is NFS. Customers report up to 3x better full backup performance comparing to the network mode.

Q: Virtual Appliance mode fails to process some of my VMs, any ideas why?
A: Click here for the complete list of current vStorage API limitation around Virtual Appliance.

[Gostev]

Network Mode

Q: How does it work?
A: Veeam Backup retrieves source VM data from production storage through ESX(i) over management network.

Q: When it is recommended to use Network processing mode?
A: Processing of VMs from multiple ESX(i) hosts with local storage by central Veeam Backup server (consider using Virtual Appliance mode and one Veeam Backup server per host instead). Replication with Veeam Backup server installed in the target site and ESX(i) 4.x hosts as source.

Q: Why this mode is so slow on ESX 4.0?
A: Network backup slow on vSphere ESX 4.0 (resolved in ESX 4.1)

[Gostev]

Legacy Modes

Q: Do you still support VCB (VMware Consolidated Backup)?
A: Yes, we have made the decision to still support VCB in v5, as some of our customers are still in the process of certifying vStorage API, and they have asked us not to drop VCB support until the end of 2010.

Q: How do I enable VCB processing mode?
A: Go to Tools > Options, and select the corresponding checkbox. Now, you will be able to select additional processing mode when creating or editing jobs. Note that we are only keeping VCB and Network modes for compatibility/upgrade reasons, and do not expect majority of customers to use them. In fact, we estimate that over 98% of our current customers are relying solely on vStorage API for all their jobs.

Q: How vStorage API, VCB and legacy Network modes compare to each other?
A: vStorage API is the single best choice for ESX(i) 4 hosts, as well as for ESX(i) 3.x hosts in case you have shared storage. vStorage API mode will provide better performance and functionality all around comparing to other processing modes. The legacy "Network" mode is usually slightly better choice for backups of full ESX 3.x hosts with local storage. And VCB is the slowest.

Q: Can I use changed block tracking in "VCB" and "Network" processing modes?
A: No, change block tracking is only available in the "vStorage API" processing mode.

Q: What are Veeam plans around legacy processing modes?
A: v5 is the last release Veeam Backup release with support for legacy processing modes. The next Veeam Backup release will support vStorage API based processing modes only. If you are not using vStorage API already, please plan for completing the required vStorage API certifications and switch all your jobs to this mode by the end of 2011.

[Gostev]

Job Types

Q: What are Backup jobs designed for?
A: Backup jobs produce highly compressed and dedupe backup files with production VMs data, which allows you to save significant amount of space required to host the backups. Full VM restore from backup usually takes significant time due to the need to extract and copy full VM image from backup to production storage, unless you choose Instant VM Recovery option.

Q: What are Replication jobs designed for?
A: Replication jobs produce exact replicas of production VMs on standby ESX servers. These replicas can be powered on immediately when production VM goes down, without any dependencies on Veeam Backup and Replication server and at full I/O performance. However, replicas require standby host, and much more disk space due to being uncompressed. Thus, replica are typically are only used for tier 1 VMs with low recovery time objectives.

Q: What are VM Copy jobs designed for?
A: VM Copy jobs produce exact copies of selected VMs on the selected storage, and can be used for scenarios such as datacenter migrations, creating test labs, and ad-hoc backups. VM Copy jobs support processing of running VMs. Unlike backup job however, VM Copy does not support "incremental" runs.

Q: What are File Copy jobs designed for?
A: File Copy jobs are designed to copy regular files (such as ISO, or VMDK) to and from hosts or any other storage, and can be used for various administrative tasks. File Copy jobs do not support processing of running VMs.

[Gostev]

Backup

Q: What are the benefits of synthetic full backup?
A: A few times less stress on the production environment, a few times faster full backup performance, a few time less backup storage space due to no need to keep multiple fulls (in select backup modes only).

Q: We have a policy in place that requires me to do real full backups. Are you saying I am forced to use synthetic fulls with Veeam?
A: No, you can configure the job to perform active (real) full backups instead. Also, you can schedule active full backup, for example, once a month (or once a quarter), while doing synthetic full backup for the rest of the time. v5 provides great flexibility around scheduling active full backups.

Q: Do you fully support thin-provisioning, on backup AND restore?
A: Yes. Veeam was the first vendor to add full thin-provisioning disk support with version 4 in October 2009.

Q: Does Veeam support writing backups directly to tape?
A: No, we support backup to disk only at this time. Customers who have requirement to store backup files on tape choose to use post-job script (see advanced job settings) to trigger their legacy tape backup solution to copy backup files created by Veeam to tape. Search this forum for "tape" for more info.

Q: What is the best way to perform offsite backups with v5?
A: If offsite storage is the only destination, best performance can be achieved by backing up to Linux target, and enabling WAN mode optimization in advanced job settings. If you backup locally, with offsite being secondary destination, we recommend using rsync to sync backup files offsite. Search this forum for offsite and rsync for more information from customers employing this technique.

Q: How can I make it so that only the latest backup file is copied over to another storage or tape?
A: You can use this PowerShell script, or leverage capabilities of your tape backup solution (example for BackupExec).

Q: How exactly does reversed incremental backup mode work?
A: Refer to the following post: Veeam Synthetic Backup Explained

Q: What backup mode should I choose?
A: This depends on your requirements. Please review Excel document attached to this post for pros and cons of each backup mode.

v5 Choosing Backup Mode.xlsx

Choosing backup mode in v5

(10.87 KiB) Downloaded 1983 times

[Gostev]

Replication

Q: How exactly does replication work? How failover to earlier time is possible?
A: Replication is very similar to backup in reverse incremental backup mode, except that compression and deduplication are not used, and virtual disks are created in native format (as normal VMDK files). Failover to earlier time is enabled by storing earlier restore points (rollbacks) along with replica. For more information, refer to the following post, towards the end: Veeam Synthetic Backup Explained

Q: Can I power on replica VM manually with vSphere Client?
A: Yes, absolutely, you can do that should the need arise in case of emergency - in the end, replica VM is absolutely normal VM. However, keep in mind that vSphere Client cannot leverage rollbacks, so replica VM can be started to the latest state only. Once you do that, your replica disks will go out of sync with source VM, so continuing replication job will result in corrupt replica. You will also immediately lose the ability to undo failover, and to perform failover to an earlier restore point through Veeam UI.Thus, we strongly recommended to always perform all replica operations through Veeam UI (whenever possible).

Q: How can I test my replica without disrupting replication job or corrupting replica disks?
A: You can test the latest replica state. Please refer to the following post for detailed procedure.

Q: What is the sense of using replication when v5 has Instant VM Recovery feature?
A: Unlike instantly recovered VMs, replicas are created in native format and can this can run at full I/O speed, and without any dependencies on Veeam Backup server. These capabilities are very important in case of major disaster with multiple VMs affected, as well as for high I/O VMs. These are the only (albeit very important) benefits of replicas over vPower-enabled backups.

Q: How does Veeam replication compare with SAN-based replication?
A: Our solution is storage-agnostic (any storage to any storage), granular (per VM versus per LUN), more network friendly, and is application-aware to ensure successful recovery.

Q: If we have a production site doing Veeam backups, can we replicate to a remote site without having Veeam at the remote site?
A: Yes, you can install Veeam Backup server in both source, and target site, or even in both - there is no extra charge.

[Gostev]

Deduplication

Q: What kind of deduplication do you perform?
A: Veeam Backup does source-side deduplication (data is deduped before it is sent to backup storage, which significantly improves backup performance). Veeam was the first vendor on the VMware backup market to add inline source-side deduplication in version 1.0 released in February 2008.

Q: How efficient your deduplication is?
A: Compression and deduplication ratios up to 10x and more of the original size can be achieved, but this depends on too many factors, of course (amount of VMs in the job, similarity of those VMs, content of virtual disks, etc). Please refer to the latest white paper about deduplication on our website, it has some real-world testing numbers.

Q: 10x is nice from software, but other software and hardware dedupe vendors claim to have 100x and more deduplication ratio?
A: Ask them to provide the formula the vendor is using to calculate dedupe ratio. With Veeam, 10x is pure deduplication ratio within a single full backup file (bytes in divided by bytes out). Other vendors often artificially inflate dedupe ratios to achieve impressive numbers for marketing purposes. This is typically done by assuming each backup is full. If you apply this approach to Veeam, then with most typical 30 days retention policy with daily backups, you will get up to 300x "marketing" dedupe ratio. This is because Veeam synthethic backup allows you to keep only one full backup on disk at any time (no matter of how long your retention policy is).

Q: To what level the deduplication is done?
A: We do block level dedupe with constant block size (configurable).

Q: How can I achieve the best deduplication ratio?
A: Group VMs made from the same template in the same job. Have fewer jobs with more VMs in each, rather more jobs with fewer VMs in each.

Q: My VMs are not made from the same template. Will dedupe work between them?
A: Absolutely. Because deduplication is done on block level, it does not matter if VMs were made from the same template, or provisioned manually. Any similar blocks between VMs will be deduped, even if these VMs have different operating systems.

Q: Have you done integration testing with other vendor's de-dupe technology? DataDomain, Falconstor, Netapp, etc?
A: We have started certification process with multiple vendors as soon v5 was released. Alpha code testing showed that incremental backup mode works well with 2 storage vendor we have tested it with.

Q: Should I disable built-in deduplication it I am backing up to a dedupe appliance (e.g., DataDomain or ExaGrid).
A: No, we recommend that you keep it enabled for better results! You will get faster backups, and more portable backup files.

Q: Does it make any sense to write Veeam backup files to storage device with hardware deduplication?
A: Yes, this way you will get global deduplication (between backup files produced by different backup jobs). Generally speaking, deduplicating storage devices are best choice for long-term archival of backup files produced by Veeam. However, not every deduplicating storage device is good as primary backup target, because unlike raw disks, these devices are not designed to provide good IOPS, and may become primary bottleneck for your backup performance, thus affecting your backup window. Likewise, very poor random read I/O performance certain deduplicating storage devices are exhibiting will affect all vPower-based functionality.

Q: Does deduplication work for replication?
A: No, because replicas are created in native format (uncompressed), deduplication is not applicable to them. However, we do compress and dedupe data stored in replica rollbacks (restore points).

[Gostev]

Application-Aware Image Processing

Q: What exactly do you mean by application-aware image processing?
A: Application-aware image processing is unique Veeam technology that allows creating image-level backups in application-aware manner. It is a multi-step process that consists of detecting applications running inside of the processed VM; using Microsoft VSS to perform application-level quiescence to ensure that each application state is transactionally consistent; applying application-specific settings to prepare each application to perform VSS-aware restore on the next VM startup; and finally performing transaction logs pruning for certain applications if backup was successful. The whole process is fully automated.

Q: Do I need to deploy persistent agent in every VM that I am backing up in order to be able to use application-aware image processing?
A: No, Veeam does not use persistent agents inside VMs. Instead, Veeam automatically deploys small runtime coordination process to each VM when backup starts, and removes it immediately after backup finishes. This frees you up from agents micromanagement (deployment, configuration, updates, monitoring, troubleshooting). Besides, actual VM runs without any 3rd party agents present most of the time.

Q: Sounds too good to be true. Does this require direct network connection and some port open between backup server and processed VM?
A: No.

Q: Does Veeam install its own VSS provider on each guest?
A: No, we leverage default VSS provider from Microsoft that is already available on each Windows guest.

Q: What is Microsoft VSS and how it can provide transaction consistency with image-level backups?
A: Please read the following beginners guide to Microsoft VSS: What is Windows VSS & why you should care

Q: Why application aware processing is important?
A: Please read the following article for some great insights on image-level backups of transactional applications with VMware, and what makes Veeam technology so important and unique: Hyper-V ahead of VMware in the backup race (nevermind the title).

Q: What applications do you support for application-aware image processing?
A: Any VSS-aware application running on Windows XP/2003 or later. All modern server applications from Microsoft are VSS-aware, plus many 3rd party vendors ship their server application with VSS writers as well.

Q: How do I know if my application is VSS-aware?
A: It should implement VSS writer and have it installed and registered in Microsoft VSS framework. Open command prompt on backed up VM, and run vssadmin list writers for complete list of VSS-aware applications on specific system.

Q: Do you know if Oracle has VSS writer?
A: Yes, Oracle 11g has a component named "Oracle VSS Writer" that installs when selecting Windows OCI Components on the Oracle 11g database install wizard. It does support Oracle 10g starting from patchset 10.2.0.3

Q: Do you support transactionally-consistent backups on Linux VMs? Linux does not have VSS!
A: Yes, we do. You should use application-specific VMware prefreeze/postthaw scripts to quiesce application before the snapshot is taken, and resume immediately after. Please refer to the following whitepaper written by one of our system engineers for more details: Hot backup of MySQL on a Linux VM. You can also search this forum for script examples for other applications directly from existing Veeam customers.

[Gostev]

Instant File Level Recovery

Q: Does instant file level recovery (FLR) require that backup file content is extracted and staged on disk or in RAM before recovery can take place?
A: No, file-level recovery happens directly from backup file, withour prior extraction. Veeam was the first vendor on the market to add instant FLR capability in version 1.0 released in February 2008.

Q: Does the VM have to have indexing enabled when it is backed up in order to enable the instant recovery feature?
A: No, unlike with other solutions, with Veeam indexing is completely optional and is not a requirement for instant (FLR). In fact, we did not even have indexing until v5.

Q: How does native Windows file level recovery work?
A: Native Windows file level recovery mounts the content of backup file directly to backup server (new volumes added under My Computer). You can even point any applications to files located on these volumes, and use them normally (backup file remains read-only no matter what you do).

Q: How does multi-OS file level recovery work?
A: Because Windows cannot read other file systems natively, we invented a patent-pending approach that uses special FLR helper appliance that runs stripped down Linux that is very small (20MB in size, 10 sec to boot) yet smart enough to be able to read the data from as many as 15 file systems. VMDK files of VM you are restoring from are mounted to FLR helper appliance directly from backup file (without prior extraction). Veeam was the first vendor on the market to provide Linux file level recovery capability in version 3.0 released in February 2009.

Q: Is VMware Player still required to run the FLR helper appliance, like it used to be the case with previous version?
A: No, with v5 FLR helper appliance runs directly on selected ESX(i) host and uses vPower NFS to access VMDK located inside backup file.

Q: Can you restore files with correct permissions?
A: Yes, this option is now available in the multi-OS file-level restore wizard when restoring directly to a Linux host.

Q: What operating systems are supported for instant file-level recovery?
A: 15 most commonly used file systems from Windows, Linux, Solaris, BSD, Unix and Mac.

Q: Do you support instant file level recovery from NSS volumes on Novell?
A: We support file-level recovery from ANY file system, but FLR wizard driven recovery is only available for above-mentioned file systems . To restore individual files from other file systems, you should leverage Instant VM Recovery functionality to publish VMDK from backup on vPower NFS datastore (without actually starting the VM). With the VMDK files readily available, you can simply mount these VMDKs to any VM that can read the corresponding file system (including the original VM), and restore the required files using native OS file management tools. Alternatively, you can mount VMDK to a Windows VM, and use tools such as Portlock Explorer.