NAS Backup File Format

[valteresjunior]

Hi All.

Could someone explain to me how all files created during File Share backup process (vstore, vsource, vindex, vslice and vblob)? Or could someone tell me where I can find this information? The only information I found in Help Center was VBLOB is a 64 MB unstructured file that stores metadata about the original files and folders on the file share and their structure, and during backup execution, will be created multiple VBLOB files to store full and incremental backups.

Thank you!

[Gostev]

Hi, Valter. Backup format is considered to be proprietary information, so we don't publish it. Why do you need this information? In general, it's not something we expect customers to need to know, just like our VBK format (which is likewise quite complex inside). Thanks!

[valteresjunior]

Hi Gostev. Thank you for your anwser.

This information is present in VMCE v10 course content (The Course Guide has a table with this files), and I'd like to understand a little bit better the function of these files. Just it. But don't worry

Thank you!

[Gostev]

@haslund can you tell us how deep do we cover this subject in our training course? Just give the list of file names that constitute NAS backup, but not what they do? Or some additional details to?

[haslund]

@Gostev: Apologize for the late reply, I missed the notification. There is a slide titled "NAS backup file format" which describes scalability to billions of files and PBs of data, that data is stored in 64 MB chunks/blobs on disk (to avoid fragmentation) and then a table of each file type which a described purpose. We can definitely drop the file type table to avoid confusion. The original idea to include it was similar to why we describe .vbk, .vib, etc. which is to offer some visibility to what will appear in the backup repository.

/cc @joemonahan

[jmonahan]

This slide will not be included in the v11 VMCE class. There are 2 slides (Changed File Tracking) that references .vCache in a very simplistic way. We can remove the reference here as well if needed.

[lando_uk]

Rather than starting a new conversation I'll add to this.
I've only just tested NAS backup for the first time today, it's impressive. But is there a import option like have have for normal backups? I'd like to know how to recover backup files if we lost or moved the VBR server.

[Gostev]

Yes, of course. All our backups are 100% portable and can be easily imported into a clean Veeam install.

[lando_uk]

Well i presumed they were, but when i test, i click on import and go to my newly created NAS (file share) backup job folder, I cant find any vbm or vbk file to import?

Do i have to import the .vstore file?

[lando_uk]

ok, so when i import a vstore file, it says " To import file backup, add a managed server as the backup repository and perform a rescan" - So not quite as simple as the traditional vbk import.

[Mildur]

@lando
Have a look at this topic:
file-shares-f57/how-to-import-nas-backup-t68042.html
Your question is covered here for importing Nas Backups

[Gostev]

Yes, it's basically one checkbox to important backups, so still super simple