VEB - Virtual Environment Backup

[PhilG]

Hi, i was hoping someone can give me some advice.l I am looking at using Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE and then using the backup image to boot in a virtual environment. Does anyone know if this is possible and if so the steps taken to do this.

Many Thanks

[Dima P.]

Hi PhilG,

Possible – no limitations here. You can use VEB’s Bare Metal Recovery to restore the backup into a blank VM, be advised though that is not the main purpose of the product.

P.S Take a look at Veeam B&R Free edition it’s also free while its designed specifically for VM backups

[JaxIsland7575]

Welcome Phil,
If I understand your question, you want to take a physical machine and then create a virtual machine of it using VEB. For that you would need to:
1. Install the latest version of VEB
2. Create Recover Media with VEB
3. Do a full system backup onto some storage device that is accessible to the virtual environment
4. Create your virtual machine
5. Boot your virtual machine with the recovery media you created
6. Restore your image onto the virtual machine

That is how I would "suspect" it to go, I have never done this procedure. There are tools available from virtual machine software providers that to Physical to Virtual conversions in a much cleaner manner. If you do try this, please let us know the results and how it went!

Cheers!

Edit: Dima beat me by less than a minute, hows that for support on a free product!

[hoFFy]

Hi Phil,

another point to mention - maybe in the future for you - if you backup your clients with VEB to a Veeam Backup & Recovery Server it is possible to convert / revover the backups diretcly from VBR to VMDKs in your vSphere environment. This could be very helpful if the workstation crashes (maybe the mainboard...) and you don't have another free workstation around there, despite of some old - not anymore used - clients, you could use them to connect via RDP to your revocered "VM" until a new workstation is bought.

[Mike Resseler]

Gents,

Good stuff here. Sebastian is right, that is a possibility but note that we don't do anything with drivers so we have heard from reports that some drivers from physical endpoints bluescreen when they are started after the conversion to vhd(x) / vmdk. I personally did this a few times with older hardware at home and everything went ok, besides the fact that I needed to remove some drivers afterwards as cleanup.

The procedure of Dima and Ryan works also. In fact, it is a bit longer procedure but a more clean one. I have this procedure also already a couple of times and have not encountered issues there.

So have fun

Mike

[PhilG]

HI Everyone, many thanks for all your responses. Very Much appreciated.

Phil

[Dima P.]

You are welcome PhilG. Dont forget to share the feedback once you've completed your testing.

Edit: Dima beat me by less than a minute, hows that for support on a free product!

Ryan, au contraire - your answer was better than mine