Unknown VBK Format

[nehalem]

Hello all and Veeam support team,

We are testing Veeam Backup and Replication v5 on Development and we are facing a strong issue with the stability of restoration process.
The process is straight forward on the same Veeam backup server v5 that performed the backups (as there is already exists on the restore tree the backup instance of this job)
Yes we can restore the machine to a target Esx Host successfully... but one of our tests was to try restore one of these successful backups from .VBK file
to a fresh newly re-installed Veeam v5 Server Copy (we simulate a case of disaster hardware failure of veeam v5 server)

The issue is that, the fresh copy of the Veeam v5 server cannot open ANY of our .VBK files, either are backed up successfully on the other side (master server).
We placed the .VBK locally on the new server and we issued the command with right click on Backups section of cosnole and select "Import Backup..."
clicking "Browse.." and pointing the .VBK file, a scroll bar appears for 3-4 seconds (trying to read the file) and a "Unknown VBK format" error message appears
The only selection is the OK that closes the window.

It is very critical to report us if this is a version ?Bug?... as we are seriously want to implement this software on many and very large installations

The version we are trying is Veeam Backup 5.0.0.179

PS: The restoration test of .VBK files on two fresh veeam v5 machines wirh x86 and x64 version and the result was exactly the same
PS2: As we are local resellers we tried the same exact test with the previous version Veeam backup v4.1.2.125 and it worked fine!

Looking forward on a help.

Best regards

[Gostev]

Hi Kiriakos, there are definitely no problems with that. I just shared VBK created with v5 with our system engineers (so they could import VM into their v5 demo labs), and import/restore worked fine across dozens of separate v5 installs I recommend you open a support case and provide full log files for investigation. Thanks!

[tsightler]

That is a pretty strange problem. I can say that we import backups all the time and we've never seen this issue across our 4 Veeam servers. Just as a shot in the dark, any chance there is some strange permission issue that is not allowing Veeam to access the file?

[nehalem]

Thanks for you reply,

We re-installed both primary and secondary installations
on 2 fresh installations of Windows 2003 ENT R2 Sp2 X86
(in case something was wrong on the OS Side)

We performed another new backup from our esx to .VBK file
and again we are unable to import it to the second node
for restore. Same error message "Unknown VBK File"
The strange thing is that neither on the same primary machine
can import the newly created VBK backup file.

One question now is, should we install also Veeam_Backup_Enterprise_Manager and Veeam_Backup_Search ???
These applications are necessary components in order to import a VBK file to the Restore Tree of Veeam Backup?

On both machines there is only Veeam Backup v5 installed....

[Gostev]

No, you do not need them.

[nehalem]

We are unable to resolve this issue.. is there any logs we can check to troubleshoot it ourselves?

We created a third installation in windows Xp sp3 pro, same bad results.
In all installations we have apply all MS patches (in case of an SP update of .Net or other windows component)
All of them have SQL express embedded supplied with installation setup package.

In version 4.x we are doing the same exact operation and it works fine!

[Gostev]

Why would you want to troubleshoot yourself? Just contact our support