Feature Request: Universal Restore Media

[controlfreak]

Can we get universal restore media for use with veeam agent protected systems. We have to create and store multiple restore media ISOs for different OS flavors. It would be awesome if all the drivers could be packed into one universal image.

Thanks,

Control

[HannesK]

Hello,
we discussed that some time ago and the result was that the media would be too big and to complex to maintain. There are too many drivers out there.

Thanks for your understanding,
Hannes

[Dima P.]

controlfreak,

We have to create and store multiple restore media ISOs for different OS flavors

You can actually keep one generic Recovery Media per OS type (when saying generic I mean without device drivers being automatically collected). Once you need to perform Bare Metal Restore you boot the media and load the desired drivers via Recovery Media > Load drivers. Makes sense?

[controlfreak]

Yes, but I have to maintain media for each: 7, 10, 2008R2, 2012, 2016.

I would like to have one ISO that can recovery any OS backup. That way I don't have to create 25 recovery keys for 5 crash bags.

[Gostev]

No, you don't actually have to "maintain" those multiple ISO. Instead, you can create them right before you need to do a bare metal recovery. This is possible because we include all required files into the full backup file. You will note there's the corresponding action log item when they job runs, and it actually takes some time to collect the required files (so, full backups would complete a bit faster without this feature).

[controlfreak]

In our environment, we have compliance requirements to have the necessary recovery tools in a crash bag before an event occurs. This is just a good practice in general. The last thing I want to worry about in a DR situation is burning recovery media from a veeam server that may or may not be offline.

[PTide]

The last thing I want to worry about in a DR situation is burning recovery media from a veeam server that may or may not be offline.

Burning ISO does not take long. Regarding the case with VBR being offline - in that situation your backups are probably offline too, thus it's not clear how you are going to perform restores from VBR repo. Also I'd like to point out that there are HDD cases that allow having multiple bootable ISOs in a single media and booting from any of them.

Another thing to mention, is that even with 1-for-all media in a situation when multiple machines crash you'll need a separate media for each of them anyway (unless you want to restore them sequentially).

Thanks!

[controlfreak]

Your competition offers this feature: https://kb.acronis.com/content/1537. Full disclosure, veeam is replacing acronis in our environment

Whether or not you see the value in having universal restore media, we do.

Thanks,

Control

[Dima P.]

Control,

Full disclosure, veeam is replacing acronis in our environment

Music to my ears

Your competition offers this feature

The only problem with other Universal Recovery Media solutions - they rely on Linux components (while we are using native Windows tools i.e. Windows RE). Linux based components are good when it comes to Linux > Linux recoveries but with Windows systems you may end up with configuration or disk allocation issues.

Whether or not you see the value in having universal restore media, we do.

I've already added your vote to this feature request, so thanks for pushing!

[controlfreak]

Sounds good, thank you!