One file server backed up by 2 separate entities - is it possible?

[Madski]

Hi Guys,

Complete newbie here and I do apologise if that has been answered before but I cannot find anything conclusive that would answer my question.

Our hosting company recently switched to Veeam for backup of VMs, one of which is our file server. They won't give me access to Veeam so I can't do any file restores myself(something that I could do using their previous backup solution). Requesting file restores from them is a long and painful back-and-forth process which I'm not happy with, so I thought about deploying my own Veeam backup just for the file share. My question is - is there any risk of my Veeam instance interfering/breaking the backup setup the hosting company has in place for this particular server? Can two separate entities be backing up the same server? I believe the hosting company backs up the entire VM, I just want a backup of the file share so that I can restore files myself.

Any input is hugely appreciated.

Mads

[HannesK]

Hello,
and welcome to the forums.

If I understood you correctly, then you want to backup a folder which is a file share to your clients. I also guess that you are talking about a Windows VM that you are running at your service provider.

Yes, you can backup that (twice) by using the Veeam Agent for Windows. I recommend doing volume level backup to backup the folder(s) you need. I described the "trick" here

Best regards,
Hannes

PS: I don't know the exact setup of your service provider, but for many scenarios we offer a self service portal that allows file level restore.

[Madski]

Hi Hannes,

Thank you for your response. Yes, it is a vmware VM running Windows Server. I just wanted to make sure that me setting up separate backup of the fileshare won't clash with the backup the hosting company has in place.

I'm not quite sure why they won't give me access to self service portal if there is such option, it would benefit both me and them.