Bare Metal restore from Backup Copy

[Moopere]

I'm struggling as I test bare metal restore with Veeam 11a.

I'm assuming total loss of primary site and restoring from offsite backup copies on USB disks.

What I've tried:

- Pre-creating a recovery usb stick thats kept offsite. This is then used to boot a fresh machine. I then plug in the USB disk with the backup copy and try to restore from local disk. Can't be done as Veeam insists it can't restore from an agent backup (???).

- After reading the forums and help, seems like this is a known problem for backup copies and that the backup copy needs to first be imported to a Veeam B&R respository ... ok so:

- Install VBR onto fresh metal. Plug in the usb disk containing the backup copy. Import the backup copy. I can see the various backups of physical and VM machines inside the backup copy thats been imported

- Take my BMR usb stick and boot a second fresh metal machine. This time, try restore from B&R repository (over the network). It connects to the new install of B&R on the other fresh metal machine but can't find any restore points for any of the backed up machines in the backup copy

I've created a user on the new B&R machine and put that user into the Administrator role. Nothing I seem to do makes the copies of the backups available for BMR.

What am I missing here? Are backup copies not capable of being restore to bare metal?

I've read a message in the forums here that I'm now thinking is telling me that I need to not only import the backup copy but actually physically copy my USB disk contents into the newly created repository on the B&R server? Is that correct? Or should the B&R find the backup copy and utilise it directly from the USB disk?

[HannesK]

Hello,
correct, backups that are stored in VBR can only be restored through VBR (what you are trying later).

but actually physically copy my USB disk contents into the newly created repository on the B&R server?

as the bare metal recovery ISO only has access to repositories, that makes sense to me, yes.

Best regards,
Hannes

[Moopere]

Amazing how just the simple act of detailing what one has done can sometimes help to understand logical flaws in the workflow used

The answer to my query above is that I imported the backup copy that was on the usb disk before I actually created the repository for the removeable disks. There was a primary repository, per the new install of Veeam onto bare metal, but you then need to create a new repository for removeable disks and then import the backup copy into that new repository.

A copy of the backup-copy files into the default repository would probably have worked equally well - but would take something like 8 hours or more to complete. This would be how tape restores work I imagine, you restore the backup-copy on tape into the default disk based repository and from there you restore to your bare metal.