Does VEEAM have functionality that will allow me to store previous versions of files?

[number02]

I want the backup to be done in such a way that for each file there is always the opportunity to restore its previous versions, is it possible?

[HannesK]

Hello,
if the backup schedule does backup more often than files are changed, then yes.

If you ask, whether Veeam has a filter driver, that does a copy of the file before each write, then the answer is "no".

Best regards,
Hannes

[vmtech123]

File backup does versioning, or if you just run a regular backup and keep the incremental at the rate the file changes you would be fine too.

[robnicholsonmalt]

IMO the correct answer here is "not really" in that you can only recover the versions for as long as the backup is kept? Veeam B&R is pretty greedy on disk space as it's recommended to create a synthetic backup every week so for a year of backup, you'd need 52 full backups. In addition, if there are multiple edits made to a file during the day, only the last version is backed up.

If granular access to versions is important to you, I'd suggest looking at Microsoft 365 OneDrive or SharePoint - or other cloud services. Which do keep a very granular version history to files.

Veeam backup for M365 has a very different architecture and it can keep every version of a file and isn't as greedy on disk space.

[Mildur]

Hi Rob

Veeam B&R is pretty greedy on disk space as it's recommended to create a synthetic backup every week so for a year of backup, you'd need 52 full backups

This depends on the type of repository you use.
With repositories from type "direct attached" and reFS or XFS as the filesystem, you can leverage FastClone which gives you spaceless synthentic fulls.
Then we have support for dedup appliances, which also don't use the space of 52 full backups. They shouldn't be used as primary repositories. Recovery performance may be affected.
And in V12, you can use direct backup to object storage which only creates forever incremental backup chains.

Thanks
Fabian

[HannesK]

Hello,
yes, the files have to be in the backup. that's why I said, that he needs to back up more often, than he is changing things.

there are also systems, that have a driver, that is checking every file change and doing a backup of individual files after each file change. Veeam does not do that.

also synthetic fulls are totally optional if somebody does not need them (e.g. for GFS). As Fabian mentioned, spaceless fulls are available for XFS & REFS and also for object storage (more a V12 feature, but also in V11 capacity tier).

Best regards,
Hannes