veeam database- what information is saved here?

[SSSSSStorage]

writing a formal DR procedure for Veeam and currently have been testing restoring our entire environment from scratch.

I am failing to understand the purpose of the veeam database file, ours is currently hosted on a separate SQL server, which may be overkill for ~500 VMs?

If I perform the below in an isolated environment:

Build a fresh Backup and Replication Server > Import configuration backup > setup DB locally. everything appears fine, there is no information lost it seems. Does the configuration backup also contain all the same information in the veeam database? What is it that is actually stored in the veeam database, is it more for historical logs? from what I can tell it is not needed during a DR restore if you have the configuration backup file, that file is only 200MB.

testing the above with an isolated VM, was very impressed with how quick everything appears after a config import.

[HannesK]

Hello,
the configuration backup is all you need for DR test (well, maybe customer registry keys also). Configuration backup is a configuration database dump where some data is removed (old session data). Just make sure the configuration backup is encrypted. Otherwise passwords will also not be in the configuration backup.

For 500 VMs most customers run the database on the same server for simplicity (and often better performance because latency is removed)

Best regards,
Hannes