Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition and free VMWare ESXi

[M4Biz]

Hi
I'd like to know if may I use Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition with the free VMware ESXi hypervisor.

Thanks in advance.

[Mildur]

Hello M4Biz

Free VMware ESXi hypervisor doesn't provide the necessary vStorage API to leverage VM backup jobs.
But you can use Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition to deploy Veeam Agent to the virtual machines.

Our Veeam Agent can backup your VMs. File or application item level recovery is possible with the backup server console.
Entire VM restore must be done with the recovery media.
--> Veeam Agent Management Guide

Best,
Fabian

[Gostev]

Please note that as of today, there's no more free ESXi > End Of General Availability of the free vSphere Hypervisor

[M4Biz]

Hi.
Actually I've ESXi 6.5.0 free version on my host with unlimited license.
I

[d.artzen]

That doesn't change the fact that the free license does not include the necessary API for VM-Level Backups, as Gostev wrote, so only way is the use of Agents on the VMs. Also your Version of ESXi is out of support from VMware side since October 2022 and out of the Technical Guidance since November 2023.