Gewtting backed it files from S3 without Veeam available

[n_lev]

Hi all,

VBR newby here.
I've spent some time searching for an answer and failed.
I use VBR (12) to backup a shared folder in my LAN and I use S3 bucket as a target. Looking at the S3 bucket directly I see that Veeam creates a bunch of folders and lots of files (e.g. *.blob", etc.) but I can't see my "original" files there. I assume that is expected as VBR turns them into its own "format".

Question is: In DR scenario I might not have my VM with VBR available at all. How can I recover the backed up file without VBR? Do I need to build a "temporary" VBR VM and point it at my S3 storage (that's some extra effort and lost production time)? Or is there any other "direct" alternative?

[david.domask]

Hi Nikolay, welcome to the forums.

You are correct, the format for backups on Object Storage repositories is a bit different.

Recovery in the event of a disaster is like you tell, spin up a Veeam server, perform a Backup Configuration Restore, and then proceed to restore. In the event you do not have access to the Configuration Backup files, you can also simply add the bucket as a Repository to Veeam and import backups that way to begin restores. (You can begin restore operations as soon as the rescan is complete, there is no need to download all of the backups first, though you can copy/download them to local storage if desired)

[n_lev]

Thank you for the reply, David, I suspected as much.
Do you know if I would have to license this temp Veeam server? Obviously, I'd prefer not to have this EC2 always available with Veeam installed and licensed. I'd rather (in case of a need) spin up a new EC2 instance, install Veeam from ISO and just use this to recover backups that my "normal" licensed Veeam server had been creating before the disaster struck.

[david.domask]

Restores are always doable even with Free/Community editions. You _can_ put a license in, but there's no need if you're in a scenario when you just need to start restores after a disaster.

But it should be simple enough to get your license during such an event, just you can do the restores without the license. That being said, if it were me, I'd just maintain a small DR plan document and include where to get the license, the backup configuration, etc, so you don't have to go searching for these things during a disaster.

[n_lev]

Thank you David, I definitely have the document (DR Procedure), just working out the technical side of things (how to actually get access to backups and restore them when/if the the backup infrastructure itself is gone). Looks like Veeam B&R Community Edition (plus manually adding the bucket as a Repository) might be the simplest/quickest way to recover.