Before I raise a case, can I just check that what I'm doing should work. I wanted to check that I'm able to restore my home dev server running Veeam community edition:
Created a backup job to backup just the OS drive of the Windows server
Exported the backup to a folder accessible from recovery media boot. The reason for this is that my dev server is in a cupboard without a screen and I have to drag it out to do work outside of Windows. I don't normally drag the backup repository drive out if I don't have to
Boot off Veeam recovery USB pen drive (a Ventoy multi-boot drive) and select bare metal restore
Browse to the folder containing the exported backup
I immediately get "Unsupported VBM format"... so fallen at first hurdle. I think that one is allowed to restore from an exported backup? That might be where I'm going wrong.
I've brought the entire system backup and I'm able "Restore guest files" from the exported backup file so that suggests the VBM/VBMK files aren't totally broken.
Things I'm going to try:
Re-creating the Veeam recovery ISO and writing to normal USB drive (not Ventoy) - the recovery ISO I used above was generated about a month ago
Copy the exported back to an external USB drive
Try browsing the exported backup from Veeam agent on my workstation
Try restoring from the full backup repository, not the exported backup
Okay, complete red herring re the exported backup. I've plugged in the Veeam backup repository drive back in, booted off (non-Ventoy) Veeam recovery ISO and I'm unable to restore from ANYTHING in the backup repository. Browse to any VBM file and the follow error is immediately displayed. Veeam B&R console is able to access the file but Veeam agent on my workstation or bare-metal restore off boot ISO cannot.
I'll have to try raising a ticket (don't think I'll get much luck as I'm community user @ home & it's Christmas) as right now, bare metal restore is completely broken for me. Whilst I've got the server on the bench, I'm going to do a CloneZilla backup just in case.
Gostev wrote: ↑Dec 11, 2024 6:36 pm
Upgrading to the latest version should help here.
LOL - catch 22 on that one The main reason I'm checking I can restore the server OS drive (all it hosts are Hyper-V and Veeam) is because of the disk space quirk I reported in another post. I wanted to make sure I could restore the server just in case the upgrade goes wrong. I don't think it will as my tests show you don't need that much free disk space. I'll do a CloneZilla backup as mentioned and then try the Veeam update.
Got it. Unfortunately, support for this scenario - performing BMR from an external media containing backups manually copied from backup repository - was only added in 12.3. In earlier versions, BMR process gets confused due to seeing original backup repository related metadata in the VBM file located on a different media.
I can confirm that Veeam Agent v6.3.0.177 can open/restore from exported backups. I'll have to schedule some downtime to check the ISO/bootable USB pen drive recovery works.
The main reason I'm checking I can restore the server OS drive (all it hosts are Hyper-V and Veeam) is because of the disk space quirk I reported in another post. I wanted to make sure I could restore the server just in case the upgrade goes wrong. I don't think it will as my tests show you don't need that much free disk space. I'll do a CloneZilla backup as mentioned and then try the Veeam update.