Feauture request: exclude folder for volume (entire) backup

[Zek]

The only possible mode of backup OS with ability to bare-metal restore is Veeam Agent volume (or entire) level backup, it automaticaly exclude pagefile, temp and deleted blocks from backup file, but it is not possible to manually add any folder that you don't want to backup from system drive. Please add ability to manually exclude folders from backup file, because, as far as I understand, such mechanism has already been implemented.
For example, OneDrive/Dropbox/GoogleDrive/etc folder, that can takes most of the used space, but already backed up in cloud, or any other large amounts of data that do not require backup.

[HannesK]

Hello Zek,
just in case you have a standalone / local UI configuration... did you try using file based backup? You can achieve it by checking the volume (important) and then un-checking the folder.

Best regards,
Hannes

[jmmarton]

BMR capability requires using either "entire computer" or volume-level backup of the system drive. File-level backup does not offer BMR. This sounds like a Feature Request--ability to exclude certain folders when performing either entire computer or volume-level backup.

Joe

[Zach123]

Hi Team

We are running into a similar issue. Cx does not want Veeam to perform the SQL database backups nor .BAK files stored on the SQL server.
They want the backup to happen from a separate server to which these .BAK files are moved once created on the local SQL Server.
I could not find a way to completely exclude the database backups nor a way to exclude .bak files from SQL server backup.

[Egor Yakovlev]

Thanks for the feature request! Noted for future versions.

Cheers!

[HannesK]

folder exclusions already work today, if you do it as I mentioned earlier. Please see screenshot below. It also works for managed by VBR jobs, but this would be more complicated. That's why I recommended using the standalone agent.



For SQL: normally there are separate partitions for log, database, backup etc. So volume level backup should do the job. Just exclude the backup volume. For file type exclusions, you can use the Exclude masks (exclude masks do not work for volume based backup)

Please keep in mind that we are not doing 90s style file backup The product is built for image level block based backup

[Zek]

Unfortunately, as can be seen from the screenshot, exceptions can be made only for non-system partitions.

[HannesK]

well, good point - I forgot about that part of your question - sorry

[splaxco]

Running across this for our backups. We are considering deploying hundreds of Veeam agents, however putting a large, diverse group of servers in a managed group is not feasible because the drive letters differ from each host. We are using a competing product for several of our physical systems and the jobs are easy to configure. With that product we can select all local drives, then either per client or per job we can exclude with wildcards (ex. *.ldf, *.mfd, and *.ndf for SQL). If we switched to Veeam we would have to keep up with added/removed drives for each host which gets very dangerous very quickly.

I'll be sure to mention this at VeeamON next week, hopefully the product managers are listening.

[Dima P.]

Steve,

We will have an option to backup all content expect the specified volumes in the upcoming major version of Veeam B&R. Will that work for your scenario? Cheers!

[sm1990]

Hello Dima,

This would be great feature for us too. We have similar to the OP, ShareSync, which is already being backed up. The ability to exclude a specific set of folders across a protection group is very useful. The drive level snapshot would be way more efficient in terms of performance too right?

Thank you

[Dima P.]

Hello and welcome to the community sm1990,

Thank you for sharing! Image-based backup is indeed much faster that file level backup, but to make sure we are on the same page: we are planning to add ability to backup all volumes except selected (i.e. this would work like entire machine backup with specific volumes being excluded).

[markrowlands]

Running across this for our backups. We are considering deploying hundreds of Veeam agents, however putting a large, diverse group of servers in a managed group is not feasible because the drive letters differ from each host. We are using a competing product for several of our physical systems and the jobs are easy to configure. With that product we can select all local drives, then either per client or per job we can exclude with wildcards (ex. *.ldf, *.mfd, and *.ndf for SQL). If we switched to Veeam we would have to keep up with added/removed drives for each host which gets very dangerous very quickly.

Definitely second this, I am facing the same issue, I think you can create a job with all the drive letters and veeam will just ignore the ones that are not there.
"In the file-level backup mode, you can create two types of backups: File-level backup that includes individual folders on your computer. Hybrid backup that contains individual folders and specific volumes of your computer. At this step of the wizard, you must specify the backup scope — define what folders with files or entire volumes you want to include in the backup. The specified backup scope settings will apply to all computers that are added to the backup job. If a specified object does not exist on one or more computers in the job, the job will skip such object on those computers and back up existing ones."

Problem I have is that then the excludes do not seem to work :-

"If you select a volume for backup, you cannot apply filters to include or exclude files of a specific type in/from the backup. You can only exclude specific folders that reside on the volume."

And it will be a pita to list out all of the different sql folders with logs / databases although I guess some powershell hack might exist for that as a pre execution script.

[backupquestions]

Hannes, you said b&r managed agent jobs can still do a volume level but exclude certain folders right? I'm trying this but not seeing how to do it.

There are less options on the agent managed jobs it seems. I don't have the file system tree to check or uncheck certain folders.

If I want to say.. backup c and d volume level (to allow bare metal restore) but I want only one folder of d drive to back up. Is this possible with b&r managed job?

[HannesK]

Hello,
it's exactly the same, just without tree. Type in the folder you need to exclude.

As you only have one folder that you want to back up, you need to exclude all other folders. If someone creates a new folder, then you need to exclude it again.

Best regards,
Hannes

[backupquestions]

Hannes,

I'm still not getting it, forgive me. Here is a picture of the job. I chose volume level and then I want operating system so that is checked, but there is not a place to "type in the ones to exclude". Let's say I want to just back up D:\users only... No matter what else is there. If I click "add" the only option is to enter in like d:\ it seems. Or I would maybe enter d:\users? but that doesn't sound right because you are saying I need to somehow add all the ones I DON'T want to back up?

Otherwise if this all won't work, I guess I will try it with the agent managed way you showed, though I really would prefer B&R to manage it.

https://imgur.com/49ZYwJt

[HannesK]

Hello,
in my example above I use file based backup. Then I choose Operating system (for bare metal restore) and the volume for backup. Then I exclude the paths with the "advanced" button.



Best regards,
Hannes

[backupquestions]

Awesome, thank you!

[backupquestions]

Hannes,

I just did a backup of a physical server with a B&R managed job. I did the exact setup you listed in your latest picture. The exclude masks do not work. (you actually mentioned earlier in this thread that they do not work for volume based backup) Well, I chose file based backup, but it seems when you add in D:\ it makes a volume based backup of the D drive and then none of those masks do anything. It backed up the whole thing.

So, in your picture, wouldn't the correct thing to do instead be to add D:\myfolder instead of D:\ and trying to use exclude masks? I noticed if I add D:\myfolder it shows a folder as the image icon instead of a volume, meaning it will do true file based backup on that volume it seems.

I am going to redo the backup and see if this will work, but just wanted to point out that what you showed does not appear to function this way.

[HannesK]

The exclude masks do not work.

case number, or I don't believe it

But yes, you can also point to the one folder you want to backup. Then the software does file based backup which might be "good enough" for the use case.

Note: the folder names will be available in the backups even for the excluded folders. but no data inside these folders.

[backupquestions]

Damn, I did drill down at least a level or two and I was seeing the folders. So I thought it did not work. I guess I did not drill down all the way to where files would be to see the data. Your note that the folders will still show up but just no data in them is key...

I will try it again and see.

Thank you

[splaxco]

Steve,

We will have an option to backup all content expect the specified volumes in the upcoming major version of Veeam B&R. Will that work for your scenario? Cheers!

Good to know but that doesn't cover what I'm looking for. I'm looking for something that backs up all files on all volumes at the file level, then excludes files by wildcard. That way if someone adds a drive to the server without telling us it will automatically be covered. I'm not looking to exclude entire volumes.

Hope this helps, let me know if I should post screen captures of what I'm referring to.

[markrowlands]

Seconded... or is this thirded now? This is exactly how we handle it in "another well known backup product"

Please backup this machine, but skip " *.mdf,*.ldf,*.ndf" wherever you find them.

[ml35]

Dear Veeam,

Instead of letting the user manually go into regedit to setup exclusions, could we have included a frontend editor for the registry key Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToSnapshot in the veeam agent?

So we could pick up the excluded folder/file with a nice gui file browse dialog when doing entire computer -type backup. You could put there a dedicated REG_MULTI_SZ called "VeeamAgent"

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi ml35.

Your feature +1 has been noted(excludes in entire\volume level backups). We keep it on track for future versions.
Today you can switch to file-level backup mode and select(tick) all volumes, which will show [volume-level backup] next to each volume, essentially backing up entire volume using VSS(thus using FilesNotToSnapshot key), giving you identical to entire machine backup. File excludes will also be present there, with GUI to control excludes.

/Cheers!