Looking for suggestions on backuping up non-networked physical hosts

[tehinternet]

While we're on enterprise B&R for most of our infrastructure, we have a manufacturing area with many non-networked (on purpose and required) Win7 machines.

The data on them is pretty static, but if the HDD on them died we're prefer to reload from backup instead of reinstalling of the manufacture's DVD so that we don't have to rebuild any of our customization. We'd be looking to backup once a month as a part of over-night maintenance.

Since they're not networked and single HDD machines, we'd probably want to back up to a removable USB HDD or SSD using the Free Windows agent. Then have someone go around, plug in the drive and kick off a backup.

My question is, if we were to do that what would be the best practices be or the easiest way to hand someone some procedures on how to do it?

Concerns I have are things like what happens if the USB ends up on a different drive letter if someone else a different USB stick in the machine (or takes it out) compared to what was present when Veeam agent was isntalled? Is there anything tricky we could do where the agent gets installed not on the host, but the removable HDD and maybe driver letters don't matter?

Maybe I'm over thinking this, but I'm just trying to find a good, reproducible process for non-computer-technical maintenance staff to perform over night.

Any suggestions on what to do or not to do?

Thanks.

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi Mike.

- Veeam Agent does have hardware tracking, so no matter which letter known-USB stick gets, backup target will be tuned accordingly
- Veeam Agent backup job can be tuned to start automatically on event such as "When backup target is connected" - making it easier to manage, all you need is to plug said USB Drive, and backup will be triggered automagically
- Veeam Agent can be set to eject media upon job completion, so it is safe to pull USB drive out
- Veeam Agent can send email notification upon job completion, so you know when to pull USB drive out without need to sit by machine watching progress bar to fill in

Long story short, settings can be done the way you plug a USB drive to Machine01, wait for email, remove drive and connect to Machine02, wait for email so on...

/Cheers!