Extract utility: restore to ESX and VIB support

[rowdy]

I just tried the extract.exe utility to restore when Veeam-server itself is down or otherwise unavailable.
What I would really like, is the option to restore directly to ESXi hosts. Now I have to extract the backup first and then copy it manually, which takes a lot of extra time.
Also, it asks for a VBK file as input. Shouldn't VIB files be supported as well?

On the other hand I can also install VeeAm itself and restore things with that program of course. But the fact the extract.exe is small and portable would make it ideal for restore operations in case of real emergency.

[Vitaliy S.]

Rowdy,

That's correct, extract utility can only restore from VBK file without pointing to a destination host. One of the main reasons why we haven't implemented an option to choose ESX(i) hosts as a destination is that this utility should be completely infrastructure independent, in other words it should allow you to restore a VM in any point of time, even after 1000 years have passed, the time when hosts might have completely different set of API calls for communication

But thank you for your feedback, much appreciated!

[Gostev]

Just to further elaborate, extract.exe was designed to be archived to tapes along with VBK files for long-term storage purposes where you do not typically archive incremental backups, but only full backups. This is why extract.exe does not support restoring from VIB files. Likewise, it was not designed with emergency restores in mind, but rather with scenarios of restoring in a few years from now. This is why it does not support restoring to host directly.

For emergency restores, I recommend to simply have Veeam Backup setup handy, it takes under 5 mins to install new server if needed, and you can use any computer since we support pretty much any Windows OS starting from XP... if you can run extract.exe there, then you can install Veeam Backup there as well

Then, you just do Import Backup and perform any type of restore, including Instant VM Recovery. And this is real win in case of emergency, because unlike restore to ESXi which will take hours, instant restore is... err... instant so it would be hard for extract.exe to match, even if it had capabilities of restoring directly to ESXi.

[MattG]

Is it possible to install Veeam B&R on my desktop without the Catalog or Database integration? I would just like to have the client on my PC so that I can import a VBK file and perform a restore, without having to enable SQL or additional services?

Thanks,
-MattG

[Vitaliy S.]

Matt, you need to establish SQL server connection while installing Veeam B&R console.

[MattG]

Is there any consideration to adding the import backup feature to Backup and Fastscp?

-MattG

[Vitaliy S.]

FastSCP has always been positioned as just a file management tool, so I don't think this functionality would be added to Veeam FastSCP. I believe adding such capability to Enterprise Manager might be a better idea. What do you think?

[MattG]

I would much rather have a simple client for restores. Since the VBK/VIB files have all the data needed to perform restores, in a Disaster scenario, it is much cleaner to just open a client point to the VBK/VIB file, choose the restore point and restore the file. Having the backup and restore Veeam's SQL DB or EM's SQL and web components seem like overkill.

A GUI equivalent of extract.exe, that is why I thought FastSCP would be a good candidate.
-MattG

[tsightler]

Well, you don't have to backup and restore Veeam's SQL DB to perform a restore. The install of Veeam itself is pretty fast and, while it will install a SQL Express instance, it can be installed on pretty much any Windows machine from XP on up. Then import the VBK/VBI files and perform the restore, that's it. There's no requirement to have the original Veeam SQL DB.

It seems like want you want is Veeam without the SQL database, but installing SQL Express takes only a few minutes, and is handled automatically by the installer, so I don't really get how this would be much help. Maybe you can clarify your concern here. I actually just keep a copy of Veeam installed on my laptop, with the services disabled and no hosts added, just to have a system that can import VBK's in a hurry. We also keep a copy of Veeam installed on a server at our DR site for the same reason. For DR we just import the backups and start restoring.

The only current weakness that I see with this is that you cannot import the VBK without also getting the catalog data, which takes a very long time to process. This was a killer for our most recent DR test and I've already asked Veeam to implement an option to ignore catalog data on import which I think they see as a good idea.