Feature Request for B&R

[akeohan]

I would like to suggest a feature request for B&R. I have an ESXi host with a GPU card installed however I can not backup the VMs that have the PCI-passthrough device added since they can not be snapshotted. The issues lies in the way Veeam uses snapshots to backup VMs and because the PCI-passthrough device does not allow snapshotting, I can not backup these VMs. A way around this is to purchase Veeam endpoint but the issue with this is I would either have too many or too few licenses. I would like to to see Veeam B&R see these VMs as not able to backup normally and either push or suggest to push the endpoint client and backup them as part of the main job. IE not creating a new job just for these VMs. Because my licensing covers this host, I should not have to purchase another software pice to back them up.

If I were trying to backup a physical machine I would need and agree to purchase endpoint backup licenses (and do) but since I have VMs and licenses that cover this host, I should be able to backup regardless of Veeams inherent limitations only using snapshots. I also do not have a SAN and am not able to utilize that option either.

[csydas]

Andrew,

Why not just use the Veeam Agent for Windows in Free mode? Yeah, it'll be separate jobs for these VMs, but honestly, it's just a limitation of VMware; you can't snapshot machines with passthrough devices. Go try it quick just in vCenter if you haven't yet.

Like if someone led you to believe that these could be backed up, that would be another story, but it's pretty clear from the get go both on Veeam's pre-reqs. and the VMware pub guide on PCI passthrough that you can't snapshot them.

[vmniels]

Best here is to actually use the Veeam Agent for Windows as this snapshot limitation isn't only related to Veeam but it is a VMware known limitation so for us to actually implement this, VMware would have to change this.

[akeohan]

Yes, essentially I will need to use the Veeam Agent for Windows but I'll have to buy it if I want to manage the backup jobs remotely. I understand this is also a limitation of VMWare. Sure, I can use the free version but then I'd have to manually touch each VM as they come/go from my infrastructure.

I believe B&R should allow the deployment of that agent and continue to backup that VM as if nothing was different. I'm not trying to get free software, I already have the licenses for B&R for this host and these VMs are not physical so paying for the agent is not what I'd like to do.