File Restores to a Different Location Slow & Unreliable

[huddie]

When restoring files to a different location (folder or host) using the 'copy to' option pictured here, I find the Veeam restore process to be very slow and problematic. This is because it's falling back on the target host and VB&R server Windows O/S to perform the copy and, as any SysAdmin will tell you, Windows is dreadful at file management. Veeam's reliance on the Windows file management stack to perform the restore operation creates a number of problems, such as:

1. Unenforced 253 character file path limit by Windows. What do you do when some of the files exceed this limit and the copy fails?
2. Extremely poor restore copy performance. This is caused by various unavoidable forms of Windows overhead, such as antivirus (Defender, can't be suspended or disabled owing to our security policy). We're transferring over a 1Gbps network with little contention and restore jobs are taking a very long time.
3. Other aspects of Windows file management that can disrupt transfer and cause failure.
4. The need to manually create a temporary share to place the files in on the target host

We are performing restore tests as part of our company disaster recovery process and are finding the current Veeam method of restoring files to another location as inadequate. Does Veeam offer a more optimised and reliable restore process for select files to go to a different location, one that is much faster and more reliable? Note that it makes no difference whether a target host is a Hyper-V VM or a physical server with the Veeam Agent installed. It doesn't even make any difference if the alternate location is on the same target host, just a different folder, or on a different target host. Veeam seems to offer no direct restore to another location option to bypass Windows APIs for doing the restore copy operation. Other backup solutions such as Symantec NetBackup and CommVault do offer this. I have a feeling like I'm missing something here but I've been testing and just can't see it. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Details below.

Veeam: Veeam Backup & Replication v11.0.1.1261 P20230227
Windows on all our servers, including Veeam B&R and target hosts: Windows Server 2019 v1809
Target host type: Physical and virtual

[HannesK]

Hello,
if I remember correctly, then the "restore to" option in V12 is using Veeam data movers.



That would be for VMs.

For physical machines, one could mount the backup to the target server with the data integration API, but then one still has to copy the files somehow. Not perfect, but maybe a workaround.

Antivirus would still kick in wherever it lives. If it would not check restores of other backup products, then it would be useless from my point of view

Best regards,
Hannes

[Gostev]

Yes, it does use the data movers. We added this into V12 specifically to address feedback similar to the above.

[huddie]

Thanks @Gostev and @HannesK. It's good to know that v12 should address this problem. I will upgrade to it once I know the release is stable.