proof of recovery help? Audit

[jblackburn]

I have been requested by auditors to put the following in place

"A program of tests for restoring backups is undertaken throughout the year which covers all servers, and that these tests are documented."

Is there something in Veeam that would help with this? A restore emulator? a report to prove backup validity?

We currently backup to SAN. The backup is also copied to a removable HDD which we change daily.
Any ideas to save me having to actually restore TBs of data every year would be fantastic

[CarlMcDade]

Have you looked at the Sure Backup features?

SureBackup will bring up virtual machines in a sandboxed environment and allow you to run a series of tests against the vm's. This then presents you with a report on the success/failure of the tests

Cheers

[veremin]

Do you have Veeam ONE deployed? If so, try Verified VMs report. Thanks.

[jblackburn]

Thanks for the replies. I'll have a look at both but surebackup looks like an expensive option as I'd have to go from standard to enterprise.

[veremin]

Then you're left with "manual" verification process. Instantly recover VM, connect it to isolated network or deselect option "connect to network" completely and check VM consistency, once it's powered up. Thanks.

[skrause]

Thanks for the replies. I'll have a look at both but surebackup looks like an expensive option as I'd have to go from standard to enterprise.

If this is to fulfill an audit requirement and you can demonstrate how this would save time and be non-disruptive to normal operations, you probably can convince the higher ups at your organization that it is worth the added licensing costs.

[jblackburn]

So I could instant restore, change the setting to select new location etc and restore to the server to test. As long as I don't connect it to the network it shouldn't be an issue. I can validate the restored data and tick a box for the auditor?
Its in a school so I have some points in the year that I can have downtime for up to a day.

[veremin]

Correct, as long as you use restore to different location option and don't connect VM to production network, there should not be any issues. Thanks.

[larry]

First this is manual.
Audit asks us for some random file they placed on the network and then deleted. They then give IT the site (DR or Prod), the file name and location then we prove we can meet our RTO/RPO. Most times is only takes 10 minutes as all our backups are online, tapes are only in case something happened to our online backups. We do full restores at DR site a couple times a year but we plan those.