Restore Option

[agrob]

Good Day

We are planing to replace our legacy backup application which we use for years with veeam B&R. We already have Veeam B&R Enterprise Edition in use and are pretty happy with it.It has many great restore feature until it comes to restore files. I played arround with Enterprise Manager but it is not very convenient to restore single files specially if you don't know the exact file name and when the user can't tell you when the file was deleted.

In 99% our users can tell us in which folder the file was. in about 80% the user knows the file name. So it would be great to have this restore option like HP Data Protector has. It is much more convenient way to select the correct Restore Point:
You should be able to go to the restore section, select the (file)server. then the folder structure should be displayed in which we can browse (like in windows explorer) to the folder with the missing file. then select the file, right click on it and see all the restore points available for this file. regardless if the file is on disk backup, or allready on tape. select the needed restore point and hit restore. fast and easy. (btw, it would be grate to attach printscreens to forum posts)

at the moment we need to know the date when the file was present (to select the right restore point to browse the filesystem) or we need to go to the enterprise manager and do a search which is not really convenient if you don't know the correct filename.
Also if i use enterprise manager, select the server end then choose the restore point, it shows restore points which are not available anymore. for example we have fileservers with 4 restore points a day and for about 14 days back. catalog retention is about 2 months. so the enterprise manager shows those restore point 2 months back even if there is no restore point present...

B&R is really a great Product but for single file restore it is miles behind legacy backup products.

if i just have missed an easy restore method, then please let me know

Thank
Best Regards

[foggy]

Also if i use enterprise manager, select the server end then choose the restore point, it shows restore points which are not available anymore. for example we have fileservers with 4 restore points a day and for about 14 days back. catalog retention is about 2 months. so the enterprise manager shows those restore point 2 months back even if there is no restore point present...

This is expected, Enterprise Edition allows for searching in both currently stored on disk and archived backups within the specified retention (Standard Edition keeps index only for backups currently on disk).

[agrob]

yes, but Enterprise Manager Shows also restore Point which are not available anymore, not on disk and not on tape...

[foggy]

Yes, you will be able to browse and search through backup contents even if you remove the backup physically.

[agrob]

Thanks Foggy, i understand this and this is great. BUT it shows restore Points which are not on tape and not on disk.

for example. i have 14 days back 4 restorepoints per day on disk. every Weekend, a full backup is written to tape. Retention 5 weeks. catalog Retention is set to 2 months. if i go 6 or 7 weeks back i still see 4 restore Points per day even if no data is present to restore. i can selekt on of those restore Point, browse the Folder structure but if i right click on it in the Enterprise Manager, the context menu is greyed out. i understand this because there is no data present to restore, but i that Case, those restore Points should not be displayed anymore... makes no sense to Display restore Points which are not present anymore.
in my Case it should just Display 4x Retention Points per day 14 days back and those 5 Retention Points for the weekly offload to tape...

[Vitaliy S.]

In this case you need to match the retention of the catalog and the retention of the backup job. These settings are independent, because users might be offloading backup to the archival storage by means of another product, that's why this setting should be set manually.

[foggy]

So basically, you want it to display only restore points currently registered in Veeam B&R database, right?

[DerOest]

I think foremost he wants a better interface for single file restores! We do as well!
We're also coming from HP DataProtector, and Veeam really really lacks in this regard!

For those not familiar with HP DataProtector:
You get a filebrowser similar to Veeam file restore Wizzard, but it shows "everything that was here in the last X days/months".
So if someone says "i deleted from this folder, somewhen last week or month", you don't have to fight with a (sorry but true) crappy search-engine/interface (Enterprise Manager) or run the single file restore wizzard repeatedly until you find the right backup. You just browse to the folder and.. hey there is the file we're looking for!

For example, we have legacy Novell fileservers with millions of files.
Using the Enterprise Manager search feature was extremely frustrating. Search was really really slow, and the usability for search-terms was incredibly bad.
-> As Novell OES is linux, search is case sensitive. Now you are fu**ed, because the user can not tell the exact filename/upper-lowercase anymore, you can only guess how it was spelled exactly and waiiiiiiiiit for the search to iterate through all backups/indexes (extremely slow, because of millions of files in each, and also the indexing is not stored in a database as i understood it, but side by side with the backup files).

This was my experience with the 9.0 Enterprise manager, and from a quick look, it did not change in 9.5

[agrob]

Here is a printscreen how the restore Option in hp dp Looks. maybe this helps do better understand. those are all restore Points available for the selected file. does not matter if on disk, storeonce, tape, tape offloaded....
http://www.zerofocus.ch/blog/wp-content ... Option.png

Yes, i don't want to see restore Points from backups not present anymore (not on disk, not on tape and not on offloaded tapes)

[foggy]

Understood, thanks for the detailed feedback.

[agrob]

Good Day
Are there any plans to improve the restore functionality as described in this post? i still find the result page, if i do an advanced search for a single file, not very elegant and usable.
Thanks

[foggy]

Hi Andre, unfortunately, we cannot currently share any particular plans around this functionality, but your voice in support of this request is counted. Thanks!

[agrob]

Thanks for your feedback Alexander. I guess most restores are Fileserver restores. I'm pretty sure this is not just the case in our company. We want to switch completely to veeam (and i'm really a veeam fan) in the next 6 months but the only thing which causes headache is the (sorry for this) not enterprise ready single file restore option. Hopefully there are plans to improve this soon.