Weekly archives: Recovery scenario

[SilkBC]

Hello.

We are using v6 of Veeam B&R.

We are looking to setup a weekly archive of our VMs onto network-attached hard drives that will be swapped out each week. I have read the thread about making the registry change to force the creation of the VBK in the event that one is missing, and the same thread suggested making the backup job perform an Active Full backup and set the retention policy to "1".

My question is regarding recovery (and it may be perhaps I do not understand how retention policy works):

Let's say we go 9 weeks with the above configuation, so we have 9 hard drives with an Active Full backup. Now, a point comes where we need to perform a restoration from the 3rd week. We put the hard drive in from Week 3, bu how do we perform the restore? Is there an option to "catalog" the currently-attached hard drive so it knows what is on there, then perform the restore, or...?

I guess my thinking is that if the retention policy is set to "1", does that mean that the backup history only goes back to the most recent one that was performed? if so, how does one restore from a backup that was performed many weeks earlier?

Thanks!

-SilkBC

[foggy]

We put the hard drive in from Week 3, bu how do we perform the restore? Is there an option to "catalog" the currently-attached hard drive so it knows what is on there, then perform the restore, or...?

Yes, after inserting the required hard drive, you can rescan the repository in Veeam B&R to import the backup file to the backup console. After that it is ready for restore.

I guess my thinking is that if the retention policy is set to "1", does that mean that the backup history only goes back to the most recent one that was performed? if so, how does one restore from a backup that was performed many weeks earlier?

Otherwise, you can use a standalone utility (extract.exe) coming with Veeam B&R and allowing to restore VMs from any VBK file created by Veeam B&R, even without the product installed.