Veeam FLR restore

[sreedama2]

All,

I am looking help on File Level restores from image backups. Veeam is a physical server and it has only access to vCenter to perform image level backups, but no communication to individual VM's. How can we achieve file level restores. As per my understanding FLR restore for Windows require OS credentials, but I feel it is not possible to maintain credentials for thousands of VM's. Is there any way to perform FLR for windows? Also FLR for Unix/Linux need helper VM that will be deployed on ESX during restore. What are the requirements for this helper vm? having one IP that can communicate to all VM's would do? Please advise.

Sree

[foggy]

It is actually the same for backup and restores - credentials are required for VM backups as well, so you should already have them, right? As for the connectivity, then it is not generally required, there's an ability to backup/restore over VIX.

[sreedama2]

Thanks for your reply. Do you mean the vCenter service account that was used to integrate with Veeam server? Is that account sufficient to perform FLR restores? I was told we need host level access. While performing Windows FLR restore, it was prompting for credentials and we have tried service account which didn't help. Do you think service account need specific privileges? Please advise

[oleg.feoktistov]

Hi,

Regardless the OS, Veeam B&R must have access to the target VM's Guest OS to perform FLR. Typically, it is a target machine local admin account. I would say, as an option, you can unify the admin passwords you use, thus, eventually having one local admin credentials record for all your Windows machines and one root credentials record for all the Linux machines.

Please, check all FLR requirements for Windows here and Linux here.
Also, FLR supports the following file systems.

[sreedama2]

Thanks Oleg. I am confused with the below statement on Windows requirements. As per the statement, we can also perform restores through vCenter VIX (I am not familiar with VIX). What I understood is if we have proper permissions to service account created in vCenter that is configured in VM to perform snapshot backups, FLR restore might work. Please correct me if my understanding is wrong on the below statement?
"The mount server must have access to the VM guest OS (if file-level restore is performed over the network) or vCenter Server (if file-level restore is performed over VIX)."

[oleg.feoktistov]

What I understood is if we have proper permissions to service account created in vCenter that is configured in VM to perform snapshot backups, FLR restore might work. Please correct me if my understanding is wrong on the below statement? "The mount server must have access to the VM guest OS (if file-level restore is performed over the network) or vCenter Server (if file-level restore is performed over VIX)."

FLR over network and VIX differ in the way Mount server obtains information about a target VM and establishes connection to it when you restore particular files/folders. But both ways don't exclude the necessity to provide credentials to connect to a target VM.
You can check out more on what is VIX here.

If you say you want to access target VMs with vCenter service account credentials, I believe it is possible if this account and a target VM are the members of the same AD domain. Then, you can add this account to Administrators local group on target VMs manually or propagate accesses through GPO.

Let us know, please, if it worked for you.

Thanks,

[sreedama2]

Thanks Oleg. Last question, So we need VM credentials to perform FLR restore. What about connectivity? I would assume we don't need any direct connectivity to VM over the LAN as the communication with VM can be handled through VCenter VIX. Is my understanding correct?

[oleg.feoktistov]

Your assumption on VIX usage is correct when it comes to Mount Server <--> VM connectivity. Mount Server still needs a connection to vCenter in case of communicating with VMs through VIX.

You can check the details following the link Foggy shared here above.

Thank you!

[Moebius]

Oleg, when you say "Veeam B&R must have access to the target VM's Guest OS to perform FLR", I understand that you mean that access rights are needed to write the file(s) to the target VM. I see that no rights are needed on the source VM to open the FLR window of one of its backup and copy the files elsewhere (provided that you have write rights where you are copying to).
In other words, FLR restores do not need the correspondent backup to be AAP-enabled. Correct?

[oleg.feoktistov]

Ciao Lucio. Correct, backups don't have to be specifically AAP-enabled in case of FLR.