Veeam Cookbook
The Veeam Cookbook Series
A simple step by step no frills approach to achieving your goal
Recipe: Recovering Guest OS Files using the Console
Expected deliverables:
Individual guest OS files and folders recovered from a backup or replica using the Veeam Backup console, without restoring the entire VM.
Time to complete: 5 minutes
Ingredients:
- A backup or replica with at least one successfully created restore point.
- [For Linux Workloads] You can restore files only from supported File Systems like ext4, XFS and UFS
- [For Windows Workloads] You can restore files only from supported File Systems: FAT, NTFS and ReFS
- The guest OS file system must not be encrypted.
- If you plan to restore files to a VMware VM, VMware Tools or OpenVM Tools must be installed on the target VM.
- If you plan to restore files to a Hyper-V VM, Hyper-V Integration Services must be installed on the target VM.
- An account with permissions to start the Veeam Backup console and connect to the backup server.
Before you start:
File Level Restore requires a mount server to mount the workload disks. You can use (depending on operating system) one of these options, or leave the default Automatic Selection:
- A Windows or Linux existing Mount Server
- A temporary Helper Appliance
- The original Linux machine, or a different Linux machine, for Linux workloads
Assumptions:
You have a Veeam Backup and Replication server installed.
Method:
- On the Home tab, select Backups in the inventory pane, expand the necessary backup, right-click the VM that contains the files you want to recover and select Restore guest files
- At the Machine step, the selected workload is listed. Click Next.
- At the Restore Point step:
- Select a restore point.
- Select a server that will be used to mount disks of a workload from the backup or replica, or keep the default (Automatic Selection)
- Click Next.
- At the Staging Host step, if restoring from storage snapshots, select an ESXi host to which the clone or virtual copy of the storage snapshot will be mounted as a temporary VM.
- At the Reason step, enter a reason for restoring VM guest OS files.
- At the Summary step, review details of the restore task. Click Browse to close the wizard and open Veeam Backup browser.
- After the wizard is closed, Veeam opens the Veeam Backup browser with the file system tree of the restored VM. From here you can:
- Restore files and folders to the original location.
- Save files and folders to a folder on the backup server or network shared folder.
- Once you have restored the required files or folders it is recommended that you close the Veeam Backup browser in order to prevent issues with the Job protecting the VM.
Links to Resources: