The Veeam Cookbook Series

A simple step by step no frills approach to achieving your goal

Recipe: Create a VMware Backup Job with Guest Processing for Windows VMs

Expected deliverables:

A Veeam Backup Job to backup VMware VMs data with Guest application-aware processing enabled.

Time to complete: 5 minutes

Ingredients:

• vSphere infrastructure must have been added to the backup infrastructure and properly configured. That means adding source vCenter Server instance (recommended) or standalone ESXi hosts.
• At least one VMware Proxy server for backup processing.
• A Backup repository with enough capacity to keep backup files for the retention period. You can also consider the use of Scale-Out Backup Repository.
• A user account with administrator privileges if Guest Processing will be enabled

Before you start:

The target Repository must have enough free space to store Backup files.

Assumptions:

It’s assumed that you already have a Veeam Backup Server fully working in your environment. It’s assumed that Windows VMs included in this job support Microsoft VSS.

Method:

1. Open the Veeam Backup & Replication Console.
2. On the Home tab, click Backup Job > Virtual machine > VMware vSphere.
3. At the Name step, specify a job name and description. Click Next.
4. At the Virtual Machines step, select VMs and VM containers (hosts, clusters, folders, resource pools, VirtualApps, datastores or tags) that you want to back up. Click Add, then in the Add Object window select the necessary VMs or VM containers and click Add. Click Next.
5. At the Storage step, select backup infrastructure components for the job:
   • Click Choose next to the Backup proxy field if you want to select a specific backup proxy(s) to process this job, otherwise keep the default setting (Automatic selection)
   • From the Backup repository list, select a backup repository where the created backup files must be stored. Make sure it has enough free space.
   • In the Retention Policy field, specify retention policy settings whether based in Days or Restore Points.
   • If you want to enable GFS for Long-Term retention, then select the Keep some periodic full backups longer for archival purposes check box and configure GFS options.
   • By default Backup mode is Incremental with weekly Synthetic full backup. If you want a different backup mode, click in Advanced Settings and use the desired settings.
6. At the Guest Processing step, check Enable application-aware processing option:
   • If it’s required, choose a specific Guest Interaction Proxy, otherwise leave the default option.
   • From the Guest OS credentials list, select a user account that has enough permissions. If you have not set up credentials beforehand, click the Manage accounts link or click the Add button to add credentials.
   • If you want to configure transaction log processing for MS Exchange, SQL, Oracle or PostgreSQL, click in Applications, then select a workload from the list and click in Edit. In the Processing Settings windows configure the parameters according to your requirements.
   • To check whether Veeam can connect to VMs using the specified guest OS credentials and can deploy the non-persistent runtime components on the guest OSes, click Test Now. Click Next.
7. At the Schedule step, select to run the backup job manually or schedule the job to run on a regular basis. Click Apply.
8. At the Summary step, review details of the backup job. If you want to start the job right after you close the wizard, select the Run the job when I click Finish check box, otherwise leave the check box unselected. Then click Finish to close the wizard.

Links to Resources:

• Veeam Guides and Helpcenter
• Veeam Community Forums
• Veeam Best Practices

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