The Veeam Cookbook Series

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

Recipe: Create a VMware Backup Job without Guest Processing

Expected deliverables:

A Veeam Backup Job to backup VMware VMs data without 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.

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.

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, keep Enable application-aware processing option unchecked. 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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