This is an archive version of the document. To get the most up-to-date information, see the current version.

Guest Processing

If you back up or replicate running VMs, you can enable guest processing options. Guest processing options are advanced tasks that require Veeam Backup & Replication to communicate with the VM guest OS. Veeam Backup & Replication offers the following guest processing options:

Application-aware processing. You can create transactionally consistent backups and replicas of VMs that run Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle Database. The transactionally consistent backup guarantees proper recovery of these applications without data loss. For information on system requirements for the applications, see System Requirements.

Pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts. You can use pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts to quiesce VMs running applications that do not support Microsoft VSS.
Transaction log truncation. You can set the backup or replication job to truncate transaction logs on the VM guest OS after the VM is successfully processed.
Transaction logs backup for Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle Database. You can set up the backup job to back up transaction logs from Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle servers.
VM guest file system indexing. You can set up the backup job to create a catalog of files and folders on the VM guest OS. The catalog lets you search for VM guest OS files and 1-click restore in Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager.

VM guest file system indexing is optional. If you do not enable this option in the backup job settings, you will still be able to perform 1-click restore from the backup created with such backup job. For more information, see the Preparing for File Browsing and Searching section in the Enterprise Manager User Guide.

VM guest OS files exclusion. You can exclude/include individual files and folders from/to backup or replica.

Requirements and Limitations

Consider the following requirements and limitations for guest processing:

Check that accounts that you plan to use for guest processing have permissions described in Permissions.

[For Oracle databases except Oracle RAC] Check that databases that you want to back up are listed in the /etc/oratab file.

To back up Microsoft SQL transaction logs with Veeam Backup & Replication, you must make sure that the recovery model is set to Full or Bulk-logged recovery model for required databases on Microsoft SQL Server VMs. If the recovery model is set to Simple, Veeam Backup & Replication will not detect and process transaction logs on Microsoft SQL Server VMs.

Veeam Backup & Replication excludes from application-aware processing Microsoft SQL databases that are mounted to the Microsoft SQL Server using a remote UNC path. If at least one file of the database is located on a network shared folder, this database will be backed up in the crash-consistent state. Other databases on this server will be backed up in the transactionally consistent state.
Veeam Backup & Replication excludes the master database from guest processing and does not process transaction logs for it.

If you want to exclude other databases from the transaction log processing workflow, see this Veeam KB article. Consider that exclusion configured this way will be treated as a global setting.

Transaction log backups cannot be copied to capacity tier.
To back up Oracle transaction logs with Veeam Backup & Replication, you must make sure that ARCHIVELOG is turned on for required databases on Oracle VMs. If ARCHIVELOG is turned off, Veeam Backup & Replication will not detect and process transaction logs on Oracle VMs.

Due to Microsoft limitations, you cannot use Microsoft Azure Active Directory credentials to perform guest processing on VMs running Microsoft Windows 10 (or later).
Veeam Backup & Replication supports backup of Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and SQL Server databases existing in mount point volumes.