Restoring VM Guest OS Files (Linux, Unix and Other)

You can restore VM guest OS files from a storage snapshot. Veeam Backup & Replication supports file-level restore for the most commonly used file systems on Linux, Solaris, BSD, Unix and Micro Focus OES.

When you perform VM guest OS file restore, you select an ESXi host in your virtual environment. Veeam Backup & Replication creates a clone/virtual copy of the storage snapshot on which the VM disks are hosted, and mounts the clone/virtual copy to the selected ESXi host as a new volume.

Veeam Backup & Replication copies an ISO of the proxy appliance, a helper VM, to the mounted clone/virtual copy. The proxy appliance is rather small, around 50 MB. It requires 1024 MB RAM and takes 10-20 seconds to boot. Veeam Backup & Replication automatically starts the proxy appliance on the ESXi host and mounts disks of the restored VM to the proxy appliance as virtual hard drives. VMDK files are mounted directly from storage snapshots. After disks are mounted, you can copy necessary VM guest OS files and folders to their initial location, local machine drive or save them in a network shared folder.

Before you start file-level restore, check prerequisites. Then use the File Level Restore wizard to restore VM guest OS files and folders.

1. Launch the File Level Restore wizard
2. Select a VM
3. Select a restore point
4. Specify a restore reason
5. Select a location for the proxy appliance
6. Start the restore process
7. Save restored files