You can restore VM guest OS files from the storage snapshot. Veeam Backup Free Edition supports guest-file restore for the most commonly used file systems on Linux, Solaris, BSD, Unix and Novell Storage Services.
When you perform VM guest OS file restore, you must select an ESX(i) host in your virtual environment. Veeam Backup & Replication creates a clone/virtual copy of the storage snapshot on which the VM disks reside and mounts the clone/virtual copy to the selected ESX(i) host as a new LUN/volume.
To the mounted clone/virtual copy, Veeam Backup Free Edition copies an ISO of the proxy appliance, a helper VM. The proxy appliance is rather small — around 42 MB; it requires 1024 MB RAM and takes only 10 seconds to boot. Veeam Backup Free Edition automatically starts the proxy appliance on the ESX(i) 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 the necessary files and folders.
- Launch the File Level Restore wizard
- Select the location for the proxy appliance
- Start the restore process
- Save restored files
