Restoring Files and Folders

You can use the Veeam Backup & Replication console to restore individual files and folders from Veeam Agent backups.

The procedure of file-level restore from a Veeam Agent backup is similar to the same procedure for a VM backup. To learn more about file-level restore, see the Restore from Microsoft Windows File Systems and Restore from Linux, Unix and Other File Systems sections in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.

Consider the following:

• [For backups of Microsoft Windows computers] For file-level restore, you can only use Veeam Agent backups stored in a Veeam backup repository or Veeam Cloud Connect repository. For Veeam Agent backups created in the cloud repository, you can perform restore tasks in Veeam Backup & Replication deployed on the tenant backup server. The service provider cannot perform restore tasks with Veeam Agent backups.
• [For backups of Linux, Unix and Mac computers] For file-level restore, you can only use Veeam Agent backups stored in a Veeam backup repository.
• [For backups of Microsoft Windows computers] Before you start file-level restore from a backup of a failover cluster, make sure that the cluster is added to a protection group in the Veeam Backup & Replication inventory. The failover cluster may be not present in the inventory, for example, in the following cases:

• The original protection group that contained the cluster was removed from Veeam Backup & Replication.
• You want to restore cluster data from a backup created on another backup server and imported in the Veeam backup console.

In this case, add the failover cluster whose data you want to restore to a protection group.

• [For backups of Linux, Unix and Mac computers] When you perform the file-level restore procedure, Veeam Backup & Replication provides the following options for mounting disks of the machine from the backup or replica:

• Mounting disks to a helper host — any Linux host from your infrastructure with a supported operating system. Starting from Veeam Backup & Replication 12.1, you can also mount disks from the Veeam Agent for Linux backup to the original host.
• Mounting disks to a temporary helper appliance — a helper VM required to mount Linux computer disks from the backup.

If you have selected to mount disks to a temporary helper appliance, it is recommended that you add a vCenter Server and not a standalone ESXi host in the Veeam backup console. If Veeam Backup & Replication is set up to deploy a helper appliance on a standalone ESXi host, after Veeam Backup & Replication removes the helper appliance, the helper VM will be displayed in vCenter as orphaned.

• [For backups of Mac computers] You cannot restore files or folders from Veeam Agent for Mac backup to the original machine. You can only save files and folders to a new location over the network by using the Copy To option.