Using SureBackup

A SureBackup job is a task for recovery verification. You can run the SureBackup job manually or schedule it to run automatically.

SureBackup job can operate in two different backup verification modes:

Full recoverability testing. Veeam Backup & Replication runs machines in an isolated environment directly from backup and performs tests against live applications.This mode ensures recoverability of your production workloads in a disaster recovery event. To learn more, see the Full Recoverability Testing section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.
Backup verification and content scan only. Veeam Backup & Replication performs backup integrity check and its content analysis to detect traces of malware or any other unwanted or sensitive data. These tests do no require setting up a virtual lab or an application group. To learn more, see the Backup verification and content scan only section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.

Getting Started

Before you configure a SureBackup job that will test your backup, you must complete the following steps:

Consider limitations listed in section Recovery Verification for Veeam Agent Backups.
Prepare a backup that you will test using the SureBackup job:

IMPORTANT

[For Microsoft Windows computers] If the backup that you test with the SureBackup job contains pending updates, the Veeam Agent computer may start rebooting while the SureBackup job is running, and the job will fail.

Add a computer to the inventory and deploy Veeam Agent on this computer using the Veeam Backup & Replication console. To learn more, see Creating Protection Groups.
Create a backup job with the Entire machine or Volume level backup mode selected in the job settings. To learn more, see Working with Veeam Agent Backup Jobs and Policies.
Run the backup job to create a backup.

[For full recoverability testing mode] Configure the backup infrastructure to create the SureBackup job:

Add a virtual lab. The virtual lab is an isolated virtual environment in which Veeam Backup & Replication will test your backups. VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V servers are supported. To learn more, see the Creating Virtual Lab section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.

TIP

You can add a virtual lab during creating a SureBackup job at the Virtual Lab step of the New SureBackup Job wizard.

Add an application group. The application group provides a fully functional work for a host or a group of hosts that is created by Veeam Agent to test your backup. To learn more, see the Creating Application Groups section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.

When you configure the application group, you must add the backup you want to test to this group.

TIP

Consider the following:

You can add an application group during creating a SureBackup job at the Application Group step of the New SureBackup Job wizard.
The application group is optional for the SureBackup job. If you do not create an application group, you can still use a backup job as a source of backups for the SureBackup job. In this case the SureBackup job will test all Veeam Agent backups created by this backup job. To learn more, see Creating SureBackup Job.

After all preparations are done, you can create the SureBackup job.