Veeam Backup & Replication 11 [Archived]
Veeam Agent Management Guide
Related documents
Search
This is an archive version of the document. To get the most up-to-date information, see the current version.

Storage Snapshots Support

You can use Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows operating in the managed mode (within the Veeam Agent management scenario) to create backups from native storage snapshots.

Native storage snapshots allow the following:

  • Veeam Backup & Replication to use backup proxy servers to process storage systems.
  • Veeam Agent to use hardware Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) provider and capabilities of native snapshots that are created on production storage systems to create backups.

This approach results in much less load on protected servers compared to the regular backup scenario that uses software VSS provider.

For general information about backup jobs that use storage snapshots as a data source, see the Integration with Storage Systems section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.

Getting Started

Before you configure a Veeam Agent backup job that will use a storage system snapshot as a data source, you must complete the following steps:

  1. Configure the backup infrastructure to create backups from native storage snapshots. For details, see the Backup Infrastructure for Storage Integration section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.

Keep in mind that you must allow your storage to process Veeam Agent backups. To do this, select the Block storage for Microsoft Windows servers check box at the Name step of the New Storage wizard, then specify options for accessing the storage system at the Agent Access step of the wizard. For details, see the Adding Storage Systems section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.

Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows allows you to create backups from native snapshots with hardware VSS provider only. For the list of supported storage systems, see the Veeam Agent Integration section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.

  1. Add a Microsoft Windows computer to the inventory and deploy Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows on this computer using the Veeam Backup & Replication console. To learn more, see Creating Protection Groups.

Considerations and Limitations

Before you create a Veeam Agent backup from a storage system snapshot, check the following prerequisites:

You can check product editions in the License Information window of the Veeam Backup & Replication backup console. For details, see the Viewing License Information section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide and the Assigning License to Veeam Agent section in the Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows User Guide.

  • At least one storage logical unit number (LUN) must be mapped to the Veeam Agent computer.
  • At least one backup proxy must have access to all LUNs.
  • You must use iSCSI or Fibre Channel protocol for your storage system:
  • You must use iSCSI or Fibre Channel protocol to connect LUNs to Veeam Agent computer and backup proxy to your storage system.
  • If you plan to use the iSCSI Protocol, the backup proxy and the Veeam Agent computer must have a Microsoft iSCSI Software initiator enabled. The Microsoft iSCSI Software initiator must have access to all LUNs.
  • If you plan to use the Fibre Channel Protocol, the backup proxy and the Veeam Agent computer must have a Fibre channel adapter installed and must have access to the storage system over Fibre Channel fabric.
  • If a Veeam Agent computer has a storage system with disks that use the GUID Partition Table (GPT) as a partitioning scheme, each disk must contain a Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partition.
  • You must configure a Veeam Agent backup job to create volume-level backups. To do this, you can create the following backup configurations:
  • You can select the Entire computer backup mode at the Backup Mode step of the New Agent Backup Job wizard.
  • You can select the Volume level backup or File level backup backup mode at the Backup Mode step and include whole volumes in the backup scope at the Objects step of the New Agent Backup Job wizard.

To learn more, see Select Backup Mode.

In addition to general limitations listed in the in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide, consider the following limitations for Veeam Agent backups from storage snapshots:

  • If the Storage Replica feature is installed on the Veeam Agent computer, you cannot back up this computer using the hardware VSS provider. If you want to add this computer to the backup scope, you must allow Veeam Backup & Replication to fail over to the regular backup scenario that uses software VSS provider. To learn more, see Integration Settings. To learn more about Storage Replica, see this Microsoft article.
  • The backup proxy and the Veeam Agent computer you want to back up cannot be the same computer.
  • You cannot back up the following objects using the hardware VSS provider:
  • Volumes allocated to the RDM disk
  • Storage spaces

With volumes allocated to RDM disks or storage spaces in the backup scope, Veeam Backup & Replication will fail over to the regular backup scenario even if failover is not allowed in storage integration settings.

  • If your Veeam Agent computer has a disk that contains the storage spaces protective partition, you cannot back up volumes allocated to this disk using the hardware VSS provider. To back up such volumes, you must allow Veeam Backup & Replication to fail over to the regular backup scenario that uses software VSS provider. To learn more about failover, see Integration Settings.

In This Section

 

 

View all results across Veeam
Back to document search