Considerations and Limitations

This section lists considerations and known limitations of Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server.

General

When Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server is installed on a server on which both Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 are installed, the notification settings will be inherited from the Veeam Backup & Replication Global Notification settings.

To restore, publish and instantly recover your Microsoft SQL Server data without granting access to the administrative share, make sure that the Veeam Installer Service is installed on the target server. For more information on installing this service, see the Veeam Installer Service section of the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.
Restore, publishing, instant recovery, and export operations of Microsoft SQL Server data from replicas can only recover your data to the latest state of the selected restore point. Replication jobs do not copy Microsoft SQL Server transaction logs so data recovery to a point-in-time state is not supported.

When recovering your Microsoft SQL Server data from CDP replicas, consider the following limitations:

Restore, publishing, instant recovery, and export operations of Microsoft SQL Server data from CDP replicas can only recover your data to the latest state of the selected long-term restore point. CDP policies do not copy Microsoft SQL Server transaction logs so data recovery to a point-in-time state is not supported.

When you recover your data from CDP replicas, you can only use long-term (both application-consistent and crash-consistent) restore points. Short-term restore points are not supported.
You can recover your data from a CDP replica if its CDP policy is currently running. During recovery, the CDP policy does not create new long-term restore points and does not delete existing ones. Short-term restore points are still created.
You cannot restore application items from a CDP replica in parallel with guest OS file restore, SureReplica, and failover.

Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server does not show or support recovery of system databases (master, model, msdb). To recover system databases, use guest OS file restore. For more information, see the Restore from Microsoft Windows File Systems (FAT, NTFS or ReFS) section of the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server does not support data recovery using a group Managed Service Account (gMSA) to connect to the target server.

Restore

Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server does not support restore using PowerShell Direct, VIX API or vSphere Automation API.
Table-level restore (with the Restore Database Schema and Data option) is not supported for the following types of tables:

Tables with external dependencies, such as tables extended to Microsoft Entra using the Stretch Database functionality.
System-versioned temporal tables.

To restore these types of tables, use full database restore.

The Replace logic is not supported when restoring schema objects.
To restore an encrypted database, consider reading this Veeam Knowledge Base article.
Before you restore a Microsoft SQL Server database to an AlwaysOn availability group, make sure that Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server can access all nodes in the availability group.

To restore a database from an AlwaysOn availability group node as of the selected transaction state, the nodes of such a group must be in the same time zone.
Databases located on VM disks excluded from backup are displayed in Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server with a question mark next to each database. It is not possible to restore data of such databases. For more information, see this Veeam KB article.

Publishing

Publishing to a Microsoft SQL Server failover cluster requires a free drive letter on each cluster node to mount a volume from the backup. If the backed-up machine has multiple volumes, a free drive letter must be available for each volume in the backup. For more information, see How Publishing Works.
You can publish the same database more than once.

Make sure that the mount server volume with the write cache has enough free disk space to store the changes of the published database. You can configure the mount server in the backup repository settings. For more information, see the Specify Mount Server Settings section of the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.

After you unpublish a database, Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server detaches such a database from the target Microsoft SQL Server but the restore point will continue to remain on the target machine for the next 15 minutes.
If a Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server session has been terminated in any way other than by clicking Exit in the main menu (or by clicking the X button in the upper-right corner), then all the published databases will continue to remain attached to the target Microsoft SQL Server with the Recovery pending state.
If published databases have been renamed manually using SQL tools (for example, Microsoft SQL Management Studio), Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server will not be able to unpublish such databases properly. In this case, all the renamed databases will continue to remain attached to the target Microsoft SQL Server and you will have to remove them manually using SQL tools.
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server does not back up published databases.

Upon closing the Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server console, all the published databases will be detached from the target Microsoft SQL Server instance automatically. Mount points will be also dismounted from under the C:\VeeamFLR directory.

Instant Recovery

To restore an encrypted database, consider reading this Veeam Knowledge Base article.

If you perform instant recovery of a database from an AlwaysOn availability group node, Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server restores it as a standalone database.
For desktop versions of Microsoft Windows (7, 8, 8.1, 10), you must perform instant recovery of multiple databases one by one. The limitation occurs because desktop versions of Microsoft Windows OS do not allow more than 20 incoming concurrent TCP/IP connections. For details, see Microsoft Windows 10 License Terms.

As a workaround, you can perform instant recovery of multiple databases in parallel using the Restore-VESQLIRDatabase PowerShell cmdlet.

If you plan to perform scheduled or manual switchover, make sure that the mount server volume with the write cache has enough free disk space to store the changes of the published database. You can configure the mount server in the backup repository settings. For more information, see the Specify Mount Server Settings section of the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.
Instant recovery to a Microsoft SQL Server failover cluster requires 2 free drive letters on each cluster node to mount a volume from the backup. If the backed-up machine has multiple volumes, the number of free drive letters on each cluster node must be twice the number of volumes in the backup. For more information, see How Instant Recovery Works.