This is an archive version of the document. To get the most up-to-date information, see the current version.

About Backup Copy

With backup copy, you can create several instances of the same backup file and copy them to secondary (target) backup repositories for long-term storage. Target backup repositories can be located in the same site as the source backup repository or can be deployed offsite. The backup copy file has the same format as the primary backup, so you can restore necessary data directly from it in case of a disaster.

Veeam Backup & Replication supports backup copy for the following types of backups:

Backups of VMware vSphere or vCloud Director virtual machines created with Veeam Backup & Replication
Backups of Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines created with Veeam Backup & Replication

Backups of virtual and physical machines created with Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows or Veeam Agent for Linux

Backups of virtual and physical machines created with Veeam Agent for Oracle Solaris

Backups of Nutanix AHV virtual machines created with Veeam Backup for Nutanix AHV
Backups of Oracle and SAP HANA databases created with Veeam Plug-ins for Enterprise Applications
Backups stored in an HPE StoreOnce backup repository

File share backups created with Veeam Backup & Replication

Backups of Amazon EC2 instances created with Veeam Backup for AWS
Backups of Microsoft Azure virtual machines created with Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure

About Backup Copy Important!

Mind the following for copying backups created with Veeam Backup for AWS or Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure:

You can copy such backups only if you have paid types of license. Veeam Backup Community Edition and Veeam Backup Starter Package are not supported.

You can copy such backups from external repositories but not to them.

When the backup copying process starts, Veeam Backup & Replication accesses backup files in the source backup repository, retrieves data blocks for a specific machine from the backup file, copies them to the target backup repository, and composes copied blocks into a backup file in the target backup repository. The backup copying process does not affect virtual and physical infrastructure resources, does not require creation of additional VM snapshots or VSS snapshots and does not produce load on machines whose backups are copied.

In Veeam Backup & Replication, backup copy is a job-driven process. To copy backups, you need to configure backup copy jobs. The backup copy job defines when, what, how and where to copy. Note that to copy file share backups, you need to configure a file share backup job, not the backup copy job. For more information, see Creating File Share Backup Jobs.

One backup copy job can be used to process one or multiple VMs. VMs included in the job are processed in parallel. If a VM included in the backup copy job has multiple disks, disks are processed sequentially, one after another.

In the target backup repository, the backup copy job creates a forever forward incremental backup chain. The target backup repository always contains only one active incremental backup chain. Restore points in the chain are managed according to the retention policy. For more information, see Retention Policy for Backup Copy Jobs.