Creating Configuration Backups

By default, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a configuration backup daily. You can change the schedule or create a configuration backup manually. You can choose the backup repository in which the configuration backup must be stored, specify the necessary retention settings. Veeam Backup & Replication allows you to create immutable configuration backups.

For more information on managing configuration backup, see the following topics:

Configuration Backup Files

When you perform configuration backup, Veeam Backup & Replication retrieves data for the backup server from the configuration database, writes this data into a set of XML files and archives these XML files to a backup file of the BCO format.

Veeam Backup & Replication exports information about the following objects:

Backup infrastructure components and objects: hosts, servers, backup proxies, repositories, WAN accelerators, virtual lab configurations, global settings configured on the backup server and so on.
Backups: backups and backup copies, replicas, CDP policies created on the backup server.
Sessions: job sessions performed on the backup server.
Tapes: tape libraries connected to the backup server.

Note

Consider the following:

If you use custom configuration registry values, note that configuration backup will not apply to them. You may want to back them up manually.
The configuration backup job creates a snapshot of the configuration database and retrieves data required for successful restore from it. If the database size is large, the job may produce significant load on the Microsoft SQL Server. Make sure that you schedule the configuration backup job for a period of low operation intensity on the backup server.

Backup Repository Target

The resulting configuration backup file is stored in the \VeeamConfigBackup\%BackupServer% folder on the default backup repository. However, for security sake, it is recommended that you do not store configuration backups on the default backup repository or in any other folder on the backup server. In this case, if the backup server fails, its configuration data will remain, and you will be able to recover the failed backup server. You can store configuration backups on repositories of different types, including Veeam Cloud Connect repositories.

Important

You cannot store configuration backups in external repositories and scale-out backup repositories.

When you configure a new backup repository, Veeam Backup & Replication offers you to change the configuration backup file location from the default backup repository to the new backup repository. Click Yes, and Veeam Backup & Replication will automatically change the backup target in the configuration backup job settings and will use this target in future.

Configuration backups that were created before the target change will remain in the default backup repository. You can manually copy them to the new backup repository to have all restore points of the configuration backup in one place.