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

Configuration Backup and Restore

You can back up and restore the configuration database that Veeam Backup & Replication uses.

During configuration backup, Veeam Backup & Replication exports data from the configuration database and saves it to a backup file on the backup repository. If the backup server fails for some reason, you can re-install the backup server and quickly restore its configuration from the configuration backup. You can also use configuration backups to apply the configuration of one backup server to another backup server in the backup infrastructure.

It is recommended that you regularly perform configuration backup for every backup server in the backup infrastructure. Periodic configuration backups reduce the risk of data loss and minimize the administrative overhead if any problem with backup servers occurs.

It is not recommended to back up the backup server configuration using backup jobs in Veeam Backup & Replication. For backup, Veeam Backup & Replication uses VM snapshots. During snapshot creation and commit, the VM freezes for some time, which can potentially lead to the following consequences:

Disconnection from the configuration database. For more information, see the Veeam KB1681 article.
Disconnection from remote Veeam Backup & Replication agents.
Disconnection from network storage (for example, storage presented via iSCSI) and so on.

It is also not recommended to clone the backup server VM. Cloning the backup server results in having two configuration databases with identical IDs. This causes problems when working with the backup infrastructure with Veeam management tools such as Veeam Availability Console or Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager.

For these reasons, you must always use the configuration backup functionality to back up and restore configuration of the backup server.