---
title: "Backup Infrastructure Assessment"
description: "The report helps you assess your backup configuration and identify potential configuration improvements. The report analyzes configuration of your backup environment against a set of recommended baseline settings and implementations, identifies..."
canonical: "https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/mp/reports/backup_infrastructure_assessment.html"
breadcrumb: "Veeam MP Report Knowledge > Veeam Backup and Replication Reports > Backup Infrastructure Assessment"
dateModified: "2026-09-10"
---

# Backup Infrastructure Assessment

The report helps you assess your backup configuration and identify potential configuration improvements.

## Description

The report analyzes configuration of your backup environment against a set of recommended baseline settings and implementations, identifies VMs that cannot be properly backed up due to configuration limitations, verifies problem areas and helps mitigate potential issues.

The report takes into account the following criteria:

<table style="width:100%;" class="Blue_Table">
  <tr style="vertical-align:top">
    <th style="vertical-align:middle; width:25%;">
      <p> Criterion </p>
    </th>
    <th style="vertical-align:middle;">
      <p> Description </p>
    </th>
  </tr>
  <tr style="vertical-align:top">
    <td style="vertical-align:middle; width:25%;">
      <p> Application-aware image processing for Windows Servers </p>
    </td>
    <td style="vertical-align:middle;">
      <p> The report searches for jobs that do not have the <span style="font-weight:bold;">Enable application-aware image processing</span> option enabled. </p>
      <p> Veeam Backup &amp; Replication uses application-aware image processing to create a transactionally consistent backup of a VM running VSS-aware applications (such as Active Directory, Microsoft SQL, Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint), without shutting the VM down. This technology ensures proper recovery of applications and application data. </p>
    </td>
  </tr>
  <tr style="vertical-align:top">
    <td style="vertical-align:middle; width:25%;">
      <p> VMware Tools Quiescence for Linux/Unix VMs </p>
    </td>
    <td style="vertical-align:middle;">
      <p> The report searches for jobs that do not have the <span style="font-weight:bold;">Enable VMware Tools quiescence</span> option enabled. </p>
      <p> When this option is enabled, VMware Tools will quiesce the file system of a running VM to ensure integrity of on-disk data during backup. </p>
    </td>
  </tr>
  <tr style="vertical-align:top">
    <td style="vertical-align:middle; width:25%;">
      <p> VM VMware Tools status </p>
    </td>
    <td style="vertical-align:middle;">
      <p> The report searches for VMs that do not have VMware Tools installed, running or up-to-date. </p>
      <p> To enable backup with application-aware image processing, it is required that guest OSes have VMware Tools installed and running. </p>
    </td>
  </tr>
  <tr style="vertical-align:top">
    <td style="vertical-align:middle; width:25%;">
      <p> VMs Verification </p>
    </td>
    <td style="vertical-align:middle;">
      <p> The report searches for VMs that are not included in SureBackup jobs. </p>
      <p> SureBackup and SureReplica technologies automate and simplify the recovery verification process - one of the most crucial parts of data management and protection. These technologies allow you to verify the recoverability of every VM backup and replica, without additional hardware or administrative time and effort. </p>
    </td>
  </tr>
  <tr style="vertical-align:top">
    <td style="vertical-align:middle; width:25%;">
      <p> VMs failed over to network processing mode </p>
    </td>
    <td style="vertical-align:middle;">
      <p> The report searches for VMs that caused a backup proxy to fail over to the Network Processing mode. </p>
      <p> The Network Processing mode can be used with any infrastructure configuration. However, when an alternative transport mode is applicable, the Network mode is not recommended because of the lowest data retrieval speed. </p>
    </td>
  </tr>
  <tr style="vertical-align:top">
    <td style="vertical-align:middle; width:25%;">
      <p> Backup server protection </p>
    </td>
    <td style="vertical-align:middle;">
      <p> The report searches for backup servers that do not run configuration backups on their database. </p>
      <p> If a Veeam backup server fails, you can re-deploy the Veeam backup server, restore configuration data from the backup and apply it to the re-built server. Alternatively, you can apply configuration data to any other Veeam backup server in your backup infrastructure. In terms of configuration, you can get a replica of the Veeam backup server you had, without additional adjustments and fine-tuning. </p>
    </td>
  </tr>
  <tr style="vertical-align:top">
    <td style="vertical-align:middle; width:25%;">
      <p> SQL Server optimization </p>
    </td>
    <td style="vertical-align:middle;">
      <p> The report searches for backup servers that run outdated versions of Microsoft SQL Server. </p>
    </td>
  </tr>
  <tr style="vertical-align:top">
    <td style="vertical-align:middle; width:25%;">
      <p> Repository free space </p>
    </td>
    <td style="vertical-align:middle;">
      <p> The report searches for repositories that have run out of free space. </p>
    </td>
  </tr>
  <tr style="vertical-align:top">
    <td style="vertical-align:middle; width:25%;">
      <p> Direct SAN access iSCSI performance tweaks </p>
    </td>
    <td style="vertical-align:middle;">
      <p> The report searches for backup proxies configured to use the Direct SAN Access mode working with iSCSI storage. </p>
      <p> To optimize performance of such backup proxies, you can tune Windows TCP settings as described in the report recommendations. </p>
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>

::: note

To run the **Backup Infrastructure Assessment** report, you must have Veeam Management Pack for Microsoft System Center installed.

:::

## Parameters

Scope: defines a list of Veeam Backup & Replication servers that will be analyzed in the report (by default, the **Veeam Backup Server Group** is selected). The **Add Group** option returns a group and all objects that the group contains. The **Add Object** option returns only the selected object.

## Sample Usage

Assess backup configuration and show recommendations for a specific backup server.

### Instructions

1. Open the Backup Infrastructure Assessment report. 
2. In the **Scope** section, select the **Veeam Backup Server Group** and click **Remove** . Then select a backup server to include in the report. 

   Click **Add Object** . In the **Add Object** window, click **Options** . In the **Options** window, click **Add** . In the **Class Name** search box, enter *backup server* and click **Search** . Select the *Veeam Backup Server* class in the list of search results, click **Add** and click **OK** . In the Options windows, click **OK** to apply the filter. In the **Add Object** window, click **Search** . The search will return a list of objects that belong to the *Veeam Backup Server* class. Select the necessary server, click **Add** and click **OK** .

3. Click **Run** to view the report. 

### Report Output

The **Summary** pie chart will show the breakdown of assessment criteria statuses: the share of criteria that do not apply to your backup environment, passed criteria and criteria that require your attention.

The details table will show the list of all criteria analyzed in the report and the verification status for each criterion.

You can click a criterion to jump to detailed recommendations on configuration improvement.