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

Overview

Veeam Backup for Nutanix AHV is an additional component of Veeam Backup & Replication that is responsible for backing up and restoring of VMs residing on Nutanix AHV clusters.

The main component of Veeam Backup for Nutanix AHV is Veeam Backup & Replication AHV Backup Proxy. It is a virtual appliance which is deployed on a protected AHV cluster that acts as a coordinator between a Nutanix AHV cluster and a Veeam Backup & Replication server. AHV Backup Proxy creates backups, snapshots and restores VMs to an AHV cluster.

To back up Nutanix AHV VMs and volume groups, AHV Backup Proxy uses an agentless approach. The solution works at the hypervisor level. It creates image-based backups of VMs, capturing the entire VM data at a specific point in time, including OS files, system state data and application data. Within a backup process, AHV Backup Proxy retrieves VM data from Nutanix AHV cluster at a block level, compresses and deduplicates it, and forwards it to a backup repository in Veeam’s proprietary format.

Note

Veeam Backup for Nutanix AHV 2.0 is an updated version of Veeam Availability for Nutanix AHV 1.0.

Functionality of AHV Backup Proxy and Veeam Backup & Replication for AHV VMs

You can perform the following operations with Nutanix AHV VMs using the AHV Backup Proxy web console and Veeam Backup & Replication console.

With the AHV Backup Proxy web console, you can:

Create backups of Nutanix AHV VMs and store them in Veeam backup repositories
Create snapshots and PD snapshots
Restore VMs from backups and snapshots to original Nutanix AHV cluster
Restore VM disks and attach them to VMs hosted on Nutanix AHV clusters

With the Veeam Backup & Replication console, you can:

Create VeeamZIP backups of Nutanix AHV VMs
Create backup copies of backups created by AHV Backup Proxy
Perform instant recovery of AHV VMs to VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V
Restore AHV VMs from backups or from snapshots to AHV, VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Microsoft Azure Blob, and Amazon EC2.
Restore from backups of VMware, Hyper-V, AHV VMs or from backups created by Veeam Agent for Windows or Veeam Agent for Linux to AHV clusters.
Restore VM guest OS files
Restore application items (Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, and Microsoft SQL Server)
Export VM disks to VMDK, VHD and VHDX formats

Note

Use Veeam Backup for Nutanix AHV to back up VMs hosted on Nutanix AHV cluster nodes. To back up and restore VMs hosted on Nutanix systems running VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V, you can use native capabilities available in Veeam Backup & Replication.