Step 5b. Enable VM Guest OS File Indexing

To be able to recover individual files with 1 click and to search for specific items in Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager during file-level restore, you must enable file indexing to instruct Veeam Backup & Replication to create a catalog of files and folders that belong to VMs included into the backup scope. To do that, select the Enable guest file system indexing and malware detection check box at the Guest Processing step of the wizard.

By default, Veeam Backup & Replication will create a catalog of all files and folders for each processed VM — except for system files. To change this behavior and configure indexing settings for a specific VM, do the following:

1. In the Granular credentials and advanced settings section, click Configure.
2. In the Advanced Settings window, select the necessary VM and click Other Actions > Guest Indexing. You can configure indexing settings for one or more VMs at a time.
3. In the Indexing Settings window, choose whether you want to index files in all guest OS folders, to index files only in specific folders, or not to index any files at all.

If you select the Index everything except or Index following folder only option, you will be able to modify the list of folders included into the indexing scope — either manually or by using system environment variables (for example, %windir%, %ProgramFiles% and %Temp%).