How Backup Works

Veeam Backup for RHV does not install agent software inside VMs to retrieve data. To back up VMs, Veeam Backup for RHV uses native RHV capabilities. During every backup session, Veeam Backup for RHV creates a snapshot for each VM added to a backup job. The snapshot is further used to create a backup of the VM.

During the VM backup process, the following steps are performed:

1. The web console sends the backup job configuration data to the RHV backup proxy.
2. The RHV backup proxy starts the backup job and forwards the backup session data to the backup server.
3. The RHV backup proxy connects to the source RHV host over REST API and creates snapshots of all VMs added to the job.
4. The RHV backup proxy creates a volume group on the RHV cluster, mounts VM disks over iSCSI and retrieves the VM data on the block level.
5. The Veeam Data Mover service compresses and deduplicates the VM data and forwards it to the target backup repository in the native Veeam format.

Related Topics

• Backup Infrastructure Components
• Backup Chain
• Retention Policy