Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure 8.1 Release Notes

This document provides last-minute information on Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure v8.1, including system requirements, installation, as well as relevant information on technical support, documentation, online resources and so on.

The latest version of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure v8.1 is available starting from September 3rd, 2025.

What’s New

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure delivers Azure-native, fully automated backup and recovery to easily protect and manage all your Azure data.

Native support for Veeam Data Cloud Vault in Veeam backup appliance – users of Veeam backup appliance for Microsoft Azure can now target backups to Veeam Data Cloud Vault repositories. This should provide a seamless user experience and enhance security by providing immutable, air-gapped, and fully-managed storage for backups.

Resource group selection for VM snapshot policies – backup admins can now override the default resource group selection when creating VM snapshots. This should allow backup admins to apply locks on production VM resource groups to enhance the overall security of the production infrastructure.

Generation 2 VMs support for backup appliance deployment – when deploying a new backup appliance in Microsoft Azure, the Gen2 VM type is selected. This improves the overall backup performance and security of the infrastructure.

System Requirements

Hardware

Standard_B2s or Standard_B2ms are the recommended VM sizes for the backup appliance:

• CPU: 2 cores (minimum)
• Memory: 4 GB (minimum)

Note: If you want to protect a large number of Azure VMs, it is recommended that you choose a bigger Azure VM size.

For more information about Azure VM sizes, see Microsoft Docs.

For the latest recommendations on deployment sizing, see the Sizing and Scalability Guidelines section in the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure User Guide.

Workers

Standard_F2s_v2 is the recommended and default worker size for standard backup.

Standard_E2_v5 is the recommended and default worker size for archive backup.

Software

The latest versions of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome are required to access the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure Web UI from your local machine.

The Azure VM running Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure is deployed with the pre-installed set of software components:

• Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
• ASP.NET Core Runtime 8.0
• PostgreSQL 15
• nginx 1.18
• libpam-google-authenticator 20191231-2
• Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure installation packages

Installing Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure is installed on an Azure VM that is created in a selected Azure subscription during the product installation. You can deploy Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure only from the Veeam Backup & Replication Console.

For the detailed step-by-step installation procedure, see the Deployment section in the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure User Guide.

Upgrading Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure

The upgrade to the next version can be performed only using Microsoft Azure Plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication. To upgrade Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure, the backup appliance must be running version 6 or later.

Backup appliances running earlier versions of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure are no longer supported, for more information see this KB article. To upgrade from version 5a or earlier, you must either first upgrade the backup appliance to version 6 or 7, or perform a configuration restore to a backup appliance running Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure version 8, as described in the Performing Configuration Restore section in the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure User Guide.

To install available security and OS updates, download and install them from the appliance Web UI. For more information, see the Updating Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure section in the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure User Guide. 

Integration with Veeam Backup & Replication

Depending on the operating system, Veeam Backup & Replication offers the following types of installations:

• Linux installation

  Veeam Software Appliance comes with Microsoft Azure Plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication pre-installed by default. However, you will not be able to access the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure functionality from the Veeam Backup & Replication Web UI. To work around the issue, install a remote Veeam Backup & Replication console — and then log in to the console using the name or IP address of the backup server. For more information, see Logging in to Veeam Backup & Replication in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.

• Windows installation

  Veeam Backup & Replication on Windows version 12 (and later) comes with Microsoft Azure Plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication pre-installed by default. For the list of compatible versions of Veeam Backup & Replication, see the System Requirements in the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure User Guide.

If your installation package of Veeam Backup & Replication does not provide features that allow you to protect Azure resources, you must install Microsoft Azure Plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication on the backup server to be able to add your backup appliances to the backup infrastructure. Microsoft Azure Plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication is available for download starting from March 27th, 2025. You can download the plug-in at the Veeam Backup & Replication: Download page: Additional Downloads section, Cloud Plug-ins tab.

After you install Microsoft Azure Plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication, you must add a Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure appliance to the Veeam Backup & Replication infrastructure. For more information, see the Adding Appliances section in the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure User Guide.

Hardware and Software Requirements

Since Microsoft Azure Plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication is installed on a Veeam Backup & Replication server, system requirements for the plug-in are similar to requirements for the Veeam Backup & Replication server.

Veeam Backup & Replication

Microsoft Azure Plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication supports integration with Veeam Backup & Replication version 13.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure Plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication supports integration with Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure version 8.

Azure Services

The Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure appliance and worker instances must have outbound internet access to a number of Microsoft Azure services. For the list of services, see the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure User Guide.

Licensing

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure is licensed using the Veeam Universal License (VUL) installed on the Veeam Backup & Replication server. For more information on Veeam licensing terms and conditions, see Veeam End User License Agreement (EULA).   

Known Issues

General

• Additional permissions may be required to perform backup and restore operations. For more information, see the Permissions Changelogsection in the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure User Guide.
• During backup policy creation, the Cost Estimation step of the wizard may display an incomplete list of protected Azure VMs. To resolve the issue, click Rescan at the Sources step of the backup policy wizard.
• Cost estimation calculation can be slow when a large number of snapshots is defined.
• The cost calculator may return N/A values for Azure SQL backup policies when using a staging server to process databases. This issue resolves itself after the first policy run.
• The cost calculator may return zero values for backup policies when using containers as a source for backups. This happens when the initial discovery process has not been completed yet. To resolve this issue, wait for 5-10 minutes and re-launch the policy wizard to review the cost estimation data.
• Under certain circumstances, the cost estimation step in the Virtual Machine policy may result in an error “Unexpected error occurred”. To resolve the issue, either change your configured schedule or contact the Veeam Customer Support Team.
• When the backup appliance operates in private deployment mode, log export may take longer to complete.
• Log download is not possible when the same date is set in both the ‘From’ and ‘To’ fields in the Period option.
• Parentheses are not allowed in backup policy names. This does not affect the execution of existing policies that contain these characters. However, if you attempt to edit the policy, you will have to remove the restricted character from the policy name to proceed with the wizard.
• When the backup appliance is running in managed mode by Veeam Backup & Replication, the correct name is not displayed under the Configuration Backup page.
• If a basic authentication email server is configured for notifications, the Email configuration page may display “Not configured”.
• On the Protected Data page, filtering by a specific Virtual Network type may not work as expected.

Infrastructure

• If you enable boot diagnostics with managed storage account on worker instances, Microsoft Azure creates a dedicated storage account. This account will not be automatically removed by the backup appliance after the worker is deallocated.
• In private deployment mode, enabling the DNS zone management feature will create new private endpoints. To work around this issue, either disable private deployment mode first and then re-enable it alongside DNS zone management, or remove all previously created private endpoints before enabling the feature.
• Worker tags specified using parameters as tag values are not assigned to deployed worker VMs if an Azure Policy enforcing tagging rules is enabled in Microsoft Azure.
• Virtual network backup copy is not supported on backup appliances with a configured web proxy.
• DNS zone management is not supported in Azure Government Cloud.

Upgrade

• The Backup Size column on the Protected Data tab will not display any values until a backup policy protecting the corresponding resource runs successfully at least once.
• After completing the upgrade operation, if you navigate to the Web UI using the link in the Veeam Backup & Replication console, the previous login session might still be active. To resolve the issue, refresh the page.
• After upgrading from v6 or v7 to the latest version with private network mode enabled, an error may occur when enabling the toggle “Create service endpoints”. To resolve the issue, contact the Veeam Customer Support Team.

Backup

• The default worker profile (Standard_F2s_v2) may run out of memory after creating 100 or more restore points. To resolve the issue, use a different worker profile.
• A backup appliance cannot detect Azure VM snapshots created by other backup appliances. This limitation does not apply when restoring a configuration backup to a new appliance.
• Due to Microsoft limitations, backup policies protecting Windows-based Azure VMs with the enabled guest processing option notify on success even if the PowerShell script fails. To work around the issue, add necessary exceptions to the script.
• It may take up to 10 minutes for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure to connect to a staging server when processing Azure SQL Managed instances.
• When backing up Azure SQL Managed instances using a staging server, both the Azure SQL backup and Azure SQL restore roles must be assigned to the service account selected in the policy settings.
• An archive session of an SLA-based backup policy may create a temporary backup of a VM, even if a backup session is scheduled for the same day. This temporary backup will be removed during the daily retention session.
• The virtual network backup policy schedule resets daily at 12 AM, causing backup intervals to restart from that point.

Restore

• When restoring an Azure VM that contains a cloud-init script, the script becomes active during the first boot.
• Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure ignores Microsoft Azure locks on existing databases when restoring databases to the original location.
• If a service account used by a backup policy for creating VM snapshots is removed, the entire VM and disk restore from these snapshots might fail. To resolve the issue, either manually rescan the region where the snapshots are located or wait for the automatic infrastructure rescan performed every 24 hours.
• When restoring unmanaged disks, the period (.) character is not supported in the disk name. The Restore Virtual Machines wizard will display an error indicating that the disk is already owned by a VM, while the Restore Disks wizard will ignore the added period and any characters following it.
• The Restore Disks wizard allows you to choose a specific availability zone for backed-up disks using zone-redundant storage (ZRS). However, the disk is still restored with ZRS as the redundancy option regardless of the selected zone.
• Under certain circumstances, the restore speed of large Cosmos DB for MongoDB databases may decrease during the operation.
• After restoring a SQL database to its original location, the backup policy protecting the source database fails to detect it. As a workaround, remove the database from the backup policy, perform a rescan operation, and then re-add the database back to the policy scope.
• When performing a Virtual Machine restore to the original location for specific regions (Australia Central, UK South and all Germany regions), an error may occur in the restore session “Azure cloud exception occurred”. To resolve the issue, verify that the Virtual Machine is restored in the region and in running state or contact the Veeam Customer Support Team for assistance.
• If indexing is enabled for Azure Files policies, Veeam Backup & Replication will not display any backup objects. To resolve the issue, use the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure Web UI to review policy sessions and perform restores.

Configuration Restore

• Under certain circumstances, the worker configuration check performed during the configuration restore may fail when using service and repository accounts from the same tenant with a different set of permissions. No user action is required.
• Connection to the backup appliance using SSH fails if the original user is no longer present in the OS list of users after the configuration restore.
• Under certain circumstances, the repository check performed after the configuration restore may fail when some Azure SQL resources were deleted but are still registered in the configuration backup. To resolve the issue, click Recheck at the Configuration Check step of the restore wizard.
• When restoring a configuration backup containing numerous virtual network restore points, there might not be enough space on the data disk to start the restore. To resolve this, increase the data disk size in Microsoft Azure and expand the ext4 partition on the data disk.
• During the configuration restore of a backup appliance with private deployment mode enabled, the private deployment settings check correctly shows ‘Success’ but also displays a misleading warning: ‘Private deployment settings have not been changed’.
• Configuration restore might fail to detect repositories owned by another backup appliance, which could cause rescan operations to fail. To resolve this issue, check repository ownership on the Repositories page after the restore operation is complete.
• When performing a configuration restore of a backup created for a private network deployment, make sure that the target Veeam Backup appliance for Microsoft Azure is configured using private network deployment mode. Under certain circumstances, the configuration restore may fail if the appliance is not configured using private network deployment mode.
• Under certain circumstances configuration restore may fail with an error “Actual: padding error”. To resolve the issue, contact the Veeam Customer Support Team.

REST APIs

• To review the detailed change log and breaking changes in the REST API v8, see the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure REST API Reference.

Veeam Backup & Replication Integration

• When you deploy Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure from the Veeam Backup & Replication console, you can choose to automatically create the default service account on the backup appliance. If you do, the created account will be associated with the same Entra application as the Azure compute account used for deployment and will share the same permissions. For more information, see the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure User Guide.
• Job and job session reports are not supported for backup policies created in Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure.
• When removing the backup appliance from the Veeam Backup & Replication infrastructure, you also remove all Blob Storage backup repositories for which credentials are not set. To remove the connected resources from Microsoft Azure, see the Removing Appliances section in the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure User Guide.
• Backups and snapshots of Azure VMs, Azure SQL, Azure Files, Azure Cosmos DB accounts and Azure virtual network configurations cannot be removed using the Veeam Backup & Replication console.
• Azure compute account must be re-added to the backup console if it was registered as an existing one in Veeam Backup & Replication v11 and earlier.
• Backup and snapshot size for restore points created by backup appliances is not displayed in the Veeam Backup & Replication console.
• If you change the secret of the Entra application associated with the Azure compute account, Veeam Backup & Replication fails to connect to the application even after updating the secret on the backup server. To resolve this issue, restart the Veeam Azure Service.
• If you add a backup appliance to multiple Veeam Backup & Replication servers, backup policies may fail with the error: ‘Failed to assign a license key to the resource.’ To resolve the issue, restart the Veeam Azure Service.

Technical Documentation References

If you have any questions about Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure, use the following resources:

• Product web page
• Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure documentation
• Veeam R&D forums

Technical Support

Veeam offers email and phone technical support for customers on maintenance and during the official evaluation period. For a better experience, provide the following information when contacting Veeam Customer Support:

• Version information for the product and all infrastructure components
• Error message and/or accurate description of the problem you are having
• Log files

To submit your support ticket or obtain additional information, visit the Veeam Customer Support Portal. Before contacting Veeam Customer Support, consider searching for a resolution on Veeam R&D Forums.

Contacting Veeam Software

At Veeam Software, we pay close attention to comments from our customers — we make it our mission to listen to your input, and to build our products with your suggestions in mind. We encourage all customers to join Veeam R&D Forums and share their feedback directly with the R&D team.

Should you have a technical or licensing issue or question, feel free to contact our Customer Support organization directly. We have qualified technical and customer support staff available 24/7 who will help you with any inquiry that you may have.

Customer Support

For the most up-to-date information about our support practices, business hours and contact details, visit the Veeam Customer Support Portal.

Company Contacts

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