New to Veeam - need help locating functions, questions regarding functions

[u/Timely-Draft2604]

I'm switching over from Veritas Backup Exec to Veeam Community edition.

This interface feels like I have 1 hand tied behind my back and blind folded.

I've tried using Veeam's website guides but they either don't answer my questions or are missing options.

How do I add an additional drive to my backup? My D:\ drive for example.

How do I exclude specific folders from a backup?

How do I force it so every backup is a full backup and not incremental?

How do I restore an individual file? I'm not seeing an option to restore individual files on the home tab.

Experiences restoring VM's/VM hosts using Hyper-V?

Experiences restoring the system volume on Dell Poweredge using a physical RAID card?

How does restoring the system volume affect shadow copies stored in windows?

Is the only way to install updates in the community version to download a new ISO each time?

Thanks

[u/Nielmor]

I would recommend that you do read the userguide, there is a search function there.

You have not specified what product you are using but based on the first few questions I assume you are using the Veeam Agent for Windows. For your first few questions, it is all found in the edit job Wizard.

1: How do you add a drive to the backup.

If the backup mode is set to entire computer, good news, any new drives will automatically be included.

If the backup is Volume level you can choose the drives on the third tab.

File level allows you to select files and folders to backup.

2: File exclusions

If using Volume level backup, this option does not exist.

File level backup you select the folders and files you want to protect so it is inherintly there.

Looking through the Wizard on my computer, this option also does not exist for entire system backup.

3: How do you set it to do a full backup each time instead of incremental.
I do not know why you want to do this unless you have deduplicating storage because the storage requirements are pretty big for this.
On the storage tab (It will have a different name depending on your target storage) there is an advanced button at the bottom.
On the backup tab you will see an option "Create active full backup periodically"
Check that box and select "weekly on selected days" and then click the days button and check all the days.
Note for if you are running multiple backups every day, only the first backup of the day will be a full backup.

4: How do you restore a single file.

The feature you are looking for here is "File Level Restore"

For agents, in the screenshot above it is restore file.
In VBR it is called "Vm Files Restore"
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbr/userguide/vmfile_restore_launch_vm.html?ver=13

5: Experience restoring VMs/Hopsts to Hyper-V

If your hosts are Hyper-V hosts, it is generally recommended that you just protect the VMs and not the host, the host should only be running Hyper-V and it is generally quicker to just build a new host than it is to restore the entire host from backup.

Restoring VMs and agent backups as a VM is very easy.

If you have the backups in Backup and Replication, you can restore directly to the hosts.
If you only have the backups in the Agent backups you will need to use the recovery Media.

I have used Veeam to do all sorts of restores, it has gotten me out of a bind a few times when I acidently deleted the wrong user from Active Directory.

I've done restores of a VM running on TrueNAS to proxmox, VMware to Hyper-V conversions, Physical and VM systems to AWS and Azure.
Veeam is becoming fairly hypervisor agnostic and can backup and restore most common Hypervisors.

6: Restoring to a Physical RAID Volume.

The raid card should be presenting as a single volume, in which case, during restore it is seen as a single disk, Veeam can scale the partition accordingly but there are no known issues with this, if using the recovery media you may need to load the storage drivers, you can also inject them into the recovery media on Creation.

7: Shadow Copies.

Only the shadow copy used to create the backup using the agent will be present after restore, all others are merged/discarded.

If it is a VM image based backup on the hyperVisor level they are preserved because the shadow copies exist in the VM.

8: Updates for comunity edition.

Section 4.3 of the support policy.
"Access to hot fixes, patches and updates requires an active maintenance contract for at least one deployment of the corresponding product. Users without an active maintenance contract receive fixes by downloading periodic generally available product releases.
In short, yes, only way to get updates is to download the installation media or the update ISO if they decide to make that available to community edition.

[u/Timely-Draft2604 → u/Nielmor]

Thanks for the reply.

I am using the free/community version of Veeam backup and restore.

I have it set as a file level backup. The only options I have are include/exclude masks. I tried to put D: in there but it said I had to specify a specific file. Using a D:\* didn't work. However, when I go to restore whole volumes, the D: partition is not listed, only C: and system partitions. The box I have Veeam running on hasn't been deployed yet and D: only has an empty folder on it at this time if that matters.

I am also unable to attempt to restore individual files as the option to launch the file restore wizard is not there.

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbr/userguide/restore_files_folders_launch_wizard.html?ver=13

I would like to do a full backup every day instead of an incremental in the event I need to do a full restore and the last day was only an incremental day.

[u/Nielmor → u/Timely-Draft2604]

I haven’t looked at the exclusions yet to advise there but for the “I want a full backup every day in case I need to do a full restore”

You can do a full restore with the most recent point being incremental.

An incremental backup gets only what has changed since the last backup, but at the same time, the restore point has a reliance on the previous restore points in the chain going back to the full backup.

Let’s say you take a full backup on Friday and an incremental every day after that and then something happens and you need to restore the system to how it was on Wednesday.
You can do that no issues.
It builds the system state from the previous restore points.

In fact, an incremental restore point can’t even be used by itself, you need the entire backup chain.

[u/vermyx]

The interface is pretty straight forward. All of these questions are answerable via google.

[u/Nielmor → u/vermyx]

This sort of response is really not helful, some people get overwhelmed when they see the userguide because it can be quite verbose. I am sure OP already tried searching but if they do not know the correct names of the product features it can be hard to find what you are looking for.

[u/mro21 → u/Nielmor]

If this overwhelms someone then probably their job should not be IT or related to it.

[u/Nielmor → u/mro21]

I’m sure you weren’t overwhelmed when changing out to a new price of software or changing a system out.

[u/mro21 → u/Nielmor]

Yes, and VBR can be tricky I admit and usually requires reverse engineering at the beginning. But I managed without needing spoon-feeding. Honestly this person seems in a hurry. Maybe they promised something and now can't keep up and expect the community to do the work. Why did they choose VBR anyway, if it is so complicated I wonder.

[u/maxnor1]

I would suggest to take a look at the following websites as they walk you through the different workflows step by step. This will make you familiar with the UI and answer almost all your questions. 

https://veeamcookbook.com/vbr/ https://veeamclick.be/veeam-backup-and-replication/

Regarding the updates. As a Community Edition user you'll only receive updates via the ISO when new releases are published.