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The Lonely Administrator

Easy VM Backup with Veeam Zip

Posted on June 27, 2013

If you run a small VMware or Hyper-V setup, perhaps for a lab or personal training, you probably haven't thought to much about backing up your virtual machines. But it is actually pretty easy and doesn't cost anything. Let me give you a quick intro to the free backup tool from Veeam. The first thing you need to do is download it. The install is pretty straightforward so I'll skip that part.

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When you fire it up for the first time you'll see a tree for VMware and Hyper-V. This product works for both! Right-click on whichever virtualization infrastructure you are using and add a server. It is a quick and easy wizard that should only take a minute to complete. The app should automatically enumerate all the virtual machines.

veeam-backup-1

To create a backup right-click on a virtual machine and select Veeam zip, or you can use the menu icon. You will be ask to provide a path for the backup.

veeam-backup-2

The program will create a single zip file of all associated files for the virtual machine. It takes a few minutes for the backup to get up to speed.

veeam-backup-3

Eventually my backup reached 24MB/second. When the backup finishes you can view a status report by going to History and then right-clicking on the backup. You can view stats.

veeam-backup-4

Or a summary report as an HTML file in your browser

veeam-backup-5

All of the files will be stored in a vbk file. This is a zip file format. You can extract files locally, or leave it alone until you need to restore something.

There are some limitations, but remember this is a free tool not a free trial. There's no PowerShell support and it doesn't support Hyper-V on Windows 8. Those are biggies for me. Of course Veeam has a full-blown backup product that you should try out, especially if you like the idea of managing backups via PowerShell.

I'll cover some additional features in future posts.


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1 thought on “Easy VM Backup with Veeam Zip”

  1. vMaria says:
    July 12, 2013 at 11:07 am

    Nice article! Thank you!

    Actually, I love VeeamZIP because it has no limits on the number of VMs and no expiration date, i.e. it’s totally free (comparing to other “free” backup products).

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