Veeam Backup & Replication
Veeam Backup & Replication is a comprehensive data protection and disaster recovery software solution developed by Veeam Software, designed to provide efficient backup, replication, and recovery for virtual machines, physical servers, NAS file shares, and cloud workloads in hybrid environments.[1][2] Originally introduced at VMworld Europe in February 2008 and made generally available in March 2008, the product emerged from Veeam Software's founding in 2006 by engineers focused on simplifying backups for virtual environments amid the rise of virtualization technologies like VMware vSphere.[3][4] Over the subsequent years, Veeam Backup & Replication has undergone continuous evolution, with major version releases including v5.0 in 2010, v12 in 2023, and the latest v13 in November 2025, incorporating advancements in scalability, security, and multi-cloud support.[5] The software's core capabilities include image-level backups with changed block tracking for efficiency, instant recovery of entire virtual machines or granular items like files and application objects, and replication for disaster recovery readiness.[1][2] It emphasizes security through end-to-end immutable backups, AI-powered malware detection, and Zero Trust architecture to protect against ransomware and unauthorized access.[2] Veeam Backup & Replication supports a wide range of platforms, including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV, physical Windows and Linux servers, Kubernetes clusters, and public clouds such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.[2] Available in Community Edition for small-scale use and enterprise editions for advanced needs, it is deployed by over 550,000 customers worldwide as of November 2025[6] and has been positioned as a Leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Backup and Data Protection Platforms for nine consecutive years as of 2025.[7][8]Introduction
Overview
Veeam Backup & Replication is a proprietary backup, replication, and recovery software developed by Veeam Software, designed to protect virtual, physical, network-attached storage (NAS), and cloud workloads across diverse environments.[2] As a comprehensive data protection and disaster recovery solution, it enables organizations to create image-level backups and perform restores for virtual machines, physical servers, and cloud-based assets, ensuring business continuity in hybrid and multi-cloud setups.[1] At the core of the Veeam Data Platform, Veeam Backup & Replication provides foundational capabilities for comprehensive data resilience, particularly against ransomware attacks and disasters, by integrating backup, recovery, and security features into a unified platform.[9] This integration allows for seamless management of data across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid infrastructures, emphasizing immutability and rapid failover to mitigate risks.[2] Key benefits include agentless backup operations for virtual environments, which eliminate the need for software installation on protected systems, instant recovery options that enable VMs to run directly from backups to minimize downtime, and scalable architecture suitable for enterprise deployments handling thousands of workloads.[10][11][12] The latest version, 13.0.1.180, released on November 19, 2025, including the full general availability release with features such as a Linux-based backup server and AI-driven anomaly detection, introduces enhancements such as AI-powered anomaly detection and improved hybrid cloud security measures.[13][14][15]Key Capabilities
Veeam Backup & Replication provides immutable and ransomware-proof backups through hardened Linux repositories, which enforce write-once-read-many (WORM compliance to prevent unauthorized modifications or deletions for a specified retention period. These repositories utilize Linux file system immutability flags and can be configured as isolated, air-gapped storage to further enhance protection against cyber threats like ransomware, ensuring data integrity even if the primary environment is compromised. This approach aligns with zero-trust principles, incorporating features such as multi-factor authentication for administrative access and integration with external immutability solutions for cloud or object storage.[16][17][18] A standout capability is instant VM recovery, allowing workloads to be restored directly from backups to production environments in minutes without the need for full restoration, minimizing downtime during incidents. Complementing this, the solution supports agentless granular file-level restores, enabling users to recover individual files, folders, or application items from VM backups via an intuitive interface, without deploying software agents on target systems. This agentless methodology reduces deployment complexity and security risks while maintaining high performance across virtualized infrastructures.[2][19] Built-in deduplication, compression, and encryption optimize storage efficiency and security; deduplication eliminates redundant data blocks to reduce backup sizes, compression further shrinks files using advanced algorithms, and AES-256 encryption secures data at rest and in transit, with support for key management services (KMS) integration. These features collectively lower storage costs and bandwidth usage while ensuring compliance with data protection standards.[2][1] Orchestrated disaster recovery is facilitated by SureBackup, which automates verification of backups in isolated virtual labs to confirm recoverability, application consistency, and bootability before an actual disaster occurs. This proactive testing eliminates surprises during recovery, supporting scripted failover plans for entire sites or clusters. In version 13, AI-assisted features enhance these capabilities with anomaly detection in backup data patterns to identify potential threats early and provide guided recovery recommendations through a generative AI assistant integrated with Veeam's knowledge base.[20][2] Veeam Backup & Replication supports multiple virtualization platforms, including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Nutanix AHV, for broad applicability in hybrid environments.[2]Operations
Backup Process
Veeam Backup & Replication employs an agentless approach to create image-level backups of virtual machines (VMs), leveraging integrations with virtualization platforms to capture data without installing software inside the guest operating systems. For VMware vSphere environments, it utilizes the VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) to create consistent snapshots of VMs through vCenter Server or ESXi hosts, enabling read-only access to VM disks during the backup window. Similarly, for Microsoft Hyper-V, the solution integrates with the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to ensure application-consistent backups by coordinating with guest OS services. This agentless methodology minimizes deployment overhead and supports efficient data capture from hypervisors.[21] The backup process supports multiple modes to balance completeness, efficiency, and storage usage. A full backup captures the entire VM image, serving as the baseline for subsequent sessions. Incremental backups then transfer only the data blocks that have changed since the last backup, significantly reducing transfer volumes and backup duration. The forever-forward incremental method chains multiple incrementals to a single full backup, with periodic synthetic full backups generated by merging previous incrementals without re-accessing the source VM, thereby avoiding downtime for large datasets. These modes are configurable within backup jobs to optimize for specific recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs).[21] Changed Block Tracking (CBT) enhances incremental backups by identifying and tracking only modified data blocks at the hypervisor level, eliminating the need to scan entire VM disks for changes. Supported in VMware vSphere (via native CBT) and Hyper-V environments, CBT integrates seamlessly during snapshot creation, allowing Veeam to read metadata about altered blocks and transport solely those portions, which can reduce backup sizes by up to 99% in stable environments. This feature is automatically enabled where compatible, ensuring efficient data identification without additional configuration.[21] Backup jobs in Veeam Backup & Replication are configured through a centralized console, where administrators define schedules for automated execution—such as daily, weekly, or event-triggered runs—to align with maintenance windows and compliance needs. Retention policies specify the number of days for which to retain restore points, automatically managing backup chains by merging or removing outdated sessions to control repository growth. Application-aware processing further refines consistency for VMs hosting databases like Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle, by injecting lightweight runtime components into the guest OS during snapshots to quiesce applications, truncate transaction logs, and ensure point-in-time recoverability. These settings collectively form a workflow that starts with job initiation, proxy assignment, data transport, and completion with metadata updates.[21][22] For storage, backups can be written directly to a designated repository from the source VM, with data streamed through Veeam Data Movers for compression and deduplication en route. To enhance performance and scalability, backup proxies—dedicated servers or VMs—can offload processing tasks like reading VM data via optimized transport modes (e.g., Hot-Add for direct disk access or Network Block Device for remote reads), allowing parallel handling of multiple jobs without overloading production hosts. Repositories support various targets, including local disks, NAS shares, or object storage, ensuring initial backup data is securely stored with metadata for rapid indexing. In v13, backup servers can run on Linux for improved availability and efficiency.[21][23]Replication Process
Veeam Backup & Replication facilitates disaster recovery by creating and maintaining replica virtual machines (VMs) on target hosts, enabling high availability and off-site redundancy. The replication process involves transferring VM data from a production site to a secondary site, where replicas serve as exact copies that can be activated if the primary environment fails. This process is orchestrated through dedicated replication jobs configured in the Veeam console, which specify source VMs, target hosts, datastores, and networks.[24][25] Replication operates on a job-based model, where administrators define jobs that read configuration from the Veeam database and query VM details from the virtualization server, such as VMware vSphere. The initial job session creates a full replica by capturing a VM snapshot, reading all VM disks, and writing data to the target datastore via source and target proxies. Subsequent sessions are incremental, leveraging Changed Block Tracking (CBT) to identify and transfer only modified data blocks, ensuring efficiency in ongoing synchronization.[25][26] The process supports two primary modes: periodic replication, which runs on a schedule (e.g., hourly or daily) to achieve recovery point objectives (RPOs) in hours, and continuous replication via Continuous Data Protection (CDP), which captures changes in near-real-time for RPOs measured in seconds or minutes. In periodic mode, jobs synchronize replicas at defined intervals, while in v13, universal CDP extends support beyond ESXi journal-based logging to agent-based protection for any Windows workloads (physical, virtual, or cloud), tracking I/O operations and replaying them to the replica without full snapshots.[24][27][28] For wide-area network (WAN) replication, Veeam employs network acceleration through dedicated WAN accelerators—pairs of Windows-based components deployed at source and target sites. These accelerators perform global deduplication by creating data digests and caching unique blocks, filtering out duplicates and zero blocks before transmission, while also applying compression to minimize bandwidth usage, often reducing traffic by up to 50% or more depending on data patterns. Network throttling can further limit transfer rates to avoid impacting production traffic.[29][30][31] Replica seeding optimizes initial data transfer by using existing backups as a starting point, avoiding a full replication over the network. Administrators can copy backup files to the target site via physical media, then configure the replication job to map the seed backup to the replica, allowing subsequent incrementals to build from that point. Reseeding applies similarly if the replica becomes outdated or corrupted, re-initializing from a recent backup to resume synchronization efficiently.[32][33][34] Failover and failback are integral to orchestration, supporting both planned (maintenance) and unplanned (disaster) scenarios. In failover, Veeam starts the replica VM on the target host, promoting it to production while quiescing the source if accessible; planned failovers allow testing without data loss. Failback reverses this by synchronizing changes from the replica back to the original VM or a new host, then switching workloads, with options for permanent failover to commit the replica as the new primary. These operations are initiated from the Veeam console or integrated with Veeam Recovery Orchestrator for automated workflows.[35][36][37] Replication integrates with existing backup chains by allowing jobs to source data directly from backups rather than live VMs, particularly useful for initial seeding or when live replication is impractical. In this mode, Veeam restores VM data from backup restore points to create the replica, then applies incrementals from ongoing backup sessions, ensuring replicas remain current without duplicating primary backup infrastructure.[38][39]Recovery Process
Veeam Backup & Replication provides a range of recovery options designed to minimize downtime and ensure data availability after incidents, supporting restores from backups across virtual, physical, and cloud environments. These options include rapid mounting of backups for immediate access, granular restores of VMs, files, or application items, automated verification mechanisms, and coordinated plans for complex dependencies. The recovery processes leverage Veeam's vPower technology and integrated tools to facilitate efficient restoration without requiring full system rebuilds.[40] Instant Recovery enables quick access to data by mounting compressed and deduplicated backup files directly as virtual machines (VMs) or volumes on ESXi hosts using vPower technology, allowing workloads to run from backups with changes tracked in redo logs. This approach achieves recovery in minutes, supporting VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Amazon EC2, and Microsoft Azure environments, and includes options for bulk recovery with resource scheduling to optimize performance. Once operational, users can migrate the VM to production storage via quick migration or full relocation for sustained I/O performance.[19][41] For complete system restoration, Full VM Restore extracts the entire VM image from a backup to production storage, registering it on the target ESXi host and powering it on as needed, providing full disk I/O performance unlike the temporary setup in Instant Recovery. The process supports restoration to the original location—where only changed disks are overwritten—or a new location with customizable settings for VM name, host, datastore, disk format (thin or thick), and network mappings. Transport modes include Direct SAN Access for high-speed restores, Virtual Appliance for hot-adding disks, and Network mode as a fallback, with multithreaded transfers and CRC checks ensuring data integrity.[42] File-level recovery allows users to restore individual files and folders from guest operating systems without recovering the entire VM, targeting Microsoft Windows VMs via a dedicated wizard launched from the Veeam console or backup files. The process mounts the backup content, browses the guest OS structure, and copies selected items to a specified location, supporting restores from backups, replicas, or storage snapshots. This granular approach is ideal for quick fixes of accidental deletions or corruptions in VM guest environments.[43] Item-level recovery extends granularity to application-specific data, enabling restoration of individual items such as Microsoft Active Directory objects or Microsoft SQL Server databases directly from VM backups or replicas using Veeam Explorers. These tools provide a native interface for browsing and recovering items without full VM restoration, leveraging the Veeam Data Integration API over iSCSI or FUSE protocols to access application data securely. Supported applications include Active Directory, SQL Server, Exchange, Oracle, and PostgreSQL, ensuring precise recovery for critical business data.[44] To verify recoverability, SureBackup automates testing of backups in isolated virtual labs, spinning up VMs from restore points and running predefined heartbeat, ping, and application-specific tests to confirm functionality without impacting production. Operating in full recoverability mode or content scan mode, it integrates with antivirus scanning for malware detection and supports scripted custom tests for tailored validation. In v13, AI-powered analysis enhances malware detection during verification. Complementing this, SureReplica performs similar automated verification on VM replicas, ensuring they boot correctly and pass tests in a sandboxed environment, thus confirming disaster recovery readiness.[45][46][47] Cross-platform recovery supports seamless restoration across diverse environments, including from cloud backups in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud to on-premises VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V infrastructures, facilitating migrations or disaster recovery scenarios. This capability allows any Veeam-protected workload—virtual, physical, or cloud-based—to be recovered to compatible platforms, with options for full-system, database, or application-level restores.[48] For environments with interdependent VMs, orchestrated recovery plans in Veeam Recovery Orchestrator automate multi-VM recoveries by coordinating failover or restore actions based on defined dependencies, such as startup sequences and network configurations. Integrated with Veeam Backup & Replication, these plans support replica failovers, CDP recoveries, and cross-platform restores to vSphere, Hyper-V, or Azure, ensuring orderly and verifiable execution of complex disaster recovery workflows.[49]Data Optimization and Management
Veeam Backup & Replication provides several features to optimize data after initial backups, ensuring efficient storage, security, and compliance throughout the data lifecycle. These tools focus on secondary processing, such as creating offsite copies, reducing storage footprint, and maintaining backup integrity against threats. By implementing these mechanisms, organizations can minimize resource usage while adhering to retention requirements and regulatory standards.[50][51] Backup copy jobs enable the creation of secondary backup copies for offsite or alternative storage locations, enhancing disaster recovery readiness. These jobs transform primary backup chains into forward incremental chains on the target repository, supporting both short-term and long-term retention policies. For long-term archival, Veeam incorporates Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) retention, which retains weekly, monthly, and yearly restore points for extended periods, such as up to 999 years, while automatically managing the transition from active to archival storage.[52][53][54] Deduplication and compression are integral to optimizing backup chains, reducing both network traffic and storage requirements. During backup processing, Veeam applies block-level deduplication to eliminate redundant data within backup files, followed by compression using algorithms like LZ4 or FLAC to further shrink file sizes. These optimizations persist post-backup, with configurable levels such as "High" for maximum reduction or "Deduplication-friendly" for compatibility with external deduplication appliances, ensuring efficient management of growing backup datasets.[50][50] To counter ransomware threats, Veeam employs immutable backups and robust encryption protocols. Immutable backups, stored in hardened repositories, prevent modification, deletion, or encryption for a predefined retention period, often leveraging Linux-based object storage with Linux Access Control Lists (ACLs) or cloud immutability features like Amazon S3 Object Lock. Encryption is applied both at rest—using AES-256 standards—and in transit via TLS 1.2 or higher, safeguarding data against unauthorized access during secondary operations.[51][55][56] Capacity management is facilitated through tools like Scale-Out Backup Repositories (SOBR) and automated retention policies, which optimize storage and remove obsolete data. SOBR tiers backups across performance and capacity extents, automatically offloading older restore points to cost-effective object storage in the capacity tier once they age beyond the operational window, reducing on-premises footprint. Retention policies, including background tasks, identify and delete outdated backup files—those without recent sessions—for a configurable period (default 30 days), preventing indefinite accumulation while preserving chain integrity during cleanup.[57][58][59] Reporting and alerting features monitor backup health and ensure compliance with minimal manual intervention. The built-in Security & Compliance Analyzer scans configurations against best practices, generating reports on immutability, encryption, and access controls to identify vulnerabilities. Health checks verify backup file integrity periodically, while email notifications alert administrators to failures, capacity thresholds, or policy violations, supporting proactive management and audit readiness. In v13, AI-driven insights enhance threat detection in reporting.[60][61][62][47]Architecture
Core Components
The core components of Veeam Backup & Replication form the foundational infrastructure required for any deployment, enabling the orchestration, processing, and storage of data protection tasks. These mandatory elements include the backup server, backup repository, source and target hosts, and Veeam Data Mover, which collectively handle job coordination, data handling, and VM protection in virtual environments.[63] Backup ServerThe backup server serves as the central management console in Veeam Backup & Replication, responsible for job orchestration, including the coordination of backup, replication, recovery verification, and restore tasks.[64] It houses the configuration database, which can utilize Microsoft SQL Server Express or a full SQL Server instance to store infrastructure settings, job configurations, and metadata.[64] Additionally, the backup server manages service coordination across the infrastructure, controlling scheduling, resource allocation, and global settings while acting as the default backup proxy and repository for initial data operations.[64] This component, deployable on Windows or Linux (via Veeam Software Appliance as of v13), physical or virtual machines, ensures centralized administration for basic functionality.[64][65] In v13 (released September 2025), Veeam Backup & Replication completed its transition to a fully 64-bit architecture across all backup infrastructure components, improving performance, scalability, and memory utilization.[66] Additionally, core components gained support for Linux operating systems through the Veeam Software Appliance, a hardened, just-enough operating system based on Rocky Linux, reducing dependency on Windows licensing.[67] Backup Repository
The backup repository is the designated storage location where Veeam Backup & Replication maintains backup files, VM copies, and metadata for replicated VMs, serving as an essential endpoint for all protected data.[68] It supports various storage types, including direct-attached storage, network-attached storage (NAS), and deduplicating storage appliances, allowing flexibility in deployment while centralizing backup data management.[68] For optimal performance, repositories should avoid overlapping paths or multiple instances pointing to the same location to prevent conflicts.[68] Source and Target Hosts
Source hosts in Veeam Backup & Replication are hypervisors, such as VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V servers, that host the virtual machines (VMs) selected for protection, providing access to the data that needs to be backed up or replicated.[69] These hosts must be added to the backup infrastructure to enable Veeam to discover and process VMs.[69] Target hosts, similarly hypervisors like vSphere ESXi clusters or Hyper-V servers, receive and maintain VM replicas in a ready-to-start state, ensuring continuity during failover scenarios and supporting replication to off-site or secondary sites.[69] Veeam Data Mover
The Veeam Data Mover is a lightweight process that handles data transfer and processing tasks during backup and replication jobs, such as retrieving source data, applying deduplication and compression, and writing to the target repository.[70] It runs on the backup server or dedicated proxy servers, with persistent instances on Windows for ongoing operations and either persistent or non-persistent modes on Linux proxies.[70] This component optimizes data flow between source hosts and repositories, ensuring efficient transport without requiring additional hardware for basic setups.[70] These core components interact to support the fundamental operations of data protection, as outlined in the Operations section.[63]