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Caring for your homework: backup your laptop or desktop using the free Veeam Agents

In ordinary life, I, like many of you, dear readers, work in the office most of the time, and it suits me perfectly. But today the situation is such that both I and my colleagues in different parts of the world, and, I think, the majority of people reading this article, we all work from home.

And here it will be quite out of place to recall the need to backup a home computer or laptop. For when the working environment changes, the usual way of working with data also changes. Everything is obvious with work in the office: direct access to the necessary resources, centralized backups, if anything, you can always contact helpdesk. With work from home, many things you need to provide for yourself, including backup.

I believe that many of you are already using Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows or Veeam Agent for Linux for this. If not yet, then perhaps you will be interested in today's brief review. So welcome to cat.



In 2014, when the first version of our product, now known as Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows , was released , it was called Veeam Endpoint Backup Free and had the only non-commercial edition.

Of course, the solution has changed a lot since then, and a commercial version has come out, in which there are many advanced features - centralized management, the CBT driver, cluster support, parallel disk processing, and much more. Veeam Agent for Linux is also developing, which allows you to backup physical machines and restore data from backups. But now, when in the yard of 2020, the new versions of V eeam Agent for Microsoft Windows and Veeam Agent for Linuxthere is also a free edition designed for individual computers.

So if you need to backup your home desktop, laptop, or even a tablet that runs on Windows, use your health.

How it works


The principle of operation of this solution is this: based on the image, a backup copy is created, and if necessary, you can perform a bare metal recovery or another recovery option from it. Consider the example of Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows. Here's how the backup works:

  1. Microsoft VSS, Veeam Agent , . VSS .

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    , Microsoft Windows VSS Outlook Data Files (.ost).
  2. Veeam Agent VSS, .

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    • When you back up files, Veeam Agent creates a volume inside the backup file on the target storage. In this volume, Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows will only copy the files that you selected for backup.
  3. Data in the destination storage is saved to a backup file.

Schematically, it looks like this:



For Veeam Agent for Linux, the story is similar:

  1. A snapshot of the required volumes is created - this is done using the special Veeamsnap module. (A snapshot is created on a volume with enough free space.)

    When a volume is backed up, Veeam Agent copies the partition table and bootloader to the target location.
  2. Veeam Agent for Linux reads data from the volume, performs compression and copying to the target location.
  3. After all the necessary data is copied, the snapshot is deleted. Data is saved to a backup file.

The picture is also very similar:



Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows: Supported OS


64-bit and 32-bit (where applicable) OS versions are supported:

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2019
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2016
  • Microsoft Windows Server Semi-Annual Channel (including 1909)
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2012
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
  • Microsoft Windows 10 (from version 1607 to 1909)
  • Microsoft Windows 8.1
  • Microsoft Windows 7 SP1

Notes:

  • For server operating systems, Small Business Server and Server Essentials editions are supported.
  • Server Core versions for server systems in a stand-alone deployment scenario are not supported.
  • Supported Windows Embedded / Windows IoT OS (except custom builds).
  • Microsoft Failover Clusters are supported when Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows is running Veeam Backup & Replication (are not supported in stand-alone deployment scenarios).
  • Microsoft Windows 10 Education is supported starting with build 10586.

The remaining system requirements are described in detail in the documentation (in English).

Backup job in Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows


For backup, configure the backup task by starting the New Backup Job wizard . In it, select the type of backup:

  • Entire computer - the whole machine.
  • Volume level backup - backup of selected volumes.
  • File level backup - backup of specific files.

Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows can use different types of storage systems as a backup storage location:

  • Local storage - external drive (USB, Firewire or eSata). The main thing here, as you know, is not to backup yourself to the built-in disk on the machine.
  • Shared folder - SMB share on a file server or NAS.
  • Veeam backup repository - Veeam repository (on-premises).
  • Veeam Cloud Connect repository is a cloud-based repository provided by the Veeam service provider.
  • Microsoft OneDrive

In my example, the backup will go to USB Drive - for this, at the Destination step, select Local storage :



Then we set the settings specific to the selected type of storage.

Important! When working with removable USB drives, you should keep in mind that if such a drive is formatted for FAT32, then it does not support storing files larger than 4 GB. So it is not recommended to use such disks as the target backup storage.

Next, configure the schedule in the Schedule step . Here you can specify whether to backup regularly at certain times or to do it when the selected events occur:

  • Lock - when you locked the car
  • Log off - when logged out for the current account
  • When backup target is connected - when the target backup storage is connected

If the third option is specified, then you can also instruct Veeam Agent to finish disconnecting (Eject) the target storage at the end of the backup so that the backup is offline. This will reduce the risk of exposure to a backup copy of the encryption virus, if one is detected.

To do this, select the option When backup target is connected → Eject removable storage once backup is completed (CryptoLocker protection) :



Veeam Agent for Linux


Veeam Agent for Linux is designed to protect the data of machines running on Linux, and this solution also has a free edition. The Linux kernel 2.6.32 and higher is supported.

Supported are 64-bit and 32-bit (where applicable) versions of distributions:

  • Debian 8.0 - 10.3
  • Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, 18.04, 19.10
  • RHEL 6.0 - 8.1
  • CentOS 6.0 - 8.1
  • Oracle Linux 6 - 8.1 (RHCK)
  • Oracle Linux 6 (starting with UEK R1) - Oracle Linux 7 (up to UEK R5 U2)
  • SLES 11 SP4, 12 SP1 - 15 SP1
  • SLES for SAP 11 SP4, 12 SP1 - 15 SP1
  • Fedora 30 - 31
  • openSUSE Leap 15.1
  • openSUSE Tumbleweed

Notes:

  • Fedora is supported up to and including kernel version 5.4.14.
  • openSUSE Tumbleweed is supported up to and including kernel version 5.1.7.
  • The Linux kernel 2.6.32-754.6.3 is not supported on CentOS / RHEL and Oracle Linux (RHCK).

For more information see the documentation (in English).

The same types of backups are supported as in Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows, including file-level backups. Backup settings can be set using the steps in the wizard or from the command line.

More information about each of the solutions can be found in the user guide for Windows (in English) or for Linux (also in English).

About the limitations of the free edition


For Veeam Agent for Linux (compared to the commercial edition of Server):

  1. Only 1 backup job can be created.
  2. The Veeam Cloud Connect repository is not supported as the target backup repository.
  3. The pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts are not supported for the backup job.
  4. Backup taking into account the work of the DBMS Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL is not supported.

More details are in the table here . And about what is happening “behind the scenes”, how our engineers work to provide support for this “zoo” and the compatibility of the Veeam solution, read the article by Sergey Shtepa, a developer on a blog on Habré.

The restrictions for Agent for Windows are listed in detail in the same table . Of the main ones, we note this:

  1. Application-based backups are not supported.
  2. The Veeam Cloud Connect repository is not supported as the target backup repository.
  3. Microsoft OneDrive is not supported as a backup storage for machines running Windows server OS.
  4. Microsoft OneDrive can only be used for backups of system status. (For more information about backup types, see here .)

I hope the Veeam Agent solution is useful to everyone who works from the home office. If your home has a more extensive infrastructure, and you need centralized backup management, you can use the free edition of Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition - its review in Russian is here .

Take care of yourself and do not forget about the safety of your data.

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