Stand-Alone Veeam Backup Agents on Windows Workstations

Introduction

As a general rule: Veeam Backup Agent Free edition is NOT supported, because the free edition does not support cloud repositories.

Managed Veeam Agents (managed by a VBR installation) or stand-alone Veeam Agents for Servers or Workstations with an already existing valid license are supported. This article guides you through how to set up your cloud backups if you use a stand-alone Veeam Agent (i.e. you downloaded the Veeam Agent setup file from veeam.com, and your installation is not connected to Veeam Backup and Replication).

Pre-requisites

- You have a Veeam Backup Agent installation running on your stand-alone machine 

- You have a valid license

- Supported OS versions: check here, under Management Agents

- Supported Backup Agent versions:

• • • • • Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 5 or later build (recommended)
        • Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 4  

Add a Cloud Job to a Stand-Alone Veeam Backup Agent

To configure a cloud job in your Veeam Backup Agent, open it from the start menu, and then click on Add New Job... 

If you already have a local job configured, just add a second job.

In the New Backup Job wizard, give the job a name.

Click Next.

In the Backup Mode step, you have the opportunity to choose how you'd like to backup your machine.

If you have a local backup configured on a shared drive, a NAS or on a USB stick, OR you have no local backup at all, you may go ahead and choose Entire computer. 

If you have a local backup configured on a secondary drive in your computer, choose Volume level backup. E.g. you have your operating system running on C:\, you have your data on D:\ and you make a backup on E:\ - It's practical to exclude the E:\ drive from your cloud backup.

Under destination, choose Veeam Cloud Connect repository and click Next.

Give the DNS name of the Service provider: vcc-ix.speicherblock.at - port 6180.

The certificate is checked.

If the check fails, the port is not open on the firewall. Turn to the network administrator to have the ports TCP 6180 and UDP 6180 opened.

To simply test this, use Telnet or the Test-NetConnection PowerShell cmdlet.

If the check is successful, go on to provide your credentials.

Choose your Cloud Repository.

At the Keep backups for: option give the number of days that you'd like to have as a retention time. E.g. if you configure 7 days, it will mean that one given restore point will remain on the cloud storage for 7 days. 

Depending on how big a storage you've purchased, you may configure here a number as high as even 60 (meaning 2 months of retention).

Click Advanced to set up some special options.

• If you have plenty of cloud storage, or defined only a few retention points (below 15!), you may want to configure periodic synthetic full backups. This speeds up the restore process if you need it.
  
  
• If you defined more than 15 restore points, we recommend unticking the Create synthetic full backups option, so you save storage in the cloud repository.

On the Maintenance tab, we recommend checking the Perform backup files health check.

On the Storage tab, we recommend you to choose the Extreme compression level and choose WAN target for storage optimization. This will create smaller backup files which are more practical for WAN traffic.

It is advisable to configure an encryption password. This will protect your backups from third-party usage.

Caution! Store this password safely! Neither the Service Provider, nor Veeam product support are able to recover it, if you lose it, and without it, your backup files cannot be used for restores.

If you have a local backup location, you may want to enable backup cache. In case, your computer doesn't have a connection to the service provider during the scheduled time when the backup should run, Veeam will create the backup file locally, and once it has access to the cloud repository, it will upload the cached file. Like this, you won't miss any retention points. But you need extra storage space to store the backup cache.

Choose the schedule for the backup job to run automatically and define what should happen afterwards (e.g. lock your machine).

If you notice that the backup job causes some network latency, and interferes with your daily work, you may throttle the amount of network Veeam is using.

On the summary tab, review your settings and then click Finish.

Your new cloud job will appear in the configuration.

Click Run Now to run the job, or let the automatic schedule run it for you.

If you click on the green column, you can see the detailed logging of the job.