🔃 Veeam Backup setup on AtomOS

General informations

Veeam supports single file (file-level) backup and also incremental snapshots on Linux servers, this automatically makes AtomOS compatible with such a system.

This document guides in going about configuring a Veeam (Windows) worker to make backups to an AtomOS host by going about specifying the paths where AtomOS works.

Virtual machine creation

It is necessary to create a VM with Windows 10 operating system. During the initial installation phase, it is essential to ensure that the following media are mounted as DVD drives:

Virtio Driver: Downloadable from this link.
ISO provided by Veeam: not strictly necessary, but simplifies the Veeam configuration process.

To ensure optimal VM performance, it is strongly recommended to use a network interface with virtio driver instead of e1000. The virtio driver offers greater efficiency and lower latency, thus improving the network performance of the VM and thus the speed at which backups are made and restored.

In order to user a virtio network interface (or a virtio image) on windows, the virtio driver are needed

Configuring Veeam Backup & Replication

In AtomOS, by default, VM volumes are located in the path /mnt/elemento-vault/. We will configure a file-level backup job for this directory, allowing all volumes there to be backed up.

Note that AtomOS (w/ Nucleus) permits to create different vaults under /mnt, in this example we are going to assume that all our volumes resides on /mnt/elemento-vault

Add AtomOS as a server in the VM

To allow Veeam to interact with AtomOS, you must add AtomOS as a server within Veeam Backup & Replication. Follow these steps:

In the Files tab of Veeam, select Add Server and then choose Linux.
In the wizard that opens, enter the IP address of the AtomOS server. Typically, this is the address associated with the vibr0 (or br0) network interface, which serves as the link between the host (AtomOS) and the Windows VM.
Add SSH credentials to connect to the AtomOS server. It is important that this user be part of the wheel group so that it can elevate to root.
Choose the File-level backup option. Next, enter the path of the volumes to be backed up, i.e. /mnt/element-vault/.

To make the Veeam "server" able to view other AtomOS hosts, be sure that the vm where is running has a interface in bridge mode on your network

Creating a backup job

Now we will proceed with the configuration of the backup job for AtomOS. Follow these steps:

In the Home tab of Veeam, right-click and select Backup --> Linux Server.
On the next screen, choose Server and the option Managed by backup server. Assign a name and description to the job (for example, Backup Volumes AtomOS).
Add an Individual Computer, entering the same IP address used previously (the one associated with the network interface you have chosen) and selecting the SSH credentials created earlier.
Choose the File-level backup option. Next, enter the path of the volumes to be backed up, i.e. /mnt/element-vault/.
From this point on, you can further customize the job to suit your needs, such as configuring the backup frequency, version retention, or destination of backup files.

What to expect from the backup

The backup created with this configuration will show a series of folders named vid.<id>.elimg within the path /mnt/element-vault. Within each folder will be data.<extension> files, which represent the actual data volumes of the VMs or volumes on the host.

To restore, you can simply retrieve the vid.<id>.elimg folder, as it contains all the information and settings needed to restore the volume in question, including metadata and actual disks.