How to back up deduplicated volumes with Veeam Endpoint Backup

Challenge

You need to take a volume-level backup of a deduplicated volume with Veeam Endpoint Backup or Veeam Agent for Windows.

Cause

Using exclusions in this scenario can lead to unexpected behavior, including corruption of the backup files.

Solution

The following recommended practices help to ensure you have an operational backup of a deduplicated volume:

• use no exclusions;
• file level restore should be performed to the OS of the same version as the one that is backed up (e.g.: if the backed up volume was part of Windows 2012 R2 machine, restore in Windows 2012 R2).

Note

The following configurations are regarded as volume-level backup:

1. Entire computer backup
2. Volume-level backup
3. File level backup > select a whole volume

If you select file level backup, then specify a whole volume and uncheck some child folders, a volume-level backup will start.