Get out of any cloud for free with Veeam Agent free edition

by Ian · 9th April 2018

Really?

Ok, so maybe I lured you here with some marketing spin whilst omitting a few key details. However, given the right conditions, this is absolutely true. I was working on a project recently with a requirement to pull some virtual machines out of a managed service environment running Hyper-V and restore them to a VMware estate. Competitors solutions were looking like they would cost thousands. This solution is essentially free.

No really.

So the conditions that need to be met for this to work are as follows, you are able to install the Veeam Agent for Windows (or Linux) into your virtual machine AND you are able to point the backup to a Veeam Backup and Replication repository. For environments with dedicated links to that cloud resource, be it Azure, AWS, Google Cloud Platform, an MSP… Whatever it is, as long as there is a Veeam backup and replication server available at the destination you plan to move to that the virtual machine can communicate with, you are onto a winner. Remember, if applicable you may still have to pay for egress charges.

Right so what do I do?

I will assume at this point you have created a Veeam Backup and replication server and created a backup repository.

Install Veeam Agent for Windows free and run through the config as follows.

Backup the entire computer.

Choose Veeam backup repository as the backup target.

Type in the name of the Veeam server and enter access credentials.

Choose a backup repository.

Choose backup schedule.

Done.

Restore the VM to your on-premises infrastructure.

Now her is the really cool part, it doesn’t matter what the source was, I mentioned a few cloud examples earlier. This example is from my own laptop. You can restore to either VMware or Hyper-V. Veeam will take care of that disk conversion process for you. Nice!

Navigate to agent backups on disk and select the machine that has been backed up.