Restore from Veeam Backups in VDC

Once logged into your vCloud director tenant user interface, navigate to ‘More’ → ‘Data Protection With Veeam’, on the top menu bar.

From here, you can either restore an entire vAPP/VM, specific virtual hard disks, or even individual files. The below guide is broken up into three sections to show the method for each of these restore types.

Restore entire VM/vAPP

Click on the ‘VMs’ tab, and find the VM you’d like to restore in the list.

Click on the VM/vAPP, then click on the ‘Restore vAPP’ or ‘Restore VM’ button, then choose if you’d like to overwrite the existing VM/vAPP or keep it and create a new one from the backup.

Choose the backup date, and if you’d like the VM/vAPP to be powered on after restore or not, and click ‘finish’.

The VM/vAPP will now be restored from backup to the existing VM/vAPP, or to a new one depending on what you selected.

Restore individual virtual disk

Click on the ‘VMs’ tab, then choose the VM you’d like to restore the virtual disk for.

Click the ‘Virtual Disks’ button.

Select the backup point, click Next.

On the disk mapping page, select the VM to restore to, and the virtual device node to restore to.

Select the restored disk type, and enable the quick rollback option for faster recovery.

Click next. Read the warning, and select OK if you want to proceed.

Restore individual files or folders - Windows

Click ‘Files’ → ‘Pick from list’

To choose which restore point to restore files from, click the small calendar icon.

Click on the date and restore point you want to restore from.

Now click ‘Mount’.

Navigate the folder structure on the left to find the file or folder you’d like to restore. Select it, then click ‘Restore’.

Provide the guest OS username and password, then click OK to start restoring. 

The user you provide will need full read/write permissions for the location you’re restoring to.

Once Veeam verifies the credentials are correct, it will take you to a file restore history page where you can view the progress of the restore.

At any time, you can click the green arrow to go back and restore more files.

Restore individual files or folders - Linux

# On RHEL based systems:
yum install open-vm-tools -y

#On Ubuntu / Debian based systems:
apt install open-vm-tools -y

[root@server~]# systemctl enable vmtoolsd

[root@server~]# systemctl restart vmtoolsd

[root@server~]# systemctl status vmtoolsd
● vmtoolsd.service - Service for virtual machines hosted on VMware
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/vmtoolsd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2025-04-09 16:05:06 AEST; 6s ago
     Docs: https://github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools
 Main PID: 3623355 (vmtoolsd)
    Tasks: 3 (limit: 126250)
   Memory: 1.7M
   CGroup: /system.slice/vmtoolsd.service
           └─3623355 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd

sudo mount -o remount,exec /tmp

root@server:~# hostname
example.com

root@server:~# dig a +short example.com
104.21.21.68 #Make sure the IP that shows here is the public IP of your server.

#If your server hostname doesn't point to a valid domain name you can update it with the following command, replacing mydomain.com with your actual domain name:

root@server:~# hostnamectl set-hostname mydomain.com

The IP addresses you need to whitelist on your NSX and inside your VM are:

118.127.40.117 (Veeam FLR Public IP)

nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

PermitRootLogin yes

systemctl restart sshd

sudo mount -o remount,noexec /tmp

The below guide shows how this can be done using IPTables, but it may differ depending on which firewall or distro you’re running. 

https://help.serversaustralia.com.au/s/article/How-To-Whitelist-An-IP-Address-In-IPTables

Click ‘Files’ then ‘Pick from list’.

Choose the VM you want to restore files to, then click ‘Select’.

On the left, choose the restore point you’d like to restore files from, then click ‘Mount’.

The backup file is now being mounted to the Linux file restore helper VM (FLR).

Once the backup file is mounted, you will see a directory listing.

Browse to the file or folder you’d like to restore. Select it, then you can either download or restore the file.

You can choose to overwrite or keep the existing file.

Now provide the root credentials to the VM and the SSH port details. If SSH fails, then the FLR will attempt to use VMware tools to communicate to the VM. 

If you enter the wrong credentials you will see an error message, and you can try again.

Once you click ‘OK’ the file restore process starts. 

Once Veeam verifies the credentials are correct, it will take you to a file restore history page where you can view the progress of the restore.

You can click the green arrow to go back and restore more files.

If you chose to keep the existing file, the restored file will have RESTORED and a date string appended to the file name.