Veeam is a great Windows tool to create and restore VM (Virtual Machine) backups. The file extension for Veeam backups is vbk and inside this file are the VM ware files such as vdmk, vmfx, and nvram. In order to extract the vmdk file you  need to use a tool called “Extract” which can be found with the Veeam program files folder located here: C:\Program Files\Veeam\Backup and Replication\Extract.exe

VEEAM BACKUP RESTORE

Here’s an example that I used to perform the restore. In this example we will use the file name test.vbk:

Microsoft Windows [Version 5.2.3790]

(C) Copyright 1985-2003 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>”C:\Program Files\Veeam\Backup and Replication\Extract.exe”

Enter path to VBK backup file:
>F:\test.vbk
VM Name ——————– Size/State — Date —– Host Name ————
test 200 GB 05/23/2014 192.168.1.230

Enter VM name (press ENTER to restore all VMs):
>

Enter output directory (press ENTER to use the current directory):
>F:\veeam restore
Proceed with restore? Press Y to continue.
To restore these VMs you can use the following command line:
C:\Program Files\Veeam\Backup and Replication\Extract.exe -restore “F:\test.vbk” “F:\veeam restore”

Press ENTER to abort.
y Restoring file: test.vmx
0%======================50%======================100%
*****************************************************

Restoring file: test.vmxf
0%======================50%======================100%
*****************************************************

Restoring file: test.nvram
0%======================50%======================100%
*****************************************************

Restoring file: test.vmdk
0%======================50%======================100%
*****************************************************

Restoring file: test-flat.vmdk
0%======================50%======================100%
*****************************************************

test is restored

Here’s a screenshot of the extracted files.

NOTE: Depending the size of your VM, you may need to have lots of storage to perform backups and restores.

Marco   /   admin   /   30 Nov

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