Veeam Explorers
Veeam Explorers are tools included in all editions for item-level recovery from several application. As of v9, following Explorers are available:
- Veeam Explorer for Active Directory
- Veeam Explorer for SQL Server
- Veeam Explorer for Exchange
- Veeam Explorer for SharePoint
- Veeam Explorer for Oracle
- Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots
Each Explorer has a corresponding user guide available in Helpcenter: Veeam Backup Explorers User Guide. For specifics of performing granular restore of certain applications refer to the Applications section of this guide.
Explorer for Storage Snapshots
Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots (VESS) is included, but it is related to storage integrations with primary storage. This is explained in the Backup from Storage Snapshots section of this guide.
VESS is a very easy way to perform item-level recovery directly from storage snapshots. Veeam is able to use discover and mount any storage snapshot for restores. By combining the Veeam application consistent with crash consistent snapshots, the RPO for certain applications can be significantly reduced.
When opening VESS, the following workflow kicks off:
Creating a Clone of the Snapshot to make it writeable
In case of Block access (iSCSI, FC, FCoE) mount the new LUN to a proxy ESXi and register a temporary datastore, in case of NFS access the existing NFS datastore and look for the cloned VM
Register the temporary VM within the VMware inventory
Access the VM using the VMware API
Show the content as a Veeam Explorer to restore
After restoring and exiting VESS, the temporary datastore, VM and LUN clones will be rolled back and cleaned up.