topic Re: Mount CIFS volume as datastore to VMware (to backup with Veeam) in Network and Storage Protocols

Mount CIFS volume as datastore to VMware (to backup with Veeam)

thomasb82 — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 15:34:43 GMT

Hi guys,

did anybody succeed or knows how backups of CIFS can be done with Veeam?

As Veeam only allows to backup this only file-copy based without dedupe and without incrementals. So this is not an option for us.

And file-to-tape is also not an option.

I found this approach so far:

"An easy way to take a snapshot is to share that volume out as a Datastore to vSphere as well.

Once the Datastore is in vSphere you then create a dummy VM - create a VM of any sort and just don't install anything.

So when you do that you effectively have a VMX file and thats all Veeam needs.
You then create a Veeam Backup Job of the Dummy VM and then ensure that you configure the Veeam job to do the NetApp snapshot."

We are running ONTAP9, have CIFS without qtrees for our Windows clients, NFS datastores for VMs and iSCSI LUNs for some servers like Exchange, SQL, etc.

Would I just need to enable mixed security style? What could go wrong? I assume it would be good enough to give VMware read-only access to our CIFS data.

Thank you very much for your help and ideas!

Re: Mount CIFS volume as datastore to VMware (to backup with Veeam)

AlexDawson — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 06:44:41 GMT

I think Veeam is probably the wrong solution here.. Are you trying to backup to another NetApp system? If so, just use snapvault/snapmirror.

If you want to have recovery points in the past to browse and get files out of, just use snapshots and the integration built into Windows' "Previous Versions"

Re: Mount CIFS volume as datastore to VMware (to backup with Veeam)

thomasb82 — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:48:57 GMT

Hey Alex,

I fully agree with you and regarding NetApps features yes thats basically what we are doing for most locations and it works very well.

I will spare you the details but unfortunatly in some areas we "have to" use Veeam. At least for a while.

So any form of workaround would be welcome.

Thanks!

Re: Mount CIFS volume as datastore to VMware (to backup with Veeam)

SeanJoo — Wed, 23 Jan 2019 23:52:59 GMT

Hi Thomas,

Have you able to find the workaround to backup CIFS volume using Veeam? I have the same situation as you are. But Veeam 9.5 Update 4 still not support CIFS volume backup.

Thanks in advance.

Sean