When working with Veeam products, you’ll be familiar with the *.vbk extension. Veeam uses this file extension to store back-ups, made with Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR).
Based on the popular demand from my fellow Dutch Veeam Vanguard Maurice Kevenaar, Veeam now has published the Extract utility as a separate download on their web-site. This can be found under the Additional Downloads to Veeam’s Software for Enterprise section on the main download page.
About the Extract utility
Previously, the Extract utility was only part of Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR) installations. With a file size of roughly 5 GB for its installation ISO file, it might prove to be a hurdle in an environment with nothing left and you need to download it using 4G… or you need to get things up and running fast, but now you need to first install VBR before getting to the utility…
This is why the Extract utility is now available as a separate download.
The Extract utility is provided in three flavors and available for both Windows and Linux:
- Windows command line tool, usable without pre-requisites
- Windows command-line tool with an optional user interface, that requires .NET Framework 4.7.2
- Linux console utility
At a mere 5MB, the Extract utility ZIP file saves a lot of time downloading and installing version 10.0.0.4461 of the Extract utility.
When to use the Extract utility
The Extract utility can be useful in disaster recovery situations, where there is nothing left and, for instance, you need to recover that first Domain Controller that allows you to deploy Veeam Backup and Replication again and restore everything else, due to permissions throughout the environment. In this case it may be a faster option to extract data from local backup files.
However, if you do need a temporary Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR) installations, Veeam recommends downloading and installing VBR Community Edition, just due to the sheer amount of restore options it provides.
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