Veeam Backup PowerShell Toolkit

We start with some information from the user guide veeam_backup_5_0_user_guide_pg.pdf :

Veeam Backup & Replication 5.0 comes with PowerShell extension — a snap-in to Microsoft Windows PowerShell 2.0. Windows PowerShell is a powerful command-line tool that allows administrators to automate some Veeam Backup & Replication activities. Veeam extends functionality of Windows PowerShell 2.0, and now administrators may use PowerShell to automate Veeam backup, replication and copy job creation and editing, VMs restores, replica failover and other operations.

Before installing Veeam PowerShell snap-in, make sure that Microsoft Windows PowerShell 2.0 is installed on the Veeam Backup & Replication console. To download Microsoft Windows PowerShell, use the following link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968929.

PowerShell uses cmdlets — simple single-function commands that can be run in the command-line shell. Cmdlets are specialized .NET classes that implement specific actions. Veeam PowerShell provides a set of its own cmdlets which correspond to actions you can perform via Veeam Backup & Replication UI. Please keep in mind that actions performed with PowerShell have the same force as actions performed via Veeam Backup & Replication 5.0 — for example, if you delete some job with PowerShell scripts, the job will be removed from the VeeamBackup database, and you will not be able undo changes.

To start the Veeam Backup PowerShell Toolkit, open Veeam Backup and Replication to Tools –> PowerShell:

The Veeam Backup PowerShell Toolkit starts:

There are 75 cmdlets. You can verify this via:

(Get-VBRCommand).Count

If you need more information about a cmdlet you can use the get-help cmdlet:

Get-Help Add-VBRBackupJob
Get-Help Add-VBRBackupJob -Full

More information about the Veeam Backup PowerShell Toolkit can be found on page 164 of the veeam_backup_5_0_user_guide_pg.pdf user guide,

You can expect some more posts about the Veeam Backup PowerShell Toolkit in the coming weeks.