After the installation and configuration of a host with Windows Server, you must configure its backup. Backup allows you to quickly restore the server state to a specific point in time and run your application. In this article, we’re going to show you how to back up a standalone Windows server by using the Veeam agent instead of the built-in Windows Server Backup feature (wbadmin).
Veeam offers a wide range of products and backup options, which can be covered in a large number of in-depth technical articles. In this article, we will only focus on the free versions of Veeam products:
- Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows — allows to easily back up a single physical PC or laptop running desktop Windows edition, or a host running Windows Server;
- Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition — allows you to centrally manage your backups. Supports multiple platforms: VMware, Hyper-V, Windows, Linux, and more. Enables you to protect up to 10 workloads (free license limitation).
In this article, we will use Veeam Agent to back up a standalone physical host running Windows Server 2019.
Download a small, lightweight Veeam Agent for Windows (about 150 Mb) from the official website (registration required).
Extract the archive and run the VeeamAgentWindows_6.0.0.960.exe installer. It is very easy and to install the Veeam Agent. All you have to do is accept all the terms of the agreement and the installation will take place automatically.
A new Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows service (VeeamEndpointBackupSvc) will be started after the installation is complete. Check the service status using PowerShell:
get-service VeeamEndpointBackupSv
The next thing you need to do is create a bootable Windows recovery image. This image allows you to restore a Windows Server backup created earlier in the bare-metal restore scenarios.
Specify the path to the directory where you want to save the recovery ISO image. You can add additional drivers (network drivers, disk controllers) to the recovery image and save the current network settings (can be required to use the network restore mode).
Wait for the ISO image file to be created (in our case the recovery image is about 630MB) and burn it to your emergency USB stick (use Rufus to write your ISO image on an USB flash drive).
You are now ready to create a backup task. Click on the Veeam Agent icon in the Windows tray and select Backup > Configure Backup.
Note. Multiple backup jobs on the same host are not supported in the free edition of Veeam Agent.
Specify a job name.
Next, you need to select the backup type:
- Entire computer — create a complete image of your entire computer, including all drives, partitions, files and folders.
- Volume level backup — you can select partitions on local hard drives to be backed up.
- File-level backup — back up individual files or folders.
We will create a full host backup in this example. 
The next step is to select a location to save the backup images to:
- Local Storage — save the backup to a local hard drive or directly connected removable storage device;
- Shared Folder — save backups to a shared network folder (SMB/CIFS);
- Veeam backup repository — perform network backups to a repository managed by Veeam Backup & Replication.
In this example, we are going to make a backup to a network SMB folder on a NAS storage. 
Next, you need to specify the UNC path to the network folder, credentials (if required) and select the depth of the backup archive (7 days by default).
Click on the Advanced button. Three tabs are available here:
- Backup — allows you to configure the frequency with which full backups are created;
- Maintenance — you can configure the frequency of the health check and frequency of defragmentation of backup files;
- Storage — you can set the level of file compression when backing up and encrypting the archive (password protected).
You can configure the backup schedule in the next window.
When finished, you can select the option “Run the job when I click Finish” or run the backup manually from tray (Backup > Backup now).
The current backup status is displayed in the Veeam Agent window.
