Understanding per-VM backup changes

When it comes to setting up your repositories, whether standard or a Scale-Out Backup Repository (SOBR), you have the option to select Use per-machine backup files, as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 2.5 – Selecting the Use per-machine backup files option

This option should be selected for your backups, the same as in Veeam Backup and Replication v11, and it is selected by default in Veeam Backup and Replication v12. Using this option takes advantage of multiple I/O streams to enterprise-grade storage arrays, allowing backups to process faster and write faster to disk.

Now, you might be asking yourself, if the option was there in Veeam Backup and Replication v11 and is still there in v12, what is the difference now when enabling this option? The difference now is in how files are stored on your repository servers compared to previous versions of Veeam.

There are three formats for storing files...