The Veeam Cookbook Series

A simple step by step no frills approach to achieving your goal

Recipe: Create a Protection Group to deploy and manage Veeam Agents (Microsoft Active Directory objects)

Expected deliverables:

A Protection Group to deploy Veeam Agents to one or more computers (Virtual or Physical) and add them to the inventory in the Veeam Backup & Replication console, by using Microsoft Active Directory objects.

Time to complete: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

• Make sure that all computers added to the protection group are powered on and may be accessed over the network. Otherwise, Veeam will be unable to connect to a protected computer and perform the required operations on this computer.
• A protection group that includes Active Directory objects can include objects from one domain only. To add to the inventory computers that reside in another domain, you need to create a separate protection group to include objects from that domain.
• It is recommended that you do not add a computer to a protection group by specifying a dynamic IP address assigned to this computer.
• It is recommended that you include each computer in one protection group only. Adding computers to multiple protection groups with different computer discovery and Veeam Agent deployment settings will result in additional load on the backup server.
• You can add a cluster only to a protection group that includes Microsoft Active Directory objects
• An account to connect to computers included in the protection group with access to the administrative share (admin$).

Before you start:

Make sure the operating system on the computers are supported by Veeam Agents.

Assumptions:

It’s assumed that you already have a Veeam Backup Server fully working in your environment.

Method:

1. Open the Inventory view. Click the Physical Infrastructure node in the inventory pane and click Add Group on the ribbon
2. At the Name step, specify a name and description for the protection group. Click Next.
3. At the Type step select the “Microsoft Active Directory objects” option.
4. The Active Directory step, select the Domain for the objects you will add to the Protection Group:
   • In the “Search for objects in this domain” field, click Change.
   • In the “Specify Domain” window, specify settings of the domain whose objects you want to include in the protection group: Domain controller or domain DNS name, and a port (By default 389).
   • From the Account list, select a user account that is a member of the DOMAIN\Administrators group. If you have not set up credentials beforehand, click the Manage accounts link or click Add on the right to add credentials.
5. The Active Directory step, select Active Directory objects that you want to add to the protection group.
   • In the Selected objects field, click Add
   • In the Add Objects window, select the necessary Active Directory object in the tree and click OK. You can add the following types of objects: domain, organization unit, container, computer, cluster, or group.
6. At the Exclusions step, you can specify which objects you want to exclude from the protection group.
7. At the Credentials step, specify credentials (local administrator permissions) to connect to computers included in the protection group. You can select a “Master account” to be used for all computers in the Protection Group, or you can click in “Use custom credentials for the following objects” to use different credentials for every computer.
8. At the Options step specify settings for protected computers discovery and Veeam Agent deployment.
   • In the Discovery section, define schedule for automatic computer discovery within the scope of the protection group.
   • In the Deployment section, from the Distribution server list, select a Microsoft Windows server that you plan to use as a distribution server.
   • If you want to instruct Veeam to automatically deploy Veeam Agents on all discovered computers in the protection group, in the Deployment section, make sure that the “Install backup agent automatically” check box is selected.
   • If you want to instruct Veeam to automatically upgrade Veeam Agent on discovered computers when a new version of Veeam Agent appears on the distribution server, in the Deployment section, make sure that the “Auto-update backup agent” check box is selected
   • Select the “Install changed block tracking driver on Windows Server OS” check box if you want to install the advanced CBT driver on servers protected with Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows.
9. At the Review step, click Apply. Then, at the Apply step, Veeam will create the configured protection group. Wait for the operation to complete and click Next to continue.
10. At the Summary step, complete the protection group configuration process. If you want to perform computer discovery later, you can clear the Run discovery when I click Finish check box. Click Finish to close the wizard

Links to Resources:

• Veeam Guides and Helpcenter
• Veeam Community Forums
• Veeam Best Practices

---