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 using CSV files.

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 CSV files.

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.
• A protection group that includes Active Directory objects can include objects from one domain only.
• 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.
• It is recommended that you do not add a computer to a protection group by specifying a dynamic IP address assigned to this computer.
• Adding computers to multiple protection groups with different computer discovery and Veeam Agent deployment settings will result in additional load on the backup server.

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 Create Protection Group in the working area.
2. At the Name step, specify a name and description for the protection group. Click Next.
3. At the Type step select the Computers from CSV file option.
4. At the CSV File specify a file that defines a list of computers that you want to add to the protection group. The file must be created beforehand:
   • In the Path to file field, click Browse and specify a path to a CSV file that contains a list of IP addresses or domain names of computers that you want to add to the protection group.
5. 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.
6. 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 Veeam to automatically deploy Veeam Agents on all discovered computers in the protection group, make sure that the Install backup agent automatically check box is selected.
   • If you want Veeam to automatically upgrade Veeam Agent on discovered computers when a new version of Veeam Agent appears on the distribution server, 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.
7. 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.
8. 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

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