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Configuring the Veeam backup server

Configuring the Veeam backup server

For the immutable backup and isolated recovery environments, the Veeam® backup server is configured by PowerShell. PowerShell is run locally on the Veeam backup server through an Ansible® playbook that is run on the automation server. Ansible uses WinRM to access Microsoft® Windows® servers. The following items are required by Ansible:

  • PowerShell 3.0 or newer and at least .NET 4.0 to be installed.
  • A WinRM listener that is created and activated.

Both these requirements are enabled by default in the IBM Cloud® build of Windows 2019.

In this step, the following tasks are required to configure the Veeam backup server so that it can be accessed by the automation server:

Creating an inbound firewall rule

  1. From the jump server, use the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) client to access the Veeam backup server.
  2. On the Veeam backup server, open a PowerShell window with Run as administrator option.
  3. Run the following command New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "WinRM (HTTPS-In)" -Direction Inbound -Action Allow -Protocol TCP -LocalPort 5986 to create the required firewall rule.

Creating a service account for ansible automation

  1. From the jump server, use the RDP client to access the Veeam backup server.

  2. On the Veeam backup server, open a PowerShell window with Run as administrator option.

  3. Use the following commands and enter a password at the prompt:

    $n = "sa-ansible"
    $d = "Service Account for ansible control node"
    $pw = Read-Host -AsSecureString
    New-LocalUser -AccountNeverExpires -Description $d -Name $n -Password $pw -PasswordNeverExpires -Confirm:$false
    Add-LocalGroupMember -Group "Administrators" -Member $n
    
  4. Verify with Get-LocalUser and Get-LocalGroupMember -Group "Administrators".

For more information, see Setting up a Windows host.