Active Directory application aware backups for Nutanix AHV VMs

[romulanvox]

I'd like to know if there's a need to back up an AD domain controller AHV VM as VAW (Veeam Agent for Windows), so that application aware backup for AD objects is achieved.

For MS SQL DBs with transaction log backups, I had to configured the VAW backup for the AHV VM.

For AD domain controllers, is it as simple as installing NGT in the guest Windows OS as per https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documen ... -wc-r.html ?

I've configured AD app aware backups for vSphere before and know that VBR needs to authenticate with the target Windows VM running AD domain controller, with a domain admin account in the BUILTIN\Admin group. How can this domain admin account setting be configured for a domain controller running as a AHV VM, without the use of VAW?

If anyone has successfully configured AD app aware backup for AHV VMs, without using VAW, please share your experience.

[HannesK]

Hello,

VBR needs to authenticate with the target Windows VM running AD domain controller, with a domain admin account in the BUILTIN\Admin group

you could also do it like on Nutanix with VMware quiescing if it's only about backup.

Backup is no problem in any case. The Explorer for AD also works with crash consistent backups. The only challenge with VMware tools quiescing / Nutanix NGT is the full VM restore. The machine won't boot in non-authoritative mode. While modern Windows AD should prevent USN rollback issues, I would simply create a new domain controller instead of restoring it (I'm old-school around that topic )

Best regards,
Hannes

[ronnmartin61]

@romulanvox we just released a new version of our AHV integration (v7.0) along with VBR 12.3. This version includes application-aware processing (including VSS quiescence) for AHV. Note that while we're confident in this new capability for the overwhelming majority of deployment scenarios we're not quite finished fully regression testing it so it currently has an "experimental" designation (see https://www.veeam.com/kb2976). It is supported functionality and cases may be opened with our technical support team should you encounter any issues.