Setup Questions, credential manager, understanding

[Amiga4000]

HI

I did got licenses from Veeam R&D 11 and try to setup backup and restore for laptops & workstations in our system.
I did have had a simple test setup running, but still got questions for a new, clean setup of the backup server.
We want to keep it rather simple, one Windows 10 system wit SQL Express and 8 TB diskdrive as a simple Veeam 11 server for 10 laptops (VM on vmware with VMFS diskdrive).

The goal is to backup 10 laptops (connected via VPN to our network) on the Veeam backup server, and each user may recover its own files via the agent from the backup server.
The user should not access files from other laptops/users.

I do somehow miss a simple "howto" guide (NO video, please), or a walkthrough with recommendet settings.

Currently I wonder moist about the user/credentials in Veeam and their usage.
In Backup Manager I can enter single user/passwords and map windows users into veeam.
In my test setup the agent with the Veeam user (NOT windows user) could not connect to the Backup server, but a mapped windows user could connect.

So: does EVERY laptop-user need a single entry in this credential manager, and does each one needs a windows account?
Or does every agent work with the same user/passwort account from credential manager?
And if latter: can every laptop user recover every file from other laptop-user backup?

Associated: AD integration or not. If every user needs a single windows account on backup server, ok, AD integration is needed.
If all agent works via a single account, AD is not needed.

So in general my understanding is a bit weak now.

Currently I think I use one local windows account, map it to veeam, and connect the veeam agents on the laptops via this account to the backup server.
AS I did read the guide correct, deduplication is done automaticly.
Do I need encryption per agent/laptop and reduce deduplication effectivity?
A backup repository is created, a first system with agent is set to backup with a test user.


Thank you for hints, tips and answers
Amiga4000

[PetrM]

Hello and Welcome to Veeam R&D Forums!

You need to use Windows account and there is a possibility to use the same account for all agents that connect to Veeam Backup & Replication server, please have a look at this page on our help center, in particular at the option "Specify your personal credentials". By the way, there is an alternative way to protect several computers using Veeam Agents in managed mode, in this case you need to specify credentials to connect to computers included in the Protection Group, more details can be found here.

Speaking about job-level encryption, it's up to you to decide whether you need it or not but I recommend to look under "When to use it?" on this page of the best practices guide.

Thanks!

[Amiga4000]

Hi

Ok, I did add the Veeam server to the AD domain and every users do enter their AD credentials in a new job on their laptop.
As we do want users the recover files from their system from Veeam Backup, they need access to the Backup. Also they should not see/access other systems backup, we cannot run all Backups with the same Job/account.

Or is another way for self management/recover from Backup for every user with only their files/systems available, with a central management via Protection Group? Currently I did not see that, but maybe I do miss something.

But with this, no encryption is available. But as users do only access their own backup, thats fine currently.


Thank you
Amiga4000

[PetrM]

Hello,

In this case, you should point every Agent to Veeam repository by using the default NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM account of the of the computer where the Agent itself is installed or to select "Specify your personal credentials" check box. I'd suggest to review the link from the previous post.

Managed mode and Protection Group allow you to have a single point of management for all backup and restore operations on Veeam B&R side. You don't need to follow this approach if you need that different users can access only their own backups.

Thanks!

[Amiga4000]

Hello

yeah, thank you.
Would be great to have both options, a central management AND seperation of backups for users to see only their backup and users be able to restore only their backup on their own.
Code42 did that very well for laptops. To bad they did go cloud only.

thx
Amiga

[PetrM]

Hello,

Just one last thing to avoid any misunderstandings: you can consider Agent Management functionality and to create a backup policy for your laptops, not a job. You can read about the difference between Veeam Agent Job and Veeam Agent Policy on this page. In case of policy, end users who run file-level restore on Agent side will be able to fetch data only from their own backups, however the possibility to start restore on Veeam B&R side using any backup will be still available.

Thanks!