Horizon VDI full clone backup

[mogan2055847]

Hello,

We need to backup the 350 persistent (Full clone) VDI, there is no roaming profile, no golden image, not instant clone, link clone.
Will agentless VMWare snapshot backup work fine? Or has to deploy the Veeam agent on each VDI?
Any concern when come to VM restore? Any reconfiguration is required from the Horizon end after the VM restore?

Thank you.

[d.artzen]

Hi,

we have done this some time ago with a test machine and generally it works fine with the "normal" VM Backup from Veeam through the Vcenter of the VDI. There are two things that can happen however, which need manual intervention after the restore.
1. The trust between the VM and the Domain could be broken, meaning domain users can't log in and get an error message. This can be repaired either by removing the system from the domain and rejoin it, or with the use of a PowerShell command to reestablish the trust. This is not an error of Veeam, this can also happen if you restore a VM Snapshot.
2. The Horizon Server can't reach the agent anymore, which shows an error in the Horizon Dashboard and prevents users from login through the Horizon Client. This is because an internal key has changed. This can be repaired by executing a command on the VDI VM. The command is "vdmadmin -A -d "Desktoppool" -m "Machinename" -resetkey" The parameters "Desktoppool" has to be replaced with the name of the pool and "Machinename" with the name of the VDI VM. After that you have to restart the three Horizon Agent services on the machine. Alternatively a reboot can also be done.

These two issues are not always happening, I think it depends on the time difference between the backup and the rest of the domain, but I am not sure.

Best regards
Daniel

[Andreas Neufert]

In addition some notes. You can backup VDI VMs independent if they are full or fast clones. If you restore, the restore is always a full (or you can restore files as needed), based on limitation of VMware APIs.