Adding a managed server via certificate authentication in Veeam Software Appliance?

[jfreeman]

We are testing the Veeam Software Appliance. We are trying to add a Windows Server 2025 managed server via certificate-based authentication. It says that it "requires a deployment kit pre-installed to the target machine." So, the first time I added the server, I added it via traditional admin credentials. That worked fine. Then, with the deployment kit now installed on the server, I tried to go back and edit the managed server and change the credentials back to using certificate-based authentication. The interface seemingly allows this, but once it saves your configuration changes, it actually is not switching to certificate-based authentication and remains using admin credentials.

1. Is this a bug? Should it actually allow switching from admin credentials to certificate-based authentication on an existing managed server?

2. In any case, is there a more supported way to do this? Is there a place to get the v13 version of the Windows Server deployment kit so I can manually install the deployment kit without needing to do the hacky workaround of first installing via admin credentials?

[david.domask]

Hi jfreeman,

You can create a deployment kit in the Inventory pane in the remote (thick) console -- create it there and deploy it to the desired server, then add the server fresh using the "Use Certificate-based authentication".

That's the correct workflow.

[jacobpalm]

Hi David,

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I am experiencing this exact issue where changing an existing Windows Server from account to certificate-based authentication doesn't work. I use the console to edit the server. It just jumps back to account based authentication without any error, warning or notice.

Am I correct to understand from your reply, that it is not possible to change this, even though the interface presents the option? If so, why is the option present?

[david.domask]

Hi,

No, you've not missed anything, however since the thread was created, we have some new information (working to get this in the User Guide)

The radio buttons in the Server Wizard are only relevant for deployment of the Veeam Components. Once the server is added, all communication with Veeam Infrastructure Components is done via certificate authentication regardless of what the server wizard shows.

Right now the UI resists reflecting this accurately due to design limitations, but we want to correct this in a future release to make it less confusing.

But to be clear, once a managed server is added to the backup infrastructure, we use certificate authentication regardless of what the Add / Edit server wizard shows.

[jacobpalm]

Thank you for the reply, David. That makes sense and reassures me that Veeam works the way I expected.

[david.domask]

Happy to share jacobpalm, to close out this discussion, we now have this documented correctly in the User Guide.