Changing of domain/host names of existing Veeam proxies and repositories

[mbrowngcs]

Our organization is currently undergoing a full rebrand. This leads to quite a few changes within our IT environment, to say the least.

One of the changes we are looking it to making is to clean up the naming of many of our servers and other VMs which we are using for various purposes within our domain. The people who set many of these servers and VMs up initially used a naming convention which included the abbreviation of our company name along with the purpose of the machine in question. So now we have a bunch of machines that are going to have names based on an organization that no longer exists.

We have four machines with this naming convention that we are looking to rename that are in our Veeam setup. We have two proxies, and two repositories. One each of these is the primary, one each is the backup/DR version.

I submitted a support ticket to ask about this, and I was told it was as simple as changing the name of one of the servers on the domain, then going to the Veeam console to edit the existing server properties there to match. Needless to say, it was not that simple.

Checking the properties of the renamed server (one of the proxies) in the Veeam console shows the server name completely grayed out. No option to change it is present at all. Left in this state, the job using it of course failed. Fortunately for me, simply changing the hostname of that server back to what Veeam was configured to recognize allowed the job to run successfully again.

Prior to changing the name back to its original, I also attempted to add the server into Veeam under its new name so it could be recognized and used. This also failed. Veeam complained that the proxy role was already present on the machine, so therefore it could not be added as a proxy.

Has anyone been though a similar situation? If so, how did you approach it? It "feels" like to me that what we would have to do is spin up brand new VMs with the hostnames we want to use, and then add them into Veeam to be recognized as new. This seems ridiculous to me and is something we are almost guaranteed to never bother with.

Thanks.

[Mildur]

Hi Matt

We provide a kb article to change the FQDN of managed servers:
https://www.veeam.com/kb1905

I recommend to try that out with one host.
Are you using hardened repositories?

Best,
Fabian

[mbrowngcs]

Regarding hardened repositories, not that I am aware of. They were all set up well before I joined the team.

[Mildur]

Hi Matt

A hardened repository is a linux based repository server for immutable backups.
In Veeam Backup & Replication v12, the hardened repository has its own repository type. You should see it in the repository list.

I submitted a support ticket to ask about this, and I was told it was as simple as changing the name of one of the servers on the domain, then going to the Veeam console to edit the existing server properties there to match.

Could you maybe provide me with the ticket number? I want to check that case.

For the renaming, please continue with the kb article. Start with the proxies and see if everything works after reconfiguration of one proxy.

Best,
Fabian

[mbrowngcs]

The case I currently have open is Case #06058561.


We definitely do not have hardened repositories then; our repositories are Windows machines.


If I attempt to open the PowerShell console within the Veeam B&R console, I receive a prompt:

"PowerShell execution policy must be set to Remote Signed. Would you like to make this change now?"

If I click "Yes" Powershell opens with this error message:

". : File C:\Program Files\Veeam\Backup and Replication\Console\Initialize-VeeamToolkit.ps1 cannot be loaded because
running scripts is disabled on this system. For more information, see about_Execution_Policies at
https:/go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=135170.
At line:1 char:3
+ . "C:\Program Files\Veeam\Backup and Replication\Console\Initialize-V ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : SecurityError: (:) [], PSSecurityException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : UnauthorizedAccess"

So this is some kind of permission setting I guess, but no idea where it is.

[BackupBytesTim]

Not sure what caused the error, if the setting got changed properly then it should've worked, but you can try changing the setting directly in PowerShell on the computer instead of via Veeam in case that's the issue. You can run this command in a PowerShell window as an Administrator, you'll likely need to open PowerShell as an Administrator, should be able to right-click the Start Menu button and click "Windows PowerShell (Admin)" to do that, you'll be prompted for admin credentials in a UAC prompt if needed. Then do

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope LocalMachine

Hypothetically that's already the default setting for Windows Server out of the box, but it may have been changed.

You can also check the current Execution Policy by running

Get-ExecutionPolicy

If the script doesn't run with "RemoteSigned" you may try setting "Bypass" which will allow anything to run and won't warn of issues. This may be necessary if the script appears to come from an unauthorized source, however that shouldn't be necessary, but may be useful for troubleshooting.

Be aware that changing the Execution Policy may allow for unauthorized script execution, so should probably make sure your change is temporary or allowed by whoever is in charge of the server security policies.

For more information about the execution policies and what exactly will be allowed with different settings check

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power ... rshell-7.3

and

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power ... rshell-7.3

[mbrowngcs]

Update on this situation.

I did manage to get the PowerShell console to run within Veeam. I simply had to login to a domain admin account; I had been attempting it while using one of our service accounts we have set up.

With that managed, I went through the steps as outlined in the KB article.

The below is what I see now in the Veeam B&R console under Backup Proxies.



And this is what I see in the Veeam B&R console in the job details under Data Transfer.



The "Veeam" name is just the name that the console seems to be referring to the server with. As originally set up, this Veeam name and the domain hostname of the machine matched. After updating the hostname of the machine on the domain, they no longer do. The hostname of the machine on the domain matches what is shown in the Host column in the first image.

Two main questions:

1. I was just curious if this looks correct based on the steps in the KB. I have not manually run one of the jobs to test, but it seems like it would work.

2. This is very much just a housekeeping type question, but is there also a way to update the "Veeam" name of this server and other ones in the future. For organizational purposes, it would be nice if they all still matched once the domain hostnames are all updated.

Thanks for all the help!