[SOLVED] v12.3.1.1139 "some Veeam Backup & Replication components are missing"

[JPMS]

[MOD UPDATE] Check if you manually uninstalled Microsoft EntraID plug-in an re-install it back, then try upgrading again.

Note that we do not test product or upgrade operations with random product components missing, so removing any "unwanted" components will always be at your own risk in terms of supportability of the resulting VBR installation, and you might be required to repair your installation in case of any issues.

[MOD UPDATE 2] Please refer to KB4725 for additional details


Trying to upgrade to v12.3.1.1139 from v12.3.0.310 and get the message "some Veeam Backup & Replication components are missing. Remove the installed Veeam Backup and Replication components manually and start the setup wizard again".

What exactly this message mean? Does "Remove the installed Veeam Backup and Replication components manually" mean fully uninstall B&R?

Whenever we have upgraded B&R it installs a load of components that we don't use, so we uninstall those after the upgrade. This is something we have done for years and has also been discussed in this forum quite a lot recently. It has never caused an issue with a future upgrade until now.

Is this now something that is going to choke future upgrades?

[veremin]

It’s hard to say right away. Please collect the setup logs (C:\ProgramData\Veeam\Setup\Temp), open a ticket with our support team and share its number here. We will also join the investigation process and take a closer look at what might have gone wrong on your end. Thanks!

[JPMS]

Sigh...

Some months it is difficult to get any work done for the amount of time spent on support tickets for third party software. Not that I am singling out Veeam but I really needed to get that off my chest!

I will open a ticket but it may take a couple of days to get the time. But as a 'starter for six'...
"[19.03.2025 17:46:07][ERROR] Unable to initialize setup of Veeam Backup & Replication: installation is corrupted. Cannot find required component Microsoft Entra ID Plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication installation."

No you won't find it because we don't use it and uninstalled it. Why should this stop the installation?!

(There are no other errors in the SuiteEngine log but I'm not sure if that is because it aborted the install at that point and if that is fixed it will then object to the next uninstalled component on a subsequent run.)

[veremin]

Otherwise, we won’t be able to assist you via forum correspondence. Removing components after installation is not a recommended practice, as it may break internal product dependencies and result in an unsupported configuration.

In any case, only support will be able to help you resolve this issue.

Thanks!

[JPMS]

We may well be talking cross purposes here as our our site doesn't have any Linux hosts that are managed by Veeam.

As a specific example of what I am complaining about, a really simple update from 12.2 to 12.3 on a Hyper-V server. Just a dedicated Veeam server VM and the Hyper-V host. Repo is a NAS so not involved.

After the update, on the Veeam server, I have these extra programs that are not required (and, unless they were new features, had been removed before):
Veeam Plug-in for Enterprise Applications Redistibutable
Agent for Linux Redistributable
Agent for Mac Redistributable
Agent for Unix Redistributable
Veeam Threat Hunter
Veeam Backup vPowerNFS
VMwareVDDK
Microsoft Entra ID plug-in
oVirt KVM Plug-in
Promox Plug-in
Nutanix Plug-in
Azure Plug-in
Kasten Plug-in
Google Cloud Plug-in
AWS Plugin
MS Windows Desktop Runtime (required dependancy for an unwanted plug-in)
MS ASP .NET Core (required dependancy for an unwanted plug-in)
MS Edge Webview (required dependancy for an unwanted plug-in)

On the host, we get these added:
Veeam Threat Hunter
VMwareVDDK

Firstly, why doesn't the installation software add the simple option of what plug-ins you want installed (upgrade or new install)?! This would avoid 65% of the unwanted software being installed.

Secondly, why does the upgrade insist on installing upgrades to software I didn't have installed? We don't need Veeam Backup vPowerNFS and VMwareVDDK (we are Windows and Hyper-V only) so why keep reinstalling them at every upgrade, even though they weren't installed prior to the upgrade?

Thirdly, we now find that if we remove some software we don't need, like Agent for Linux Redistributable and Agent for Unix Redistributable, it just gets reinstalled when we make changes to protection groups, even though there are no Linux or Unix agents.

I can understand installing software for a new feature like Threat Hunter (even if we aren't going to use it) but all this software just has to be uninstalled again.

Strange, because in the discussion that this quote was taken from, neither @Ptide or @Egor Yakovlev raised the issue that "it may break internal product dependencies and result in an unsupported configuration".

Anyway, I note your point about raising a ticket to get your software fixed.

[GordA]

i see we're not the only ones with issues...
Please install the following prerequisites:

Microsoft System CLR Types for SQL Server 2014

and it's already installed. And we use a separate SQL server.

We have a case open so hopefully they will find the issue...before our InfoSec people have a stroke.

G

[veremin]

It will be helpful, if you provide your case number here, so we can follow the investigation from our side as well. Thanks!

[pesos]

Subscribing, sigh. Having to have all these ridiculous plugins installed (which support has told us to UNINSTALL when we inevitably get the ERROR MESSAGES that there is an ISSUE TALKING TO THEM when doing configuration backups) is really lame, especially now if it prevents installing these HUGE NEW BUILDS which are necessary to be "secure."

[JPMS]

For anybody with the the issue I originally posted, I reinstalled the Microsoft Entra ID Plug-in MSI from the install image of the version I am currently running and then the upgrade ran fine. Although I had previously uninstalled all the other plugins, it didn't complain about them being missing.

On the install console it specifically lists Microsoft Entra ID Plug-in as one of things it is upgrading, so I suspect that is why it refuses to proceed but the installer should be more intelligent than that. It still reinstalled all the other components I had removed (including all the other plugins), so I removed them again and look forward to the next upgrade </sarcasm mode off>

[pesos]

We are missing (likely multiple) plugins as well. Support had us uninstall them to "fix" the broken system where it starts freaking out during configuration backups saying it can't communicate with them. So now based on support's recommendations we can't install this latest update. Going to have to manually reinstall them all (the installer doesn't even say specifically which are missing), upgrade, and then I'm sure that the problem will resurface with configuration backup alerts... and what is support going to tell us then? Uninstall them again? What a mess.

[d.artzen]

I had a similar issue, but not with missing components, but with missing prerequisites. Since it was easily resolved I did not need to involve support,so I just want to share it here, so others don't run into the same. In my case the prerequisites missing were "Microsoft System CLR Types for SQL Server 2014" and "Microsoft Report Viewer Redistributable 2015". Luckily I still had the ISO from the last version and could install these from there. After that the update was successful.
As to why these were missing in the first place: After the Installation of 12.3 we migrated the configuration database from SQL-Express to the PostgreSQL Instance that was installed with 12.3. I then went and uninstalled the MS-SQL and corresponding components on the VBR Server since it was no longer needed. In this case I seem to have uninstalled these two components as well, not knowing they are not part of the SQL but needed for the VBR.
Interestingly enough the VBR worked the whole time without issue, so I am unsure for what exactly these two components are used. Maybe some feature we aren't using.

[Gostev]

We are missing (likely multiple) plugins as well. Support had us uninstall them to "fix" the broken system where it starts freaking out during configuration backups saying it can't communicate with them. So now based on support's recommendations we can't install this latest update.

I discussed this with Support Management and they agreed this was a bad recommendation. The proper path is to fix the root cause bug, not implementing random workarounds. They will relay this information to the team.

[rjv1971]

On this topic: Over here, in the best practices guide, hardening section, it is a recommendation to remove unused components:

https://bp.veeam.com/security/Design-an ... ts-removal

Remove all non-essential software programs and utilities from the deployed Veeam components. While these programs may offer useful features to the administrator, if they provide additional access (“back-doors”) to the system, they must be removed during the hardening process.

We don't use: AWS, Azure, Nutanix, Google Cloud, Proxmox, oVirt KVM or Kubernetes (kasten) so they are disabled and removed.

so you're saying in this topic, this is not something we should do, cause it is causing upgrade issues?

[Gostev]

We officially support not installing certain plug-ins but you can't just remove any Veeam plug-in or component you like, this is what is not officially supported or tested for upgrades.

The specific issue discussed in this topic is caused by removing Microsoft Entra ID plug-in.

[Gostev]

I was just reminded that Veeam VCSPs have access to a special version of VBR 12.3 ISO for use with VSPC remote management, which doesn't have Entra plug-in in principle (among other things). So we will probably need to reissue this special ISO for 12.3.1 now. Let's continue this specific topic in the VSPC forum.

Update: already confirmed that these special ISO installs were tested and not a subject to the issue described in this thread.

[Gostev]

We've created a support KB article with more details > KB4725

[JPMS]

I think Veeam need to reflect on their installation process and also what they are saying here.

The whole point of plugins is for people to add additionally functionality to a product where they need it. I can't think of any other software product that insists you install every plugin rather than offering you a choice as part of the installation process. Furthermore, other software products will detect what you have installed when you update them and update just those components. The best software has a repair option allowing you to add or remove components to the current installation.

None of this is an option with Veeam. As discussed previously, for our requirements, we end up with 7 components, 8 plugins and 3 dependencies that offer us no functionality. Best practise is to remove software that is not required, so that is what we will continue to do unless you say it is required. To say it is not supported is just a cop out and quite frankly doesn't inspire confidence in your plugin development. You should have confidence that not having everything will not break core functionality.

With reference to this particular issue, an additional reason I particularly don't want the Microsoft plugins installed is because the dependancies require frequent patching, particularly webiew which Microsoft seem to update every ten minutes. It is difficult enough to keep up with patching without having to patch dependancies of plugins that we don't need.

[BackupBytesTim]

I've suggested it before, but I'll mention it again as it seems relevant, VBR could do what certain other softwares do (Acronis) and install NO optional components intially (Acronis also has one application per OS regardless of use, equivalent to having VBR, Management Agent, and Backup Agent as one app rather than 3) and then it will AUTOMATICALLY install and uninstall optional components as required by the configured settings. So if you enable SQL backup, it will install the SQL backup component, if you disable SQL backup it will uninstall the SQL backup component. Thus maintaining the minimum installation footprint automatically. Components can also be managed manually, but I've rarely ever needed to.

The current method Veeam has seems designed for offline installations, which may have made more sense when Veeam first started their backup software, but these days I don't have a single customer device that isn't connected to the internet, most computers are even backing up over the internet with only a small percentage using local backups at all, so I think having the VBR server download optional components as needed from Veeam's servers or our VSPC server is perfectly acceptable.

On the other hand though, my standard approach is usually for as little maintenance as possible. So whether it is supported or not, I wouldn't modify the VBR installation by removing the "optional" components, as it creates extra effort any time an update is performed. From my perspective, if it's ever unacceptable to have the optional components installed, then the solution should be switching software, which is what we have done for some customers, not trying to manually tweak Veeam's software to "make it work". If it doesn't "just work" out of the box, then it isn't the right solution in my opinion. That said, the only place I've ever manually uninstalled components or moved to a different software is where the installation was on a server or something with an abnormally small storage capacity, Veeam takes up an enormous amount of space on the disk, whereas Acronis takes 2 GB for a basic installation, 12 GB if ALL optional components are installed, so there's been some places where Veeam just wouldn't work without customizing the environment to fit Veeam, whereas Acronis would just fit and "just work" in the existing environment.

[FCU_JE]

On this topic: Over here, in the best practices guide, hardening section, it is a recommendation to remove unused components:

https://bp.veeam.com/security/Design-an ... ts-removal

Remove all non-essential software programs and utilities from the deployed Veeam components. While these programs may offer useful features to the administrator, if they provide additional access (“back-doors”) to the system, they must be removed during the hardening process.

We don't use: AWS, Azure, Nutanix, Google Cloud, Proxmox, oVirt KVM or Kubernetes (kasten) so they are disabled and removed.

so you're saying in this topic, this is not something we should do, cause it is causing upgrade issues?

Very good find and quite well put IMO. I assume in the last sentence you had meant to write "something we shouldn't do".

[rjv1971]

What @JPMS and @BackupBytesTim post above here reflects what I meant... information on the component installs/uninstalls is scattered. One spot Veeam recommends to remove unused components, but the ONLY information on this is in the link Gostev provided below my comment, which is ONLY for a 'silent' deployment. Well, since I never use a silent install, I don't read that, hence I missed it. Like tghe posters above said: Why not have a checkmark menu in the GUI install where one can select components that are going to be installed, or not. Any other software has that. Besides the ones I mentioned in my original post, we don't use the Microsoft entra ID plugin, or Threadhunter so I too figured I could remove it.

[shooker]

Same issue here. I always remove the following since I'll never use them and have had issues with several of them giving me errors for an unknown reason.

Agent for Linux Redistributable
Agent for Mac Redistributable
Agent for Unix Redistributable
Microsoft Entra ID plug-in
oVirt KVM Plug-in
Nutanix Plug-in
Azure Plug-in
Kasten Plug-in
Google Cloud Plug-in
AWS Plugin

[BackupBytesTim]

So I think some of the confusion has come from reading this https://bp.veeam.com/security/Design-an ... ts-removal and then assuming that it is a Veeam recommendation conflicting with another Veeam direction (from support or wherever), but as I recall (and someone at Veeam can correct me if this wrong) the guidelines at https://bp.veeam.com/security (despite being hosted on Veeam's website) are actually NOT written or verified by Veeam. As indicated in the footer at the bottom of every page:

Please note that information provided in this guide is not produced or verified by Veeam R&D but is a result of community effort based on the field observations.

So perhaps the guidelines there are simply inaccurate, although I tend to agree with the idea of "as little unnecessary software as possible to minimize attack footprint, maintenance, etc..." it would seem to actually be AGAINST Veeam's guidelines to remove unused components.

[iomalley]

I was just reminded that Veeam VCSPs have access to a special version of VBR 12.3 ISO for use with VSPC remote management, which doesn't have Entra plug-in in principle (among other things). So we will probably need to reissue this special ISO for 12.3.1 now. Let's continue this specific topic in the VSPC forum.

Update: already confirmed that these special ISO installs were tested and not a subject to the issue described in this thread.

@Gostev
What would be the process for getting this ISO and would there be downsides/limitations to using this over the normal ISO in a standard environment? It seems that if the differences include no plugins by default it could be a solution we may be looking for.

[Gostev]

Apologies, you can disregard my statement, I have confused a few things there. It appeared to be specific to automated VBR upgrade process within Veeam Service Provider Console, as opposed to just a generic ISO everyone can download and use.