How to disable the collector automatic deployment on MS ?

[keyaertc]

Hi Guys,

One of my customer configured the Veeam MP to get the collectors automatically deployed on each SCOM Management servers. Is there a way to disable that ? I would like to manage the collector deployment myself on stand-alone machines .

Thank you
Christopher

[Alec King]

Hi Christopher,

Automatic versus Manual Collector deployment is chosen during setup. So the official way to change that would be to uninstall and reinstall Veeam Extensions Service (AKA the Collector Manager), and choose Manual during setup.

However - if you want a quick fix, then on the Veeam Extensions Server find the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Virtualization Extensions for VMware\Manager and the string value there ResourcePool. Delete the contents of that (leave it empty) and Veeam MP will stop trying to auto-deploy Collectors, as it won't have a target SCOM resource pool.

Hope that helps, any further questions let us know!
Cheers
Alec

[keyaertc]

Hi Alec,

I found the same information on your knowledge base
http://www.veeam.com/kb1918

From the KB, I read that all the collectors will be automatically uninstalled. I assume that only the collectors related to the Resource pool and not the ones installed manually.
I will try that tomorrow at my customer.

Regards
Christopher

[Alec King]

Hi Christopher,

Aha...I should review our KB articles more often

And you are correct, only Collectors in the Resource Pool would be uninstalled. Manually installed Collectors on servers outside the pool would not be uninstalled.

I'd make one final point though - we do recommend that Collectors run on a SCOM Management Server. A Management Server will scale and perform much better than a SCOM Agent, for Collector purposes.
So especially for a large environment, I would advise running Collectors on Management Server(s) - maybe even dedicated to the Collector role. Any questions on that topic, let me know!
Cheers
Alec

[keyaertc]

Hi Alec,

The environment is quite small here, about 10 hosts only in their main site (Belgium) and 3 hosts in a remote site. (US)
For the remote, I installed a SCOM GW and I will install the Veeam Collector role on it.

For the main site, I choose the option of having the collector role installed on dedicated VMs. If I have issue, I will do like you proposed, Dedicated MS with Collector role.

Thanks for your help !

See you at MS Ignite ?

[Alec King]

Thanks Christian! It sounds like you have a good deployment plan there
If you do have any further questions just let me know.

And yes indeed - I'll see you at MS Ignite in May!

Cheers
Alec

[keyaertc]

Hey Alec,

I've got some trouble since I removed the registry key content. I started to have an orphaned collector I tried to re-add the key content, but it doesn't help. It seems that the collector is deleted, re-added, re-deleted,...



I think that I will have to open a support case.

Regards
Christopher

[Alec King]

Hi Christopher,

That's strange.... I would advise you open a support case, it should be resolved quickly I hope.

On the Veeam UI side, you should be able to remove those 'fake' Collectors by selecting them and choosing Unregister Collector link in the right-hand pane.

On the SCOM side - there might be some cleanup of the auto-deploy objects required. Our support team can help with that. And I'll check this scenario again with my own dev and QA teams.

Let me know how it goes!

Cheers
Alec

[sergey.g]

Hi Christopher,

We've analyzed the process of disabling Auto-Deployment described in our KB article and we think it lacks a note about manual re-deployment of collectors. You should wait another hour or perform another health service restart to be able to re-deploy collector manually, because collector auto-deployment workflows are still there and they will try to remove/uninstall a collector you are trying to install on the management server. Here is the process:

1. SCOM Workflow on VES discovers that servers with auto-deployed collectors are outside of the resource pool (because resource pool name in VES is empty) and collectors should be uninstalled. This could take up to 5 hours by default and two health service resets.
2. Collector installer workflow uninstalls the collector, could take another hour or a health service restart on this management server.
3. SCOM Workflow on VES detects that collector installer removed the collector and can be undiscovered, Also could take an hour and another health service restart

We think that you probably tried to install Collector after step 2, but before step 3 happened. In this case Collector installer workflow will try to uninstall the collector again, producing another orphaned collector (collector will be orphaned after uninstall and you have to unregister it in the UI).

To make sure collector auto-deployment is not doing anything, could you try to use Discovered Inventory view to display "Veeam VMware Collector Installer" object? The view should be empty if all installers are undiscovered, if it's not empty there could be autodeployment workflows still trying to install/uninstall collectors. Could you send us a screenshot with all properties if there is still something in this view?