Disaster recovery orchestration for the Enterprise (formerly Veeam Availability Orchestrator)
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Eric_Cartman
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Post Restore Step Execute Location grayed out

Post by Eric_Cartman »

Hello there!

I've come up with an interesting problem which currently couldn't be solved by the Veeam Support Team so I thought I'll post this here and maybe I'm not the only one faceing this kind of obsticle.

Due FW restrictions and IP segementation my production B&R where the VirtualLabs for my VRO are running are not able to execute any verification steps/scripts.
F.e. the Verify Domain Contoller Port Step (https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vro/u ... ml?ver=7.2) has the option to change the Execute Location but it's grayed out and according to the User Guide this option is not editable.

Image

Why is that?
I mean why implementing this option when I'm not allowed to use it?
In our case we could simply change the Default Value to the Orchestator Server and are good to go.
But it's not just the DC Port Step - DNS, SQL, etc have the same option but still grayed out.

Can anyone shed a light on that matter for me?
Anyone else has this kind of "problem?
Alec King
VP, Product Management
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Joined: Jan 01, 2006 1:01 am
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Re: Post Restore Step Execute Location grayed out

Post by Alec King » 1 person likes this post

Hello @Eric_Cartman !

As I recall, we disabled this ExecutionLocation parameter to help customers avoid errors in configuration - we knew that the In-Guest option was not how the step was supposed to work; and we made the assumption that the Veeam Backup server would be able to communicate with the guest OS (for example, for app-aware backups) whereas the Orchestrator server might not have direct network access to guests.

As with many assumptions, it seemed this was incorrect :mrgreen: as you require this exact functionality.

In a future release we may enable both options on our built-in port checking steps; however you can work around this very easily with a simple custom script.
It may be useful to you in other ways too, as the port to be checked is customisable. So you can test any network connection you want on the VM being processed.

Below is the script for port checking, and instructions -

Code: Select all

[CmdletBinding()]
Param(
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
    [string]$Server,

	[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
    [int]$Port
)

if ($Server.Contains(',')) {
	$Servers = $Server.Split(',')
	Write-Host "Several IP addresses found, script will check them all"
}
else {
	$Servers = $Server
}

[bool] $testResult = $false
foreach ($s in $Servers) {
	if (-not $testResult) {
		$tcpClient = New-Object System.Net.Sockets.TcpClient
		try
		{
			Write-Host("Trying connect to server '{0}' and port '{1}'" -f $s, $Port)
			$tcpClient.Connect($s, $Port)
			$testResult = $true
		}
		catch [System.Net.Sockets.SocketException]
		{
			Write-Warning("Could not connect to server '{0}' and port '{1}'. Details: {2}" -f $s, $Port, $_.Exception.Message)
		}
		finally
		{
			if ($tcpClient.Connected)
			{
				Write-Host("Successfully established a connection with the server '{0}' via the port '{1}'" -f $s, $Port)
				$tcpClient.Close()
			}
		}
	}
}

if (-not $testResult) {
	Write-Error "Failed to verify port number"	
}
To create your custom script step in Orchestrator -
  • Navigate to Administration in the VRO UI and Plan Steps page
  • Click Add
  • Name your step
  • Browse to the script above (save locally as a PowerShell script .ps1)
  • Click next, confirm if you want to add step to all scopes, click next and finish
Now select the step you just created, and click Edit
Click next-next to parameters page.
You will see that Execute Location parameter is unlocked, so you can choose 'Orchestrator server'
Click Add and configure these custom parameters:
Server
  • Name = Server (this must match the name in the script Param block)
  • Type = Text
  • Click Edit
  • Choose a macro, for example %target_vm_name% or %target_vm_ip% (use current_vm options if you are using replica VMs, then it will work for both failover and failback)
  • Save
Port
  • Name = Port (this must match the name in the script Param block)
  • Type = Signed Integer
  • Set a default value (I used 22 for SSH but you can change it when using in a plan anyway)
  • Save
Now you can add this step to required VMs (use multi-select to do it in one move :mrgreen: ) and customize to check any port number.

Hope that helps!
Alec King
Vice President, Product Management
Veeam Software
Eric_Cartman
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Re: Post Restore Step Execute Location grayed out

Post by Eric_Cartman »

Hello and Thank you Alec for your quick reply!
And of course thank you for your PS Script!
I will do some testing this week and let you know the outcome... :)
Eric_Cartman
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Re: Post Restore Step Execute Location grayed out

Post by Eric_Cartman » 1 person likes this post

@Alec King: Thank you again - the script is working just as I needed to!
Although I would like to post a "feature request" to be able to copy existing plan steps and editting them cause just now I needed to create and configure manually 11 steps instead of one which I could clone :wink:

But again big thanks to you!
Alec King
VP, Product Management
Posts: 1522
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Joined: Jan 01, 2006 1:01 am
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Re: Post Restore Step Execute Location grayed out

Post by Alec King »

Hi @Eric_Cartman , glad it's working for you!
Can you clarify your feature request though? My plan was to create just ONE step, and then you can re-use the step multiple times. When you add the step to a VM in a plan, you can use a different port number for example.
So I'm not clear why you had to create 11 steps, which parameters were different between the 11 steps?

Anyway, the ability to 'clone' a step is an interesting idea - we can already clone recovery plans in VRO, why not steps too? :mrgreen:
Eric_Cartman
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Re: Post Restore Step Execute Location grayed out

Post by Eric_Cartman » 1 person likes this post

@Alec King: I've created 11 Steps for 11 dfferent Ports not realising that you can add multiple ports to one step... Sooooo anyhow :mrgreen:
I still request to be able to clone custom steps because f.e. we have multiple DCs with different roles and therefore different ports to look for.
Currently this would mean to create one step for each DC but with many similar ports to look for - it just would save time :)
But again thank you for your input!
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