Recovery Manager for AD Forest Edition 10.3 - User Guide

Permissions required for the Backup operation

The table below lists the minimum user account permissions required to perform the Backup operation.

Minimum permissions required for the Backup operation

Backing up the AD data using the preinstalled Backup Agent

Membership in the RMAD Backup Operators group.

-OR-

Builtin\Backup Operators domain local group.

Create the RMAD Backup Operators group before the Backup Agent installation. For more details, refer to Using a least-privileged user account to back up data.

If the Ensure Forest Recovery Agent is deployed check box is selected on the Agent Settings tab of the backup collection Properties, the account must be added to the Builtin\Administrators domain local group.

Backing up the AD data using the automatically installed Backup Agent

Membership in the Builtin\Administrators domain local group.

This operation is always performed under the Recovery Manager Console account.

Installing the Backup Agent

Membership in the Builtin\Administrators domain local group.

-OR-

Domain Admins group.

Managing Backup Agent

Recovery Manager for Active Directory (RMAD) employs a Backup Agent to back up data on domain controllers and AD LDS (ADAM) hosts added to Computer Collections. For this reason, the Backup Agent must be installed on each computer where you plan to back up data by using RMAD.

For each Computer Collection, you can specify whether you want to use only preinstalled instances of Backup Agent or want to automatically install Backup Agent when necessary. You can configure RMAD in one of the following ways:

• Use preinstalled Backup Agent only. When configured this way, RMAD will only use the Backup Agent you manually preinstalled on the computers in the Computer Collection.

• Use preinstalled Backup Agent and automatically install the agent when necessary. With this method, RMAD will use preinstalled Backup Agent if it is present on the target computer. If the Backup Agent is missing, RMAD will automatically install it before backing up data on the target computer, and then will automatically remove the automatically installed agent upon the backup operation completion.

You can specify one of these methods in the Computer Collection properties. For more information, see Agent Settings tab subsection in Properties for an existing Computer Collection.

In this section:

• Installing Backup Agent automatically

• Preinstalling Backup Agent manually

• Discovering preinstalled Backup Agent

• Updating Backup Agent information

• Upgrading Backup Agent

• Uninstalling Backup Agent

• Removing a Backup Agent entry from the Backup Agent Management node

Installing Backup Agent automatically

You can configure Recovery Manager for Active Directory (RMAD) to automatically install the Backup Agent on each computer (domain controller and AD LDS (ADAM) host) added to a particular Computer Collection. After you do so, RMAD will automatically install the Backup Agent before backing up a computer where the agent is not preinstalled. When the backup operation completes, RMAD will remove the automatically installed Backup Agent.

If the Backup Agent is already preinstalled on the target computer to be backed up, RMAD does not automatically deploy the agent and uses the preinstalled agent instead.

For RMAD to automatically install the Backup Agent, the user account under which RMAD accesses the target Computer Collection must have specific permissions. For more information, see Permissions required to use Recovery Manager for Active Directory.

• Windows Server automatically creates Administrative Shares. If the automatic creation of shares was disabled (Microsoft KB Article 954422), re-enable the automatic shares creation.

• Check that Administrative Shares are accessible. For details, see Shared Folders in Microsoft documentation.

To install the Backup Agent automatically

1. In the Recovery Manager Console tree, expand the Computer Collections node.

2. Locate the Computer Collection that holds the computers on which you want to automatically install the Backup Agent.

3. Right-click the Computer Collection, and then click Properties.

4. On the Agent Settings tab, make sure that the Use preinstalled Backup Agent check box is cleared.

   For more information about this check box, see Agent Settings tab subsection in Properties for an existing Computer Collection.

5. Click OK to close the dialog box.

Preinstalling Backup Agent manually

You can use the Recovery Manager Console to manually preinstall Backup Agent on the computers added to a particular Computer Collection. Alternatively, you can perform a silent installation of the agent.

To preinstall Backup Agent on all computers in a Computer Collection

To preinstall Backup Agent on all computers in a Computer Collection, perform the following steps:

1. In the Recovery Manager Console tree, expand the Computer Collections node.

2. Right-click the Computer Collection that includes the computers on which you want to preinstall the Backup Agent, and then select Install Backup Agent from the shortcut menu.

3. Follow the steps in the wizard to complete the Backup Agent installation.

To selectively preinstall Backup Agent on computers in a Computer Collection

To selectively preinstall Backup Agent on computers in a Computer Collection, perform the following steps:

1. In the Recovery Manager Console tree, expand the Computer Collections node.

2. Right-click the Computer Collection that includes the computers on which you want to preinstall the Backup Agent.

3. In the right pane, select the items representing the computers on which you want to install the Backup Agent.

4. Right-click the selected items, and then select Install Backup Agent from the shortcut menu.

5. Follow the steps in the wizard to complete the Backup Agent installation.

To perform a silent installation of Backup Agent

To perform a silent installation of the Backup Agent, perform the following steps:

1. Copy the Backupagent.msi file supplied in the RMAD installation package to the target computer.

2. On the computer to which you copied the Backupagent.msi file, enter the following syntax at a command prompt: msiexec /i "\\<TargetCompName>\<Path to the backupagent.msi file>" ERDPORT=<PortNumber> /qn

   <TargetCompName> refers to the target computer network name.

   <PortNumber> refers to the TCP port number you want RMAD to use to connect to Backup Agent.

   By default, the silent installation uses a local system account. To install Backup Agent on a remote DC, this account must have sufficient permissions to access that DC.

   Example:

   msiexec /i "\\MyDC\temp\backupagent.msi" ERDPORT=3355 /qn

By default, RMAD uses the TCP port 3843 to connect to Backup Agent. If you have specified some other port number, perform the following steps:

1. Start the Recovery Manager Console (snap-in).

2. In the Recovery Manager Console tree, select Recovery Manager for Active Directory, and then click Settings on the Action menu.

3. On the General tab of the Properties dialog box, select the Connect to the backup agent using specific TCP port check box, and then specify the port number in the Port box.

If you have installed Microsoft Windows Firewall, the specified TCP port must be opened. You have to specify the same port number for all target DCs to be backed up.