Introduction

Veeam has a migration strategy for moving your Windows deployment to the new VSA Appliance by following KB4800. During this process which I have done 4–5 times already I ran in to an issue after the migration with the VSA Appliance still being linked to the Veeam Enterprise Manager server due to these settings being stored in the Configuration Backup file that is used for the migration.

I tried to re-enable the services and take a new configuration backup to try the migration again but ran in to errors. I then opened a case with support to figure out how you can go about removing the link with some CLI commands, which leads me to using PowerShell in the VSA Appliance.

The reason for me needing to do this is because we use Veeam Service Provider Console to manage our server licenses across all our datacenters so it was a requirement to unlink from Veeam Enterprise Manager.

PowerShell Setup

The first part to get this working is you need to enable both SSH and Root Shell access on your VSA Appliance. Then once that is established, connect via SSH using your veeamadmin user credentials. You run the PowerShell session, import the VBR PowerShell module and then connect to your VBR server. You can follow this link from the help.

Once you have your PowerShell command prompt up this is where you use the commands in the next section to unlink the VSA Appliance from Veeam Enterprise Manager.

Unlink from Veeam Enterprise Manager

Use the following PowerShell code to unlink your VSA Appliance from the Veeam Enterprise Manager, ensuring to validate at each step of the process. The first two lines of code allow you to check the settings prior to running the subsequent PowerShell code below that.

• Check current details of link to Veeam Enterprise Manager from the PowerShell prompt -

  • Get-VBRServer | Out-Null
  • [Veeam.Backup.Core.SBackupOptions]::GetEnterpriseServerInfo() | Format-List –> This will return the information for the connection details to Veeam Enterprise Manager

• Now you can use the following PowerShell code, changing the ServerName line to your FQDN and the Url line as well using the FQDN of your server -

# Load into XML object
[xml]$doc = $xml

# Set your values
$doc.EnterpriseServerInfo.IsConnected                = "false"
$doc.EnterpriseServerInfo.ServerName                 = "server FQDN"
$doc.EnterpriseServerInfo.Url                        = "https://FQDN:9443"
$doc.EnterpriseServerInfo.IsLicenseAutoUpdateEnabled = "true"

# Leave these at default unless you specifically need them:
# SkipLicensePush        = "False"
# ProactiveSupportEnabled = "False"
# VmcLogUploadAllowed    = "False"

# Verify the XML looks correct before proceeding
$doc.OuterXml

# Deserialize back to object
$EMInfo = [Veeam.Backup.Model.CEnterpriseServerInfo]::Deserialize($doc.OuterXml)

# Confirm the object properties look right
$EMInfo | Format-List *

# Apply
[Veeam.Backup.Core.SBackupOptions]::SetEnterpriseServerInfo($EMInfo)

The key to this code is running each section one at a time and when you get to the “Set your values” section ensure the line - $doc.EnterpriseServerInfo.IsConnected is set to FALSE. This is what removes the connection and reference to Veeam Enterprise Manager.

Validate Connection

Once you have run the commands as noted in the unlink section you can use the two check lines to validate that the link to Veeam Enterprise Manager is gone (set to False).

Closing

This is the procedure for removing the link between the VSA Appliance and Veeam Enterprise Manager should you not complete that step prior to taking the Configuration Backup during the Windows to VSA Appliance migration process. I hope this helps anyone that runs in to this issue, but please ensure you take backups and/or snapshots prior to any work on your Veeam systems.