Like many kids, my daughter started high school this week. Throughout this summer, I’ve been preparing her for the changes that come with a bigger school, more demanding classes, and new extracurriculars. A couple weeks ago, we went back-to-school shopping then spent the afternoon glued to Olympics coverage. As we watched diving and dressage, we talked about the skills the athletes had to learn to compete at that level. We were as interested in how the athletes prepared as we were their performances. This got me thinking about how much time we humans spend preparing.
Whether getting ready for school, an athletic competition, or countless other activities it seems like humans are always preparing for something. Proper preparation helps us succeed and achieve our goals. It also helps us plan for things to go wrong. The same is true when you make changes to your technology environment, such as installing Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure. Once installed, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure secures your data backup and recovery, protecting it from disasters. Taking time to prepare for deployment will go a long way toward a successful deployment. Having deployed several appliances lately, I’m sharing things to consider when preparing to deploy Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure.
My first tip when preparing to deploy is to keep the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure 7.0 User Guide handy while you work through the process. I like to refer to it when I’m deploying and need to look up a specific guideline or required permission.
Review and Verify System Requirements
Start by reviewing Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure’s requirements which are listed in detail in User Guide. You’ll need a backup server for the Azure Plug-in to run on; and the plug-in requires .NET Core Runtime 8.0 and ASP.NET Core Shared Framework 8.0. To access the console, you’ll need Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome. Finally, your system needs both the Microsoft Azure for Veeam Backup and Replication and Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure Plug-ins.
Review and Configure Azure Services
Once you know your system is set to deploy, review your Azure Services and make any needed changes. Backup appliances and worker instances require outbound internet access to several Azure Services including Entra ID, Azure Resource Manager, and Azure Storage. Since the plug-in uses the same ports as Veeam Backup and Replication itself, you may need to open required network ports to access those services. Refer to the list of required services and ports is in the User Guide; and open them using the service’s IP address, DNS name, or virtual network service tag.
When I was deploying a new appliance this week, I ran into an issue where Veeam Backup and Replication couldn’t communicate with Azure. It’s partially what inspired me to write about this because it was a lesson in preparation. It turned out that the problem was I didn’t have Azure Services configured correctly before beginning a deployment. Once I corrected the configuration, it deployed smoothly.
Grant Plug-In and Service Account Permissions
Microsoft Azure for Veeam Backup and Replication requires several permissions to backup and restore data, so user accounts require several permissions. Don’t forget that you may need to grant permissions to both the plug-in and user accounts. When possible, I prefer deploying directly from the Veeam Backup and Replication console itself. When an appliance is deployed that way, it creates a user account with the correct permissions automatically.
The next step is reviewing Service Account permissions, which are required for Veeam Backup and Replication to function. First, ensure you have a Microsoft Azure compute account since you’ll need its permissions to create, connect, and manage backup appliances. Permissions also matter during disaster recovery and data protection incidents. In addition, review permissions for your Azure SQL account, virtualization servers and hosts service accounts. If you plan to restore Azure VMs to Google Cloud or AWS, grant those permissions as well. Next review permissions for the following service accounts: Repository, Worker, Azure VM, Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, Azure Files, Virtual Network Configuration, and Permissions Changelog. Guidelines for each are listed in the Service Account Permissions section of the User Guide. Finally, review the list of Azure Resource Providers in the user guide and register them in your subscriptions. Once everything has the correct settings, you can begin deployment.
Days after my daughter started school and almost a week after the Olympics, I still have preparation on my mind. This week was a good reminder that preparation matters. Taking time to prepare makes virtually everything go better. Once I had my environment configured correctly, deploying Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure was a smooth process. Hopefully, you’ll learn from me, prepare ahead of time, and won’t spend as much time troubleshooting as I did this week.
As always, if you have questions or need more detail outside of the User Guide, there’s a whole community of humans on this site who are willing to help one another learn. Personally, I’m curious about what you learned this week. Feel free to share in the comments.
