Dell EMC Avamar for Windows Servers 19.7 User Guide

Preparing a Windows Server 2019, 2016, or 2012 for SOFS or SMB cluster

To ensure successful backup and restore in a Windows Server 2019, 2016, or 2012 for SOFS or SMB cluster, you must correctly configure roles and permissions in the cluster before you install Avamar client software.

1. Enable the Remote Management feature on each cluster node.
2. Install the File Server VSS Agent Service server role on each cluster node. Otherwise, backups of clustered file servers for general use fail when the proxy node is not the owner node.
3. To prevent access permissions errors during backup and restore, add the machine accounts for each cluster node to the Backup Operators group on all nodes, and then restart all nodes.
   If the cluster disks use a Scale-Out File Server, then do not manually edit the permissions for a folder or file to remove the machine accounts. If you remove the machine accounts for a folder or file, then Access Denied errors occur for that folder or file during the backup or restore.
4. If you create SMB file shares, then configure the shares so that the machine accounts for each cluster node have access privileges for the shares.
5. Create an account for the Avamar Plug-in Service for Windows, which is the plug-in service that the proxy cluster client uses for backup and restore. The account must have the following privileges:
   • Domain administrator privileges.
   • Access privileges for all file servers and file shares that you plan to back up.

   NOTE You can use the account for both the Avamar Plug-in Service for Windows and the Backup Agent service, or you can create separate accounts for each service.
6. (Optional) Create a separate account for the Backup Agent service, which is the service for the Avamar agent. The account must have the following privileges:

   • Domain administrator privileges, or privileges to perform WMI queries and copy files to the shared cluster storage during a restore.

     If you do not give domain administrator privileges to the account, then backups include ACL and file attribute information only for file system data on file servers that the proxy node owns. You cannot back up ACL and file attribute information for file system data on file servers that other nodes own.

   • Access privileges for all file servers and file shares that you plan to back up.