In the previous posts of this series, we completed the configuration of Veeam Availability Console and on-boarded our first customer. In this third part, we are going to access the Console as a new customer, to so learn what we can do there.
Log into VAC as a customer
Our new customer has been created, and with the master account we can immediately login into the Veeam Availability Console. The URL is the same used by the service provider, and the login works like this:
The format, for those of you that are used to work in a Microsoft domain environment, will surely be familiar: any user logs in using the format “company name\username”. Thanks to this, there could be how many “test” users as we want, without any worry of getting confused about which customer the user belongs to.
Once into the portal, this is the initial view:
There is obviously no data yet, as there is no infrastructure to be managed.
Customer configuration
Let’s take a look at the configuration section. The first option is Locations. Here, a customer can create multiple locations, mapping the real shape of the company he has to manage. Each subsidiary/branch can be mapped here, and each location can have its own amount of Cloud Connect storage quota assigned:
As you may remember from the previous post, we didn’t assign any Cloud Connect service to this customer, so when configuring a new location, we have to specify 0 for this quota. We have also renamed the default location as Headquarter.
Next to Locations is Portal Users, and the two option are tightly linked to each other. Here, we already have the “company owner” that was created for us by our service provider, and we can customize it a bit. But the most important part here is that we can configure additional users that may help the administrator in managing the Veeam services. You can spot in fact the option called Set Location: this option cannot be set for the administrator, as this user can manage every location, but it’s handy for users. Since we created already the Branch location, let’s create a sub-administrator for this location:
We skip the user info as those are only information, and we go into the Login info. Here, we define username and password, and we can choose which role this new user will have. As you can see in the above screenshot, we can create a new Company Administrator, a Company User or an Invoice Auditor. This last one can login and check billing and invoicing information, but cannot touch any technical part of the console; this is useful to give access to VAC to financial users from the company. We configure our user as a Company Administrator and move to the next step:
In the locations step, we can plan to allow this new user to only be able to manage the Branch location. In this way, we have created a user that cannot manage the Headquarter, but has admin privileges in the branch office; this is a configuration when for example a customer has remote IT people in branch offices, and wants to delegate the management of Veeam services to these people.
If I log into the portal with this new branch administrator, I cannot obviously edit the locations, nor I can unset the location in my permissions. What I can do is to create additional users that can only be Portal Users, and limited to my same location. So, I am indeed an administrator only for the branch that was assigned to me. I can create additional backup policies and manage alarms, but then I would be able to apply them only to machines belonging to my location.Back into the console as the company owner, let’s complete the configuration options. If I go into the Backup policies, I can see the default policies that have been created by the service provider and assigned to me; I can choose to use
Back into the console as the company owner, let’s complete the configuration options. If I go into the Backup policies, I can see the default policies that have been created by the service provider and assigned to me; I can choose to use them or to create my own backup policies to better fit my needs. Every option that is available in the Veeam Agent is configurable here, and once the policy is created, I can apply it to any computer I have in my company. For now, I’m fine with the options I have, so I can exit the configuration and get back to the main Dashboard.
I’m now ready to connect my resources to my account, and this is what we will do in the next two blog posts, first one of my Veeam Backup & Replication installations, then a Veeam Agent for Windows.