Enabling Application-Aware Processing in Veeam Self-Service Portal

This guide covers off how to enable "Application-Aware Processing" for your VM backups in the Veeam Self-Service backup portal for vCloud Director

What is Application-Aware Processing?

Veeam uses their proprietary feature "Application-Aware Processing" to quiesce applications and create a consistent view of application data within the guest operating system ensuring there are no unfinished database transactions or incomplete read/write operations when a snapshot of the VM is taken.

This process is based on the way that Microsoft VSS works and is recommended to be enabled for any server running a critical business application like Active Directory, any form of SQL server (e.g. MySQL, Postgres, etc), or any application that is read/write sensitive (e.g. MYOB or other accounting software)

What are the requirements or permissions needed to use Application-Aware Processing?

Due to the way Veeam is set up it uses the method "VIX" (Virtual Infrastructure eXtension) which uses VMware tools to interact with the Guest OS.

For "VIX" to work you may need to make some adjustments within the Guest OS. Below is a table on the permissions required.

If you're in a situation where you can't use the local admin on the VM or are unable to use the built-in Administrator in Active-Directory you will need to modify the "EnableLUA" setting in the registry of the Guest OS.

To do this modify the below registry key:

PATH: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system
KEY: EnableLUA
VALUE: 0

Setting EnableLUA to 0 disables some of the built-in security to allow non-built-in accounts to interact with the Guest OS in the same way and not encounter issues with UAC.

Changing EnableLUA to 0 requires the guest OS to be rebooted for it to take effect

How do I enable Application-Aware Processing?

Hosted Network will not have access to read the password stored in Veeam to allow the guest processing to work.

Step 1. Login to your Veeam Self-Service Backup Portal using your vCloud Credentials (please contact support if you don't know your portal address)

Step 2. Click on the "Jobs" tab at the top of the screen

Step 3. Click on the job you want to edit and then click on the "Job" dropdown above the table, select "Edit" from the dropdown

Step 4. In the window that opens click on the "Guest Processing" option on the left side of the window

Step 5. Tick the box next to "Enable application-aware image-processing"

Step 6. In the bottom half of the window add a set of credentials with Local Admin access to the VM (Domain Admin will also suffice)

Step 7. Optional, click on "Customize Credentials" to modify the credentials per object (e.g. different credentials for each VM)

Step 8. Click "Finish" at the bottom of the window to save the settings

Now on the next run of the backup, it will attempt to complete the backup with application-aware processing enabled.

If you encounter any issues please reach out to our support team at [email protected] or via phone on 1300-781-148