Addition of ESXi to the desired unit

Hi,

First of all note that you should register each Agent for VMware connected to the same vCenter/ESXi host (there could be multiple agents) under single desired unit. In other words there should be no situations where 1st agent connected to ESXi host #1 is registered under root Organization unit, while 2nd agent connected to the same ESXi host #1 is registered under some child unit. If you do so, the units resources inheritance will become broke: the same VM instance may appear randomly under both Organization and its child units and the behavior will become unpredictable.

To register the agent under proper unit do the following:

1) Remove the agent (which I assume is under root Organization in your case currently) from Settings->Agents:

2) Switch to required unit context:

3) Go to Devices list and hold Ctrl+Shift, then click on "Add" button which will open direct agent registration dialogue (this is a hidden feature used in specific cases only). Specify the IP of the removed agent + credentials to connect to vSphere used by this agent.

As the result this agent along with all VMs reported by it will get registered in proper unit.

Thank you.

As always, you made my day!

Thank you Vasily

Hi all,

I am recovering this thread because I've seen a difference in the latest build (13400).

Did Acronis removed the CTRL+SHIFT+ADD option from this build?

I have the Acronis virtual appliance deployed in an ESXi but without this option I cannot add the virtual appliance to the desired unit, it always goes to the ORGANIZATION level and I cannot move it from there. If I use the ADD option I always get this message:

We frequently use it to add machines to the different units whose agent has been installed unattended, because before we had several issues... Basically even if the agent was installed if we used the ADD button only, the agent installation started anyway instead of just adding the machine to the unit.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

Kind regards

Hi,

The Ctrl+Shift+Add functionality has been removed due to security-related concerns. Note however that the original issue of registering appliance under specific unit has been fixed in Update 4 as follows:

- When you deploy appliance via backup console UI, (Devices -> Add -> VMware ESXi), then the appliance deployed will get registered on Acronis Management Server (AMS) under the user account used to log into backup console -> under unit which this user account is admin for.

Example:

- You have "rootadmin" account which is the main administrator on AMS ( = admin of "Organization" unit)

- You log into backup console under "rootadmin"

- You create some child unit named "ChildUnit" and add "UnitAdmin" account as administrator for this unit

- You switch to this "ChildUnit" unit context from backup console (from top left dropdown selection)

- You perform deployment of appliance from Devices -> Add -> VMware ESXi

- As the result the appliance will be registered on AMS using "rootadmin" account which means that appliance will appear under the root "Organization" unit instead of the "ChildUnit"

Therefore to get the appliance registered under "ChildUnit" during initial deployment (Devices -> Add -> VMware ESXi), you must log into backup console under "UnitAdmin" account instead of the "rootadmin" one.

An alternative way would be to use the appliance local UI to perform registration under corresponding unit admin account.

To do so, open appliance local UI -> "Change" the "Management Server" settings and specify

- IP/hostname of the Acronis Management Server (AMS) machine

- Username for account which is administrator for corresponding child "Unit" on AMS

- Password for this account

As the result the appliance will be registered under corresponding unit (unit is defined by this username).

Thank you.

Hi Vasily,

As always, you solved my issue.

I was able to successfully add the ESXi to the desired unit using this workaround.

I am now concerned about the addition of workstation machines to the desired unit. As mentioned in my previous post, we deploy the agent using the unattended installation and then we were adding the machine to the desired unit using the CTRL+SHIFT+ADD.

Is it now fixed that when using the ADD button the AMS correctly detects that the agent is already installed in the workstation and just adds the machine instead of trying to remotely install the agent?

Thank you very much for your help. Much appreciated.

Regards

Hi,

I'm glad to hear that my suggestions helped :) What concerns unattended installation, there is a possibility to define the "unit" where the agent will be registered in by defining TENANT=<unit id> parameter during installation as described in https://kb.acronis.com/content/59780, so there should be no manual input required, e.g. no need to manually add the agent to corresponding unit after installation.

>> Is it now fixed that when using the ADD button the AMS correctly detects that the agent is already installed in the workstation and just adds the machine instead of trying to remotely install the agent?

From what I've checked (tried also enabling UAC before re-adding machine to AMS), this issue should be fixed as well. Though you should not even need this sequence to work assuming that the agents will be registered in proper unit during installation as described above.

Thank you.

Dear Vasily,

At some sites we're using such parameter, but sometimes with certain sites, machines jump from one sub-unit to another and the CTRL+SHIFT+ADD was very helpful to avoid any issues of remote agent installs.

I will double check the correct behaviour of the ADD button and follow up in this thread to confirm everything runs correctly.

Again Vasily, thank you very much for your help

Regards

Hi,

Thank you for the details - in this case I'd recommended to check the "register_agent.exe" utility which also allows to move machine between units. It's located in \Program Files\Acronis\RegisterAgentTool\ and can be used as follows:

register_agent.exe -o register -a <management server address> -u <AdminOfUnit> -p <PasswordForAdminOfUnit>

You can run this command even on the machine which is already registered on AMS and it will re-add the machine into corresponding unit.

Thank you.

Hello again,

we're facing a weird issue while trying to add an ESXi host to the AMS. We're running AMS 12.5.11010 and following the instructions you gave me of using a sub-unit admin to add the virtual appliance to the desired unit is not working properly. In fact is really weird.

We deployed the agent in a remote ESXi and then we added a dummy AD account as administrator to the sub-sub-unit (Eg: CHINA-WORKSTATIONS-VMWARE). We made this dummy account administrator of the VMWARE unit.

The virtual appliance is successfully registered to the AMS but ALWAYS to the ORGANIZATION unit... What can be happening here? We've tried two service accounts to be 100% sure that there were no other hidden permissions assigned by mistake... We're 100% sure that those service accounts used to add the virtual appliance to the AMS have only admin rights to that specifically sub-unit.

Another issue we have with another virtual agent installed in another ESXi is that we're getting the following error when trying to register the agent to the AMS:

Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards

Hi,

>> We're running AMS 12.5.11010

This is the exact root cause of the behavior you see. The issue when the Agent for VMware (Virtual Appliance) was always registered under the root unit ("Organization") was fixed in Acronis Backup 12.5 Update 4 only (internal bug ID: ABR-130110). You should update your Acronis Backup 12.5 installation.

Thank you.