HOWTO: Install the Veeam One v9.5 Monitor Client on a Domain Controller

@DeanColpitts

Most of my client sites are smaller companies, with one, two or three hypervisor hosts and a single Windows 2012R2 physical installation to manage the hypervisor cluster, shared storage, and backups.  Typically we configure the 2012R2 physical installation as a domain controller, in addition to a pair of virtualized domain controllers on the hypervisor cluster.  We generally utilize Veeam Availability Suite for backup and cluster monitoring, with Veeam Backup & Replication being installed the 2012R2 physical instance and Veeam One being installed in a virtual machine.  When we need to manage something in the customer’s environment, we typically RDP the 2012R2 physical instance and do whatever we need from there.  This means we install all our management tools on there whenever we can.

This approach has always worked well for us except for when vendors decide to prevent installation of their software on domain controllers.  Now I won’t dispute that some software packages definitely deserved to be blocked from installing on a domain controller, but in this particular case, Veeam has decided that the Veeam One Monitor client is just too dangerous for a domain controller – huh?  Why?  It is just a client (no different than the vSphere vCenter client, or the Vertias Backup Exec console utility) that connects to another server where the software resides.  So what do you do when you still want to install the Veeam One v9.5 Monitor Client on a domain controller?  You edit the installer.  🙂

In Veeam One version 8 and 9, you needed to edit the veeam_monitor_cln_x64.msi installer and change the VmACheckIsDC entries in both the InstallExecuteSequence and InstallUISequence tables to True, then save the installer.  Then you could run the installer on your domain controller.

In Veeam One v9.5 however, Veeam has changed their checking logic, so the above steps no longer work.  The good news is that with v9.5, you only need to modify one table entry now instead of two.  So here are the necessary steps.

  1. Extract the VeeamONE.9.5.0.3201 iso image to a folder, then navigate to the extracted Monitor folder.
  2. Copy veeam_monitor_cln_x64.msi to veeam_monitor_cln_x64_dc_installer.msi
  3. Open veeam_monitor_cln_x64_dc_installer.msi with an msi editor such as Panataray’s SuperOrca
  4. Scroll down to the VMLaunchConditions table
  5. There you should find three entries, and one of them will have the following data: “MsiNTProductType <> 2“2016-11-21-10-39-00-snagit-0048
  6. Edit the entry and change “<>” to “=” so you end up with “MsiNTProductType = 2“2016-11-21-10-38-46-snagit-0047
  7. Save the msi and close your msi editor
  8. On your domain controller, launch the veeam_monitor_cln_x64_dc_installer.msi to install the Veeam One v9.5 Monitor client

As always – Use any tips, tricks, or scripts I post at your own risk.

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