How to log in to the Virtual Proxy Appliance

This article documents how to login to the Linux appliance used by Veeam Backup & Replication. This is not a common need, but may be neccesary for troubleshooting or advanced configuration.

Linux appliances are used by Veeam Backup & Replication for several purposes:

• In Surebackup, the Virtual Lab proxy appliance routes network traffic between isolated and production networks.
• In Multi-OS File Level Restore, the temporary helper appliance mounts the virtual machine disks.
• In Cloud Connect Replication, the network extension appliance routes traffic between tenant networks and service provider networks.

Considerations and Limitations

• The only active account on any Veeam Backup & Replication deployed appliance is root.
• If the Virtual Lab or Network Extension appliance password has not been configured in the Datacenter Credentials Manager, the default appliance password is the appliance VM's name with _r appended (see Default Password details below).
• For security reasons, because the temporary helper appliance has backup data mounted to it, the default root account password for the File-Level-Restore temporary helper appliance is a randomized hash created for each restore task. Access to this type of appliance requires the "Helper appliance credentials" to be set before the restore occurs.
• For Surebackup and Cloud Connect, the appliance must be redeployed for the new password to be used by the appliance. The multi-OS FLR appliance does not persist between restore sessions, so to use the new password, you only need to close the file browser and restore.

Setting Appliance Password

To set the password for the particular type of appliance, edit it in the credentials manager.

• To set the password for the Helper Appliance used by Surebackup (Virtual Lab) and Multi-OS FLR, edit the entry with the “Helper appliance credentials” description.
• To set the password for network extension appliances, edit the record with the appropriate description: “Tenant-side network extension appliance credentials” or “Provider-side network extension appliance credentials.” Only Cloud Connect Service Providers can set the password for provider-side appliances.

The password will be applied to all newly deployed appliances. It is not possible to specify different passwords for different instances of the same appliance type.

Default Password

The default password is only active if a password has not been set in the credentials manager for the Virtual Lab or Network Extension appliance.

To determine the default password for a particular appliance:

1. Start with the appliance name, as seen in the infrastructure view in the hypervisor.
   The password is derived from the original VM name when it was deployed by Veeam Backup & Replication if the appliance was renamed, the password will still be based on the original VM name.
2. Replace any dot ( . ), underscore ( _ ), space, or parenthesis with a dash ( - ).
   Skip any trailing symbols.
3. Add “_r” to the end.

For example, if the appliance’s VM name is:

network.extension_appliance(cloud connect)

The default password would be:

network-extension-appliance-cloud-connect_r