Unattended installation of Veeam using Boxstarter – Part 2 – VBO

In the previous post I described how to setup your test environment. Therefore I’ll assume you are going to use the Vagrant setup I described. We will now continue with the automated installation of Veeam Backup for Office 365.

The scripts explained

The Repository contains a folder called “vbo_scripts”. Inside this folder you’ll find the scripts that I have created to install Veeam Backup for Office 365 on your machine.

common_packages.ps1

We are going to include this script in all other scripts. It creates a local cache folder for Chocolatey. Creating this folder prevents a known issue. Under the hood BoxStarter uses an older version of Chocolatey. When using BoxStarter and Chocolatey together sometimes the cache folder contains an endless loop of chocolatey folders.

This script will also install DotNet4.7.2 for you.

vbo_server.ps1

When using this script, all required parts of your VBO Server will get installed. It kicks off with the “common_packages.ps1” script and after that, it installs the VBO Server and VBO Powershell.

vbo_management.ps1

This script could be used on your VBO server or your VBO Management station. Again this starts with the “common_packages.ps1” file. After that, it installs the Explorer for Exchange, Explorer for SharePoint as well as the VBO Console

vbo_all.ps1

This is the one script to rule them all. It combines the “vbo_server.ps1” file and the “vbo_management.ps1” scripts to install both on your management server.

Preparing

To start, download the latest release. Extract it into a folder. For example “C:\veeam-boxstarter”. Open an Elevated Command Prompt, PowerShell or Windows Terminal. Change your working directory to that folder. Depending on how you want to continue, choose Vagrant or Local below.

Vagrant

Once in the folder, the vagrant box can be started.

cd C:\veeam-boxstarter
vagrant up

The Windows Server 2016 box will be imported into VirtualBox. After that a linked clone will be created. This reduces the time required when you destroy and re-create your box. Once the Windows Server 2016 machine is started, Chocolatey and BoxStarter will automatically be installed. All the scripts will be available in the “C:\Temp” folder. If you have installed the Sahara plugin, this would be the best point to create an snapshot.

vagrant snapshot on

We can now start installing Veeam Backup for Office 365. Please continue with the Installation step below.

Local

Please make sure you have Chocolatey installed. You’ll need this to install BoxStarter. Installing BoxStarter is easy, you only need to execute this command:

choco install BoxStarter

Installation

Depending on the function of the machine choose one of the scripts below.

Open the “Boxstarter Shell” from your desktop. We will now invoke BoxStarter to start installing VBO. In the example below, I’ll assume you’re on the VirtualBox environment and you’ll be installing all of the VBO packages. Please execute the following command:

boxstarter.bat c:\temp\vbo_scripts\vbo_all.ps1

Boxstarter will now ask for your password. Inside the VirtualBox environment this will be “vagrant”. Enter the password for the current logged in account. BoxStarter will now install VBO and all required dependencies on your machine. Depending on the function and installed patches on the machine, this might take multiple reboots before it’s completed. Boxstarter will let you know when it is finished when it asks you to type ENTER.

Sometimes installations can fail. Therefore logging has been enabled by default inside the Chocolatey packages. Veeam installation log files are located in the “C:\ProgramData\ChocoCache” folder. Boxstarter log files are located in “%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Boxstarter”