Backup Exec Remote Agents in SBS Land

If you're running Veritas or now Symantec Backup Exec and have the Small Business Server edition you may be trying to backup your clients on the LAN. Remember however to do one thing.

If you select these clients through the Job Setup you might be getting an error that the remote agent is not accessible or old. This is caused as a result of the Windows XP SP2 firewall blocking the remote agent requests. How do you resolve this? You could go around to each workstation and unblock the port through Windows Firewall but the much easier way is to do it through Group Policy.

1. Go to Server Management. Advanced Management.
2. Expand Group Policy Management.
3. Expand your Forest and Domain.
4. Right click on the Small Business Server Windows firewall policy and click edit.
5. Go to Computer Configuration...Administrative Templates...Network...Network Connections...Windows Firewall...Domain Profile.
6. Now open up the Policy for Windows Firewall:Define Port Exceptions.
7. You'll see the listing for remote assistance.
8. Add in the Veritas remote agent port. 10000:TCP:*:Enable:Veritas Port.

There you go. Make sure you allow time for the Policy to replicate to the workstations. The agent should now work as advertised.