Download the MARS Agent- Understanding Disaster Recovery

There are a couple different ways to download the MARS agent. One way is to go to Microsoft’s website at https://aka.ms/azurebackup_agent. The download will start automatically.

Another way is to open the Recovery Services Vault to start a backup:

1. Sign into the Azure portal using your Azure subscription.
2. In the portal, select All Services.
3. In the All Services dialog box, type Recovery Services.
4. From the list of vaults, select a vault to open its Overview dashboard.
5. In the vault, under Getting Started, select Backup, as shown in Figure 17.11.

FIGURE 17.11 Getting Started With Backup

6. Under Where Is Your Workload Running?, select On- premises. Select this option even if you want to install the MARS agent on an Azure VM.

7. Under What Do You Want To Back Up?, select Files And Folders, as shown in

Figure 17.12. A number of options are available, but some of them are only supported if you are running a secondary backup server.

FIGURE 17.12 Backup Goal window

8. For Prepare Infrastructure, under Install Recovery Services Agent, select Download Agent For Windows Server (or For Windows Client), as shown in Figure 17.13. Click OK.

FIGURE 17.13 Prepare Infrastructure window

9. From the Download menu, select Save. By default, the MARSagentinstaller.exe file is saved to your Downloads folder.

10. Select Already Downloaded or Using The Latest Recovery Services Agent, and then download the vault credentials, as shown in Figure 17.13.

11. When done, click OK. The file is downloaded to your Downloads folder.

Install and Register the MARS Agent

To install and register the MARS agent, perform the following steps:

1. Run MARSagentinstaller.exe on the machines that you want to back up.
2. In the MARS Agent Setup Wizard, select Installation Settings. Choose where you want to install the agent, and then select a location for the cache. Then, click Next, as shown in Figure 17.14. Azure Backup uses the cache to store data snapshots before sending them to Azure. The cache location should have free space equal to at least 5 percent of the size of the data that will be backed up.

FIGURE 17.14 MARS Agent Setup Wizard

3. On the Proxy Configuration page, specify how the agent will connect to the Internet. Then, click Next, as shown in Figure 17.15.

4. On the Installation page, review the prerequisites, and then click Install.

5. After the agent is installed, select Proceed To Registration. The Register Server Wizard will open.

6. In Register Server Wizard, select Vault Identification and browse to and select the credentials file that you created earlier. Then, click Next.

7. On the Encryption Setting page, specify a passphrase that will be used to encrypt and decrypt backups for the machine. If you lose or forget this passphrase, Microsoft cannot help you recover the backup data, so save the passphrase in a secure location.

8. When done, click Finish. The agent is now installed, and your machine is registered to the vault. You can now configure and schedule backups.