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Remote computers are viewed and managed from the Computers page of Site Manager, under the Site Configuration heading on the left hand side column. This page displays a list of all managed computers:
The dark blue side menu may can be helpful used to filter the computers by Groups and Tags. and group computers based on tags. Clicking on a tag (e.g. Connected) will filter the computers list to show only those computers with the Connected tag. Clicking on a group header (e,g, Status) will show the computers sorted into groups based on the tags in this group.
Toolbar Buttons
- Add - Adds new computers to Site Manager. See the section later on this page for details.
- Delete - Deletes selected computers from Site Manager.
- Install Agent - Uses remote MSI tools to install or reinstall the remote agent on computers.
- Upgrade Agent- If automatic upgrade of Agents is turned off in settings, this button can be used to initiate Agent upgrades.
- Force Reconnect- Disconnects and reconnects the computer and updates computer data from the selected computers.
- Set Passphrase - Allows the passphrase for the selected agent to be updated to the one used installing the Agent.
- Manual Agent Installation- Exports the computers table data as CSV. This can be imported into other tools.Installation - Shows information on how to install the Agent manually and provides download links to MSI installers.
- Open Filters - Opens the filters of the table.
- Download to CSV -Downloads Exports the content of the computers table to data as CSV. This can be imported into other tools.
Groups and Tags Side Menu
- Configure - Configure Groups and Tags and their visibility. More information about Groups and Tags can be found here.
- All Computers - Shows all the computers.
- Status and A Custom Group: Groups to filter the computers by.
Clicking on a group or a tag filters the computers.
The group can be collapsed or expanded by clicking on the 
icon
To know how to hide groups from the side menu and from the tags column, click here.
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Shows the basic details of a computer as well as the last activity data.
The Logs and Event Logs buttons at the bottom of the control can be used to go to the Logs and Event Logs pages, filtered to show the data for this computer.
Description and Tags can be edited by clicking on Edit.
Custom Description
Identify a computer by its description. It can be edited by clicking on Edit.
It can show the Active Directory/Local computer description or a custom description can be provided.
Computers may be given a description to help identify them. By default, the description is taken from Active Directory or the computer itself. A custom description may be set by clicking on Edit.
Tags
Tags are useful to group some of the computers in meaningful ways. To know more about tags, click here.
This is what a Group and Tag look like:
computers for backup and filtering purposes. More details information on groups and tags can be found here.
A tag has the following structure:
Each tag is contained in a group - these groups are used to categorise tags in menus and other places. For example, a "Departments" group might hold different tags such as "Accounts" or "IT". These tags are then shown under a heading for the group in the left-hand side menu of the computers page.
The Group and the tag are separated by the \ character. Everything before the \ is the group and everything after is a tag.
If the separator character is not present it means it's only showing the tag nameIn most places, the group is only shown as part of the tag if there are tags with the same name in multiple groups.
Automatic tags are calculated automatically and added and kept up to date by the system and cannot be edited directly.
Assigning a Tag
Tags can be assigned to a computer from this view.
Existing tags can be assigned to a computer by selecting them on the dropdown menu.
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New groups and tags can also be created and assigned to a computer in one go. That can be done by typing a new group or tag and press Enter or clicking on the Add option.
After adding the new group or tag, it will show as orange - meaning it is a new group or tag.
In the example above, a new group called A New Group will be created and a new tag called New Tag will be added to that group.
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The disks and partitions on the computer are shown here, to help in determining how and what to backup from this computer.
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A list of .xml backup definitions and script files stored locally on the computer are listed here and may be run manually from Site Manager with the 'Run Now' option.
After pressing 'Run Now' a dialog will pop up to select the type of backup (Usually Full, Differential or Incremental but may have other options for different backup types) and confirm the backup:
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Some extra features that are less used can be found in this view: Resync Logs and , Get Network Information, Reset VSS and Reboot Computer.
Resync Logs
A confirmation modal will be shown before starting the resync.
The selected Agents will be disconnected and on reconnect will resync all backup logs.
Get Network Information
Reset VSS
When clicked, this will send a message to the Agent to restart the Microsoft VSS service. This can be used to clear some VSS related backup errors without having to directly access the computer. To prevent accidental use triggering backup issues, the Agent will only perform the action if there is no backup currently running.
Reboot Computer
This can be used to reboot the computer. This may be useful if the Agent is reporting that a reboot is required to activate the CBT driver or for other maintenance reasons. When clicked, a further set of options will be shown:
The No User Reboot option will only succeed if there are no users logged in. The Reboot option will give any logged in users a 5 minute warning before rebooting, to all them to save any work. The Force Reboot option will immediately reboot the computer with no warning. As with the Reset VSS option, this will always fail if a backup is already in progress.
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Computers are added to Site Manager using the Add Computers Wizard which can be accessed from the computers page.
Site Manager uses NetBIOS names to uniquely identify computers (though connections are over TCP/IP). This means that a NetBIOS name must be provided before a computer can be added to Site Manager. However, Site Manager provides multiple ways to lookup a computer’s NetBIOS name for user convenience.
Domain Computers
Site Manager can search Active Directory to find domain computers. To set up a connection with Active Directory, users can choose a domain login provider or enter the connection details manually. For a manual connection, enter the name of the domain controller and the credentials of a user authorised to perform searches (the domain field is used in domain forests where the domain of user differs from the target domain). The connection will be verified before the next step of the wizard.
The tree on the left can be used to navigate the domain and computers contained within the selected organisational unit are displayed in the table. Selected computers will be added to Site Manager.
The final page displays the computers which have been added to Site Manager.
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If there are no computers seeking a connection with Site Manager then this option is disabled.
Adding Computers
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Manually
Computer can be added manually if the user knows the NetBIOS or DNS name or the IP address (IPv4 or IPv6) of the target computer. DNS names and IP addresses will be resolved to a NetBIOS name by Site Manager. Multiple computers can be added if they are separated by semicolons (;); whitespace is ignored.
The table reports the success of name resolution; agents with resolved NetBIOS names are added to Site Manager. Unsuccessful IP lookups will also be reported. Note that NetBIOS and DNS names are not checked to allow offline computers to be added.
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Installing the Site Manager Agent
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- Select the computers to perform a remote install on.
- Press the Install Agent button in the toolbar.
- Select 'Confirm' in the dialog that pops up to attempt to install or cancel to exit.
- Site Manager will attempt the install and show the status of each computer.
Once each install has finished, the status will be displayed. If all computers succeeded then only 'Done' will be available
Problems with Remote Installation
If there are any issues in installing the agent on any computer, this will be shown in the results:
All failed installs can be retried simultaneously via the Retry Failed Installs button or on an individual computer basis by using the Retry buttons in the table next to the install status. Each failed computer has a help icon that can be clicked to provide detailed information about the failure.
If retrying the installation on a computer (or computers) which failed the install due to credential errors, Site Manager will prompt for new credentials:
Once new credentials have been entered and OK pressed, reinstallation will be attempted using the new credentials.
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| Install Error | Description | Recommended Action | ||
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| No Credentials Available | The installation cannot proceed because there are no cached credentials to try. This only occurs when attempting the install when the Management Console is set to allow anonymous login and the password prompt is cancelled on attempting the install | Retry the install and enter credentials when prompted | ||
| Credentials Rejected | None of the entered or cached credentials were accepted by the computer as valid.
| Retry the install with different credentials or attempt a manual installation. | ||
| Remote Install Not Available | The install process connected to the WMI server successfully, but the WMI installer component is not installed. This typically occurs on Windows XP machines as later editions have this component installed automatically. | Install the Remote Installer WMI component on the remote machine and try again. | ||
| WMI Not Available | Could not find a WMI process to connect to. Either the computer is offline, not a Windows machine or WMI remote access is blocked for security reasons | Check the computer status and try again or manually install the agent. | ||
| Operating System too old | The computer connected but is below the Windows version required for the Agent. | Upgrade the OS on the computer or use a different computer. | ||
| Installer Error - 1234 | The installer ran, but returned an error code and was not successful. The number in place of 1234 is the code from the installer | Contact Macrium support or try a manual install. | ||
| Install Failed | A general failure in installation. | Retry the install or contact Macrium support. | ||
| Computer not present on network | The computer name could not be resolved to an IP address by either DNS lookup or LLMNR broadcast. | Check that the computer is present on the network and that DNS is correctly configured | ||
| File sharing unavailable | The computer IP address could be lookup up, but an attempt to connect to the Windows administrative share failed (\\computername\admin$) | Check that the computer is present on the network and that Windows share traffic is not blocked | ||
| Could not connect to computer via cached IP | The current IP address for the computer could not be looked up, but IP address information was used to attempt the install. This failed and may be due to either the IP being out of date or authentication issues. | Check that DNS returns the correct IP address for this computer if available, | ||
| Remote Install already in progress | Either a previous Remote Install attempt is still running, or another browser session has initiated a Remote Install to this computer. The computer status should be listed as 'Installing' to reflect this. | Wait for the install attempt to complete and the computer status to change from 'Installing' and re-attempt if required. |
Installing the Agent Manually
If Remote Install is not available, the Agent can be installed manually. See Agent Manual Install for more details.
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To set the passphrase, select the computers by checking the appropriate box in the computers list and press the Set Passphrase button in the "More Actions" dropdown. This will open the passphrase editing dialog:
To set a passphrase, check the Use custom passphrase option and enter the passphrase in the box. Press CONFIRM to apply the passphrase.
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This will bring up a confirmation dialog box, including information of any computers which are part of currently scheduled backups or Backup Definitions:
To remove these computers, press Confirm.
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