Prerequisites for Application-aware processing and Pre/Post Scripts in EC2 Instances

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To perform application-aware processing (or) to run pre/post scripts, BDRSuite will install, through AWS SSM Agent, BDRSuite Guest Tools in your EC2 instances. To enable BDRSuite BDR to automatically install the guest tools via AWS SSM Agent, follow the steps below:

Note: For Windows EC2 instances, Vembu Guest tools installation requires .NET Framework v3.5. Please make sure you have installed .NET Framework and then follow the steps below.

Step 1: Attach IAM role to EC2 Instance

From the Amazon EC2 console , choose Instances from the EC2 Dashboard displayed on the left pane.
Select the instances one by one for which application-aware processing or pre/post scripts have to be enabled and perform the following steps.
Click on the Actions button and navigate to the Security -> Modify IAM Role page
On the Modify IAM role page, select ‘AmazonSSMRoleForInstancesQuickSetup ’ on the IAM role field, and click ‘Update IAM Role’.

If the above-mentioned IAM role is not present, you need to configure Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) in the Systems Manager service to enable the role.

Steps to configure SSM ROLE:

Navigate to the ‘Systems Manager’ page. You can use the search option to quickly locate it.
Click ‘Quick Setup ’ on the left pane.
On the Host Management section, Click Create . You will be directed to the Customize Host Management Configuration options page.
On the Targets section, Select the radio options: ‘Choose region’ and ‘ All Instances’.
On the Target Regions section, select the checkbox of the regions under which the instances are running for which you want to enable application-aware.
Click Create button to complete the host configuration. This will create the required IAM role.

Note: The above steps are given as per the latest AWS user interface. If you are using old UI follow the steps given in the next page.

Step 2: Install SSM Agent

After attaching the IAM role, SSM Agent needs to be installed on EC2 instances.
SSM Agent is pre-installed in most Operating Systems. To check whether the SSM Agent was already installed, run the command specified in the documentation: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/ssm-agent-status-and-restart. html
If it’s not available, then manually install SSM in your EC2 instances by following the below documentation:

For WINDOWS : https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/sysman-install-win.html

For LINUX : https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/sysman-manual-agent-install.h tml

Important Note for Pre/Post Scripts:

Pre/Post scripts have to be manually placed in the Vembu Guest Tools installation location mentioned below (Create the folder structure if not available) before scheduling a backup.
- Windows – C:\Program Files\Vembu\BackupForAWS\GuestTools\scripts
- Linux – /opt/GuestTools/scripts
Naming conventions for pre/post scripts:
- The scripts which needs to be executed before the backup starts should be named as: before_<<backupjobname>>
- The scripts which needs to be executed after the backup ends should be named as: after_<<backupjobhome>>

Attach IAM role to EC2 Instance (OLD UI)

From the Amazon EC2 console , choose Instances from the EC2 Dashboard displayed on the left pane.
Select only the instances for which application-aware processing or pre/post scripts have to be enabled.
Then click on Actions , choose Instance Settings , and select Attach/Replace IAM role .
On the Attach/Replace IAM role page, select AmazonSSMRoleForInstancesQuickSetup on the IAM role field, and click Apply .