Macrium company logo

29 Jul 2022

As part of the Site Manager continuous improvement program, our team have made a new release available.

In this blog post, we will be discussing some of the features from the video in more detail. For a full list of the changes and improvements included in Site Manager 8.0.6898, please read the release notes here!

We have a companion video demonstrating the new features. Watch it on YouTube here! (and at the end of this blog post).

Macrium Image Guardian (MIG) Control in the Site Manager UI

Macrium Image Guardian is designed to protect your Macrium backups from third-party modification and accidental deletion. MIG works by only allowing Macrium tools (and optionally Robocopy) write access to backup files, all other applications will be denied write access. You can read more about MIG in this article. Although MIG has been included with Site Manager, and managed using a separate application for several updates now, MIG can now be managed for individual repositories through the Site Manager UI. This makes it easy to see and manage the status of MIG protection for individual repositories.

Role-based User Access Control

Role-based user access control enables you to restrict access to the Site Manager using a set of predefined roles. The roles that you can select from are shown below:

Administrator

Grants full administrative access to the Site Manager user.

Standard User (Viewer)

Grants minimum access to the Site Manager user. A user with this role can view the majority of information available in Site Manager, but can't make changes beyond configuring their own instance of the dashboard and table layouts. The repository browser and verification pages are unavailable to the user.

Backup Operator

Grants the same access as a "Standard User" to Site Manager, but the user can enable or disable predefined backup plans, start, stop or pause backups, start or stop remote syncs, access the repository browser (without access to backup contents) and verify backups.

Restore Operator

Grants the same access as a "Standard User" to Site Manager, but the user can perform remote restores, generate and download rescue media, access the repository browser (and open backups) and verify backups.

Backup Manager

Grants the same access as a backup and restore operator to Site Manager, but the user can configure backup plans, definitions, schedules, repositories, remote sync's, agent tags along with access to the repository browser (full access, including deletion) and full access to manage agents (add, remove, remote install, upgrade and perform maintenance actions including reboot agent, reset VSS and resync logs).

Server Manager

Grants the same access as a 'Standard User' to Site Manager, but the user can configure server settings, configure repositories, access the repository browser (view listings only), manage agent licensing, perform agent maintenance actions (reboot agent, reset VSS and resync logs), generate rescue media and install server updates.

This works in combination with the existing Windows Active Directory integration. Roles may be assigned to individual users, local user groups or to Active Directory security groups. If a user is part of multiple AD groups with different roles assigned in Site Manager, they will get access to the roles from each of these groups.

Rescue USB Builder UI Mode

The rescue media USB builder in Site Manager enables you to create USB rescue media  using the rescue media ISOs created by Site Manager. A UI has now been added to the rescue media USB builder, alternatively, the rescue media builder can still be launched via the command line. You can read more about rescue media in Site Manager in this KnowledgeBase article.

The rescue USB builder can be downloaded from the ‘Rescue Media’ page of the Site Manager. 

Agent Power Options

The agent power options allow you to specify power options that will be applied following a backup. These power saving options are shown below:

These can be applied to scheduled backups and ‘run now’ backups. When combined with Site Manager’s Wake on LAN options, this enables Site Manager to power on a computer, perform a backup and then power the computer off again.

‘Computers’ page improvements

There have been a host of improvements to the ‘Computers’ page to provide you with more information and tools for the computers connected to the Site Manager. This includes additional information about the Change Block Tracker status and version:

As well as an improved ‘Tools’ section that contains the options to resync logs, get network information for an agent computer, restart the VSS service on an agent computer, and reboot agent computers.

Honourable Mentions

Unfortunately, with some updates there are just too many features to write about them all. So here are some honourable mentions that did not quite make it into the video:

  • Added computer tags for locally scheduled backups
  • Added an assortment of command line actions to both the agent and server:
  • Debug and support options
  • Agent connection check
  • Agent driver gathering
  • Site Manager Server first time install options
  • Site Manager Server upgrade
  • Site Manager Server data export
  • Added a new driver harvester application to harvest drivers from computers with no agent installed
  • Added a standalone installer for Macrium Image Guardian
  • Backup log files will now be removed from Agent computers based on the Site Manager log retention setting
  • Agents connecting to Site Manager for the first time can now be automatically added to the computers table
  • viBoot included with Site Manager server installer
Next Post

State and Local Government Cybersecurity Risks