Veeam, Data Domains, DDBoost and making it all work!

I have a customer with infrastructure in the NorthEast and infrastructure in the Southwest.  Both sites run VMware and have Veeam deployed with EMC Data Domains.

Virtual Machines are backed up using Veeam in the Northeast, to a Data Domain in the same location using DDBoost.  Once there, the Data Domain is configured to replicate the Backup data across the wire to the SouthWest location.  Once replicated to the Data Domain in the DR location, Veeam is used to restore the replicated jobs to the infrastructure in the southwest.

While configuring the Veeam at the secondary location, I was running into an issue adding the replicated DDBoost repository to the secondary Veeam server.  Primarily, the error reflected that the Data Domain was presenting it as Read Only storage (due to the replication in place).  After much Google-Fu, I came across a Veeam forum article that recommended adding a local user to the replicated DDBoost repository. 

 ddboost storage-unit modify <SU name> user <ddboost user name>

Running this command on the southwest Data domain, allowed me to proceed with the Veeam repository addition. 

From there, I was able to scan the repository and import the replicated Backup jobs.

This drove me nuts today and although I had opened up both a Veeam and EMC case, the answer was squirrelled away in a forum post.  Hopefully now it’ll be a little easier to find for next time.