Veeam VM Restore failed: Cannot apply encryption policy. You must set the default key provider.

So in my Lab vCenter went completely POOOOOF. So, I installed it fresh.

After vCenter was installed, I updated my Veeam configuration to ensure my backup chains wouldn’t break which still works great by the way.

One VM was missing from my vSphere. So I went to restore it when all of a sudden:

I remembered by post about configuring a Native Key Provider cause it was required as such to have a vTPM. So I thought, is this a “PC Load Letter” problem, and it’s actually just complaining that I didn’t configure a NKP for it to “apply encryption policy”?

Follow the same old steps to configure a NKP.

  • Log in to the vSphere Client:
    • Open the vSphere Client and log in with your credentials.
  • Navigate to Key Providers:
    • Select the vCenter Server instance.
    • Click on the Configure tab.
    • Under Security, click on Key Providers.
  • Add a Native Key Provider:
    • Click on Add.
    • Select Add Native Key Provider.
    • Enter a name for the Native Key Provider.
    • If you want to use hosts with TPM 2.0, select the option Use key provider only with TPM protected ESXi hosts.
  • Complete the Setup:
    • Click Add Key Provider.
    • Wait for the process to complete. It might take a few minutes for the key provider to be available on all hosts.
  • Backup the Native Key Provider:
    • After adding the Native Key Provider, you must back it up.
    • Click on the Native Key Provider you just created.
    • Click Backup.
    • Save the backup file and password in a secure location.

Once I did all that…

No way that actually worked. But will it boot? Well it def “booted” but it asked for the BitLocker key (which makes sense since we created a new TPM and it doesn’t have the old keys). I checked my AD and sadly enough for some reason it didn’t have any BitLocker keys saved for this AD object/VM.

Guess this one is a loss and the importance of saving your encryption keys.

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