Blogs and Podcasts

A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend and present at the Atlantic Security Conference (ATLSECCON) in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Established in 2011, this information security conference focuses on fostering innovation, strengthening collaboration and building resilience. The conference agenda centers on everything security related; challenges, complexity and emerging threats. This was not my first time attending ATLSECCON, I have had different working roles at the event throughout the years, meaning I’ve worked booth operations, I’ve presented at the event, and I probably have coordinated just the sponsorship opportunity in the past. I am unsure of the exact number of times I have attended, but I can say I look forward to this event every year, and it only gets better over time! After I got back, I was thinking about all the se

On Feb 5, 2026, Microsoft officially announced that EWS in Exchange Online is being deprecated. Starting Oct 1, 2026, Microsoft will begin turning off EWS usage unless it is explicitly extended via a setting. With a deliberate “Not yet!” (aka OrganizationConfig -EwsEnabled $true), EWS is expected to remain usable until Apr 2027—however, this is not a permanent setting, just a temporary extension. So first…. What exactly is EWS? EWS stands for Exchange Web Services and was built almost 20 years ago. For

Migrating between sites is rarely straightforward, especially when you don't have access to the virtual infrastructure to create a replication job between sites. In this post I'll walk through a real-world migration from another provider to our own Virtual Private Cloud on VMware vCloud Director.  This will not be a build guide, but more of a high level overview of how it was accomplished and some of my findings, positive and negative. Project Background Our customer had expressed a desire to offboard from their previous service provider and onto our platform. They did not want to approach the provider before migrating, and suspected that the provider would not cooperate with setting up replication jobs to another service provider.They asked us to come up with a solution that had a low Recovery Point Objective to minimize interruption to public facing services. Key Constraints:The customer did not have access to the

 Some days ago, I stumbled upon a great feature in the Veeam Calculator.A feature request I’ve had open by Veeam for several years has finally been implemented: a tool to create a port list, view it graphically, and export it –> is now called “Interactive Maps”There are various features, such as a port map, a server planner, and a source-to-target map with predefined Veeam Backup and infrastructure components and workloads.  AccessVeeam Interactive Maps are part of the Veeam Calculator.You can access Veeam Interactive Maps via the standard link for the Calculator, where you’ll find a new button.Link: https://www.veeam.com/calculators Port MapW

Hi everyone,I am delighted to present my first blog post and my first contribution to the Veeam community today. I would be very grateful for any feedback 😊 When working with Veeam Recovery Orchestrator (VRO), you might occasionally run into situations where the system makes decisions that aren’t immediately intuitive. Recently, a partner approached us with a scenario that raised exactly that kind of question: How does VRO choose which backup copy to use when multiple copies exist? Let’s walk through the use case, the unexpected behavior, and what we learned from digging into it. The Scenario In this environment, VRO is running at the disaster recovery site and orchestrating a vSphere-to-vSphere restore plan. The plan uses the following steps:  A backup-to-disk job writes backups to a local backup repository.

Today marks a big milestone as my fourth book was published - Mastering Veeam Backup & Replication v13.  I wrote a blog about it when you can read in the link below, and I have put the links to Packt/Amazon where you can find it if interested. 😎This one was great to write, and I especially enjoyed the chapter on Veeam ONE that I put in this book.  I would truly like to thank ​@Rick Vanover for his chapter contribution about the Console (Chapter 4) and also ​@NikolaPejkova for her inspiring Foreword that she wrote, it was very touching, and I am grateful.Blog - Mastering Veeam Backup & Replication v13 - BlogBook LinksPackt - 

I recently deployed the Veeam Plug-in for HPE Morpheus VM Essentials version 13 (RTM) on my Veeam Backup lab server, which is running v13.0.1. Once tested, I'll have it available to demonstrate to my customers. Veeam has introduced a dedicated plug‑in that enables image‑level backup and restore for virtual machines running on HPE VM Essentials. This integration brings VM Essentials into the same unified protection workflow as VMware, Hyper‑V, and other supported hypervisors. The plug‑in is not bundled with the main Veeam Backup & Replication installer, so it must be added separately. What the Veeam Plug‑in for HPE VM Essentials DoesThe plug‑in extends Veeam Backup & Replication to understand and interact with HPE VM Essentials resources. Without it, Veeam cannot discover or protect VM Essentials servers or workers. Once installed, the plug‑in enables:Discovery of HPE VM Essentials hosts Ba

If you’ve been following the Veeam Community this year, you may have noticed that many members have been picking up some Veeam University PRO  trainings, specifically Veeam Data Platform: Monitor, Manage, Analyze (Veeam ONE) and Veeam Data Platform: Scale, Automate, Secure (Veeam Recovery Orchestrator), and sharing their experience with us.What started as a training initiative quickly turned into a stream of stories. We read posts written late at night after work, weekend reflections, hands‑on breakdowns of modules, and honest comments like “I didn’t realize how much I was underusing this product”, or “this finally made disaster recovery feel structured instead of stressful”.They came in many languages, from many countries, and from people with very different backgrounds, but they all had something in common: real learning and real impact.These trainings are n

 You open the Add Server wizard in Veeam Backup and Replication. You pick Microsoft Hyper-V. The next screen gives you three choices. Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Microsoft Hyper-V cluster. Microsoft Hyper-V server (standalone).Here is the part that catches people at times. SCVMM is the first option listed in the wizard. If you do not have SCVMM in your environment and you click Next without changing the selection, VBR throws this error: "Veeam Backup & Replication server does not have Virtual Machine Manager Administrator Console installed." That is KB4351. It is not a bug. You picked the wrong type.Each option changes how VBR discovers your VMs, tracks Live Migration, deploys components, and handles backup proxy behavior. This post covers what each option does, what it requires, and when to use it. It also covers how the same choice applies in Veeam ONE.What VBR Deploys on Every Hyper-V HostRegardless of which type you

I recently had an issue after updating both my VBR v12 Servers to the latest patch v12.3.2.4465. As most of you know, Veeam released a Vulnerability KB back on 12 March. See below:https://www.veeam.com/kb4830From this page, there is a link to direct you to VDP v12.3 Release information:https://www.veeam.com/kb4696 , which provides the download to the latest VDP v12 Patch. A few weeks ago, I downloaded the small patch and updated both my VBR servers. All good. But, with this patch, there is a bug. And let me be more specific here, a non-functional disruption bug. (i.e. more cosmetic than anything; Jobs are unaffected)IssueThe bug is on how VBR detects the latest update/release information. Even after I installed the P

Field Experience — When the Human Link Becomes the Missing LinkBy a cybersecurity consultant, from the field.The Day Everything Stopped… Without a CyberattackImagine the scene.No ransomware. No server failure. No fire in the server room. And yet, an entire company's information system finds itself in total disarray.The cause? Two simultaneous, extended sick leaves. The only two people who made up the internal IT department.This is exactly the scenario I discovered when I arrived at this client's site. A scenario that nobody had anticipated, that nobody had recorded in a risk register, and which nevertheless caused an operational paralysis as severe as a major cyberattack. A Deafening Digital SilenceWithin the first few hou

When designing a Hyper‑V backup architecture, one of the most important decisions you’ll make is how will backups be moved from a hypervisor and how are they processed. In Veeam Backup & Replication, Hyper‑V backups rely on backup proxies, and unlike vSphere, Hyper‑V proxy behavior comes with some unique considerations that require upfront planning.Hyper‑V supports two types of backup proxies:On‑host proxies Off‑host proxiesAt a high level, these operate similarly to VMware proxies—but the implementation details, limitations, and operational overhead are significantly different. Let’s break them down and discuss when (and when not) to use each. On‑Host Proxy: The Default and Recommended ChoiceFor most environments, the on‑host proxy is the simplest, most reliable, and re

Hi thereTime to update the Lab, this time, easy monitoring for VMs, Services and Webs.UPTIME - KUMAIm going to show you how to easily deploy an instance inside Proxmox, containerized, ready to go.First, go to this website and search the community script to deploy it:https://community-scripts.org/?q=uptimeCopy the command, as shown in the pictureGo to your Proxmox Host, open a terminal, and paste the commandHit EnterLets follow

How to change name and what to watch out for and what to consider if you have unmanaged plugins. My Name is „Bond“ – „Repository, Bond“ – Display-Name vs. FQDN – Licensed to Rename  Sometimes, in the backup universe, you simply want to bring order to chaos, fix a mistake, or the naming structure has just changed. So a repository is supposed to get a new, nicer name. Or the server behind it needs to be renamed because a domain migration is coming up, naming conventions have changed, or a rebranding is being rolled out. Basically: “We’re cleaning everything up now.” And this is exactly where you need to: “Change the name”. I know it sounds harmless at first — but it rarely is. Especially in IT, names often have… well… everything attached to them

 When you're standing up a Hyper-V cluster and adding it to Veeam Backup & Replication, the proxy placement question comes up. The documentation says you can use on-host or off-host backup mode, and both work. What it doesn't tell you is what the data path looks like. Or what infrastructure each mode requires. Or what happens when VBR makes a decision you didn't expect.This post covers what I've observed running on-host backup across a Hyper-V cluster and what the docs say about off-host mode.How Veeam Sees a Hyper-V ProxyVeeam's proxy for Hyper-V is not the same component as a VMware backup proxy. For Hyper-V, the role is fulfilled by the Veeam Data Mover. In on-host mode, every Hyper-V host you add to VBR gets the on-host proxy role automatically. You don't install it yourself. The VBR pushes the Data Mover to each host when you add it to the infrastructure.In off-host mode, the Data Mover runs on a separate machine outside the cluster. Tha

I have seen repeated conversations around leveraging SSO in Veeam v13, particularly concerns about joining the backup server to a production domain. This has also come up multiple times in my discussions with partners.Based on that, I put together this exercise to explore a few possible ways of addressing those concerns. It may be more than what some environments need, but sharing it here to get thoughts and opinions from the wider community.The challenge: Central identity Vs domain isolationVeeam Software Appliance v13 brings a SAML SSO experience into Veeam Backup & Replication. Organization want to integrate with Microsoft Entra ID forSingle Sign-on Unified Identity management Central auditingBased on my recent engagements with users, I have heard an interesting challenge: connecting Veeam to a production Entra domain. It has long been considered a best practice to avoid joining backup infrastructure to the pro

Hello Community,  There’s something every backup admin will relate to.You arrive, open the Veeam console, filter jobs by status, start clicking through failures, make a note of error codes, maybe open a browser tab to Google it or check the Veeam Community, cross-reference it, and slowly form a picture of what your morning actually looks like.By the time you know what needs fixing, it's already been half an hour. I’ve done this for years. We all have.  A few days back, I came across a post talking about Veeam introduced feature called Data Resilience Daily, also known as the Morning Coffee Report.The concept is straightforward. Before you open any console, the report lands in your inbox and tells you exactly what happened overnight, which jobs have issues, which workloads are affected, and what you should probably do about it.When I first heard about it, my reaction was simple. Another summary

Veeam 12In v12 is not so sensitive via WMI/DCOM connection Veeam 13Upgrade to v13 was successful.All services are runningPS C:\Users\user01> Get-Service | Where-Object { $_.Name -like "Veeam*" }Status Name DisplayName ------ ---- -----------Running VeeamAHVSvc Veeam AHV ServiceRunning VeeamAWSSvc Veeam AWS ServiceRunning VeeamAzureSvc Veeam Azure ServiceRunning VeeamBackupCdpSvc Veeam CDP Coordinator ServiceRunning VeeamBackupRESTSvc Veeam Backup Server RESTful API Ser…Running VeeamBackupSvc Veeam Backup ServiceRunning VeeamBackupUpda… Veeam Backup Update ServiceRunning VeeamBrokerSvc Veeam Broker ServiceRunning VeeamCatalogSvc Veeam Guest Catalog ServiceRunning VeeamCloudSvc Veeam Cloud Connect ServiceRunning VeeamDataAnalyz… Veeam Data Analyzer ServiceRunning VeeamDeploySvc Veeam Installer ServiceRunning VeeamDistributi… Veeam Distribut

Hi Folks,Next week we will be launching our new Fleet Manager and we have a true star joining us! See if you can guess who that is 😁! There will also be some other cool folks present. If you have time please join us. https://objectfirst.com/fleet-manager-launch-event/  

While upgrading to Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 8.4, you might notice the following message: Connection to PostgreSQL is not encrypted. Enable TLS in PostgreSQL for secure communication.  VB365 checks whether the connection to the PostgreSQL database uses TLS.If TLS is not explicitly enabled, the warning is shown regardless of whether PostgreSQL is local or remote. If the PostgreSQL database is locally hosted on the vb365 server itself, this traffic does not leave the host. But if you have multiple proxies, those proxies also connect to the database, and this traffic leaves the network. So in those scenarios, it might be good to have this traffic encrypted. I will describe here how you can enable this traffic to be encrypted. Step

I am not sure if this has been posted somewhere before but I thought I would post my experience of setting up Linux proxies for our VMware backups and the one issue I ran into. I deployed a couple of Ubuntu 22.04 VMs, as I will be using hot-add for the VM backups. I added them to the VBR server and created a test backup of one VM. First backup attempt and I got this error:Error: Cannot get service content. Soap fault. Temporary failure in name resolution Detail: 'getaddrinfo failed in tcp_connect()', endpoint: 'https://vc.domain.local:443/sdk' SOAP connection is not available. Connection ID: [vc.domain.local]. Failed to create NFC download stream. NFC path: [nfc://conn:vc.domaint.local,nfchost:host-1310340,stg:datastore-1310378@TEST/TEST.vmx]. --tr:Unable to open source file [nfc://conn:vc.domain.local,nfchost:host-1310340,stg: So the key to the problem is “failure in name resolution”. Specifically name resolution from my new Linux pr

Ansible + Veeam + AI + Monitoring and Observability Tools = AIOps Everything starts with a signal.A sudden spike detected by Dynatrace.Suspicious behavior flagged by CrowdStrike.A failed backup showing up in Splunk.Before, this meant just another ticket.Someone had to notice it.Someone had to analyze it.Someone had to act.Time lost.Today, the flow is different.Observability detects.AI evaluates.The system decides.And that’s where everything changes.👉 Ansible Automation Platform executes automatically:isolates the workload adjusts the infrastructure triggers remediation workflowsMeanwhile…👉 Veeam ensures there is always a clean recovery point:immutable backups validated re

So Andy you did Magic tricks some time ago right? Can you tell me how security and ransomeware scanning is done by veeam with a card trick? Im a little rusty with it, but sure Challenge accepted, I will give it a try…   Can you tell me how security and ransomware scanning is done by veeam?SureSo lets do an abstraction. So we’ve got your files. Let’s think about 52 files inside a card deck.Each card in this deck, represents your workload, your database, your VMs, your server, your fileservers, your hardware servers.Each card is one of them and of course they all have a lot of data inside of them.Now one of your files,  one of your file servers is gettin

I'm really happy to share with the Veeam Community the release of vScan 2.0, a complete rebuild of the vulnerability scanner for Veeam Backup & Replication.For those who don't know vScan, you can check the original post here: vScan v1 – Vulnerability Assessment in your Veeam BackupsSince the v1 release, I received amazing feedback from the community (thank you all!) and many feature requests. Instead of patching v1, I decided to rebuild the entire application from scratch with a completely new architecture, new features, and addressing all the questions and requests from the community. What Changed from v1 to v2?