Blogs and podcasts

MicoolPaulVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Password Authentication & Certificate Authentications both have their pros and cons, but one undisputed stance is that certificates are more secure than passwords when used properly. To that end, I prefer to deploy certificate authentication when working with SSH, and when deploying Linux VMs, Azure prefers to as well.However, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure also signs you in with your Ubuntu user account, but doesn't support certificate authentication. Does this mean you're stuck with password authentication? Nope! Is it complex to configure? Also, nope! How does this work?Simply, we'll ensure that SSH is configured to only support certificate authentication, whilst configuring a password for authentication against the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure portal. For good measure, we'll also go through how to secure this platform further to reduce your attack risk. Getting set up with Certificate AuthenticationWhilst typically the more difficult part, Azure has done a great job of ma

Securing Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure: Password/Certificate Auth & Other Hardening Tips

Link StateVeeam Legend

Switching to Seal Mode - User Guide for VMware vSphere (veeam.com) Hello I wanted to bring to your attention a really interesting and useful feature.Create new Veeam backup repository on new storage Insert new exent on existing SOBRSet seal mode extent to be decommissioned After the extent is sealed, no further data is saved to the extent, and only read operations such as restore, merge and remove are allowed.Wait for the chains of all your jobs to reach the set restore points.Then verify that no Veeamzip \ export backups or oneshot backups without schedules are allocated on the old extent to be decommissioned.Such data will not be migrated needs a manual operation of moving veeamzip \export backup files etc.I love this feature allows me painless storage migrations for both standalone VBR environments and Veeam Cloud Connect platform .thanks for your attention

VBR-VCC Storage migration data backup SEAL mode

MicoolPaulVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Ever had your backups fail? I sure have! But it’s all part of the fun & games of learning exactly how these systems work.Recently I spun up another instance of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure, and as part of my security mindset, I configured some elements of hardening to my infrastructure. Well, I missed a setting that I’m going to share with you today. Worker Job Completed with Error So, I had Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure working, my daily snapshot job was also running fine, but it was the daily backup that wasn’t working. Some of the key terms I could pick out from the logs were ‘Worker: <Resource Name> (IP Address:Port): job completed with error’, ‘Error: This request is not authorised to perform this operation’, ‘Status 403’, and ‘ErrorCode AuthorizationFailure’ were the error messages I was being greeted with. Dissecting the Errors The key hint here was the job task ‘Backing up <VM Name> to Backup Repository. Followed by the worker not being authorised.Within

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure: Repository Backup has Failed

Iams3leVeeam Legend

VMware vCenter Server is advanced server management software that provides a centralised platform for controlling your VMware vSphere environments, allowing you to automate and deliver a virtual infrastructure across the hybrid cloud with confidence.This privilege escalation vulnerability in VMware Center Server was reported to VMware by Yaron Zinar and Sagi Sheinfeld of Crowdstrike for reporting.Present IssueThe vCenter Server contains a privilege escalation vulnerability in the IWA (Integrated Windows Authentication) authentication mechanism. VMware has evaluated the severity of this issue to be in the Important severity range with a maximum CVSSv3 base score of 7.1. Impacted ProductsThe following products are impacted. Workarounds are available to remediate this vulnerability in the affected VMware products.VMware vCenter Server (vCenter Server) VMware Cloud Foundation (Cloud Foundation).Known Attack VectorsA malicious actor with non-administrative access to vCenter Server may expl

VMSA-2021-0025.2 - VMware vCenter Server updates address a privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE-2021-22048)

regnorVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

It’s not big news that Microsoft is going to disable Basic Authentication in October 2022. Thanks to @Mildur we already know that What I didn’t get at that time, Microsoft is already randomly disabling Basic Authentication for customers/tenants; of course only if Basic Authentication isn’t used at all.The process is: We’ll randomly select customers with no usage in any, or all affected protocols, send them a Message Center post informing them that in 30 days we’re going to turn off Basic Auth. 30 days later, we’ll turn it off and send another Message Center post to confirm it was done. Customer protected... check!→ https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/basic-authentication-and-exchange-online-june-2021-update/ba-p/2454827The StoryNot that bad if you don’t use Basic Authentication, but I did run into a problem with that. I was able to successfully setup Veeam Backup for Office365 with Legacy protocols (Publicfolders )and after a week it suddenly stopped working; all

VBO365 - Microsoft is already disabling Basic Authentication (Legacy Protocol)

MicoolPaulVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Today, VMware have announced vSphere+ & vSAN+, VMware’s attempt at providing cloud benefits to traditional ‘on-premises’ virtualisation environments.Let’s dive in! What is vSphere+?VMware vSphere+ is a subscription service for vSphere licensing, complimented by the addition of cloud-based services bundled into the subscription pricing. Subscription pricing being the most predictable element in my opinion as this is how the model most tech companies are using to license their products. Cloud ConsoleVMware will be providing a cloud console for centralised ‘single pane of glass’ management for all your VMware vSphere deployments, globally.It will be possible to view global inventory, security posture, resource capacity, and even offer the capabilities to tackle configuration drifts between instances vis Desired State Configuration.Alerts will be centrally collated within the Cloud Console, with VMware enabling simplified workflows for sysadmin tasks such as centralised updating of vCe

VMware vSphere+ & vSAN+ Announced

Iams3leVeeam Legend

VMware ESXi contains Return-Stack-Buffer-Underflow (CVE-2022-29901, CVE-2022-28693) and Branch Type Confusion (CVE-2022-23816, CVE-2022-23825) vulnerabilities due to the Intel and AMD processors it utilizes.There is a resolution to this issue, and as such there is no workaround discussed in this guide. VMware has evaluated the severity of these issues to be in the Moderate severity range with a maximum CVSSv3 base score of 5.6. VMware ESXi enables you to:Consolidate hardware for higher capacity utilization. Increase performance for a competitive edge. Streamline IT administration through centralized management. Reduce CapEx and OpEx. Minimize hardware resources needed to run the hypervisor, meaning greater efficiency.Multiple side-channel vulnerabilities in Intel (CVE-2022-29901, CVE-2022-28693) and AMD (CVE-2022-23816, CVE-2022-23825) CPUs have been disclosed. Patches are available to mitigate these vulnerabilities in affected VMware products. Below are the impacted products.VMware ES

Moderate. VMware ESXi addresses Return-Stack-Buffer-Underflow and Branch Type Confusion vulnerabilities

MicoolPaulVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Today I want to share a sneak peek at the next release of Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, v6a. Like traditional minor/interim releases, this release will mainly include bug fixes. However, there’s an interesting feature being released that I’ll be sharing some details on. Goodbye Exchange, Hello Teams Export APITo understand what’s changing, we need to understand what is going, and why this change is necessary. Currently, Veeam are protecting Teams channel ‘chat’ data via Exchange Online. Notice I say Teams channel, currently Veeam doesn’t protect any ‘Direct Messages’, either 1:1 or group chats, so chat in this context refers to posts and comments within a Teams channel. How does Veeam currently process my Teams data?To achieve the protection of this Teams data, Veeam reads a hidden folder within Exchange Online, called ‘TeamsMessagesData’. This is true whether you use Basic or Modern Authentication.If you weren’t already aware, Microsoft are completing removing Basic Authentication S

Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v6a - Teams Export API Previewed

haslundMr. VMCE

The new official capacity calculator for O365 is now live at https://calculator.veeam.com/vbo/You can either connect it to your real account and retrieve needed data or manually input data:If you love the full details you can click the “Show details” button:This will definitely make it a lot easier to estimate capacity use, but also size VBO servers and proxies, just click on the little “i” icon next to infrastructure sizing for even more information like CPU/memory:

The OFFICIAL! Veeam Backup for Office 365 capacity calculator is LIVE!

Chris.ChilderhoseVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

This week I was able to sit the VMCA2022 course on Thursday and Friday. The course was taken through HPE Learning and is a two day course. The course is the entire day for the duration and is jam packed with great content and labs. My instructor was George Vish II and he was extremely great with the course teaching. Overview: The course takes you through the new “Design Methodology” of Veeam and covers the following topics -Discovery Conceptual Design Logical Design Physical/Tangible Design Implementation & Governance Validation and IterationThe course is mix of both lecture and lab work using the Veeam Activity Guide document which lays out the methodology, Architecture principles, the Scenario you work on and all the required details including questions with answers and charts that you fill in.You are taught in the Discovery phase how to get things like -Requirements Security Requirements Constraints Assumptions Risks Other Information pertinent to the projectLabs - Group Work

Veeam Certified Architect 2022 - Course Review

kirststoner12Product Strategy

Veeam ONE is an important part of Veeam Availability Suite. If you are new to Veeam, or currently running Veeam Availability Suite, you may not know that you have a powerful monitoring solution not only for your data protection environment but also your virtual environment. Veeam ONE provides visibility into your environment by monitoring and analyzing data trends that identify resource usage, helping plan for capacity, ensuring applications are performing efficiently and confirming backup operations are completing successfully. Veeam ONE does all of this, and if you are first getting started with Veeam ONE, this blog post is for you.Monitoring your environmentOnce you have added your environment into Veeam ONE, it immediately starts collecting data on how resources are being consumed, finds any problem areas and identifies bottlenecks. By switching through the different Veeam ONE Client views, you can monitor different environments, get more granular based on infrastructure components

5 Steps to Getting Started with Veeam ONE

anthonyspiteri79Product Strategy

Hear the problem statement that led to the founding of ⁦@Minio from COO and Co-Founder ⁦@garimakap⁩ … Episode 48 looks at the state of Object Storage and how the data profile of what’s stored is shifting!

GTwGT Episode 48 with MinIO

regnorVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Probably you’ve heard the rumors or news already, but today Broadcom announced that it’s going to acquire VMware.https://investors.broadcom.com/news-releases/news-release-details/broadcom-acquire-vmware-approximately-61-billion-cash-and-stockI personally don’t know what to think about this, but I don’t have any positive feelings about the future of VMware. After they were split of from Dell I was hoping that things would get better, especially their quality. But now being merged with Broadcom (they’re going to rebrand as “VMware”) I’m not sure what we can expect from them.What do you say about this? Anything positive or negative about this?Update 26.06.2022:Broadcom did publish a new blog post. It doesn't contain much information, and rather feels like an answer to all the negative comments: https://www.broadcom.com/blog/broadcom-vmwareAnd the EU is going to do an antitrust investigation and could probably block the acquisition: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/broadcom-take

Broadcom acquires VMware

MicoolPaulVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

It’s that time of the IT lifecycle again, where we talk upgrades and decommissioning.On the 12th July 2022, Microsoft SQL Server 2012 will go End of Life. Not just to extended/security patch support, but completely out of support.So, why am I talking about Veeam? If you’ve got an installation of Veeam that utilised a SQL Server Express database, and you installed Veeam prior to 9.5 Update 4, odds are you’ve got a SQL Server 2012 Express database. This creates a security risk as of the next Microsoft patch cycle, scheduled for the 12th July 2022.I would also like to state that whilst this isn’t the focus of the article, if you’ve got a Veeam Backup & Replication or Veeam ONE environment that’s not running v11 yet, you really need to upgrade, as everything prior is at end of fix. Which version of SQL Server should I migrate to?Unless you are limited by the operating system support for SQL Server 2019, I don’t recommend going for anything older. This is because SQL Server 2017, whils

Veeam & SQL Server 2012, The Approaching End of Life & How to Migrate

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

If I survive the Tsunami, Sea Monsters, or hordes of American fishermen I will return later to talk about RedHat’s Kubernetes distribution for testing: Local Openshift!

The Kasten Tsunami Pre-Show from the Lake. Today Local Openshift

vNote42Veeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Although the post is very small, the news in it is big 😃With v12 you can start a Active Full backup of a single VM processed by a job. Just open the progress dialog of the job and right-click the VM you want to backup. As you can see, this can also be used to run a Retry just for selected machines. Important: this will just work when you use the also new feature in v12: True per-machine backup files

[What (else) is new in v12 - IV] Active full/Retry of a single VM of a job

vNote42Veeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

There are a lot of new PowerShell cmdlets for VBR alone - without agents and explorers. in v11 we have 1178, in v12 1334 cmdlets. So the list is too long to show here. Categories I could see:GFS scheduling options Hyper-V Surebackup/Instant Recovery CDP Tape … I have to check separately :) Application Groups OracleAnother nice feature is that we now can see PowerShell commands at the end of wizards.In older versions we saw parameters for Veeam.Backup.Manager.exe.

[What (else) is new in v12 - III] PowerShell news

vNote42Veeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

The question may sound provoking. I asked myself during reading an article about Quantums concern about the LTO roadmap:https://blocksandfiles.com/2022/06/17/quantum-thinks-lto-tape-falls-short/For short: Capacity of tape media fall behind capacity of single disks. Also therefore tape does not fit for hyperscale that good. They need huge volumes of cheap storage. Best solution would be to use tape as very slow disk drives. And because hyperscaler use tapes within their own environment, they do not care about standards. And because they are the biggest customers for tapes, it could happen that we see a new tape technology arise. At least this is my option.What do the community think about this?

Do we need a new tape standard?

marcofabbriVeeam Legend

Problem: Like a shooting star, sometimes can happens that some backup job on a Synology NAS fails with this error:Error: Incorrect function. Agent failed to process method {ReFs.SetFileIntegrity}.with VB&R 11.0.1.1261 and DMS 7.0.1 with a SMB share.It seems to be related to “Fast clone” feature inside Synology control panel. Solution: Adding this registry key in the VB&R machine seems to solve the issue[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication]"UseCifsVirtualSynthetic"=dword:00000000 As reported in this thread, that registry key tweaks the full fast clone feature.https://forums.veeam.com/microsoft-hyper-v-f25/error-incorrect-function-agent-failed-to-process-method-refs-setfileintegrity-t68754.html More about this topic:All said above, I found this topic on reddit where the issue is present on Veeam 9.5u4 and always a Synology NAShttps://www.reddit.com/r/Veeam/comments/omridr/synology_ds1821_and_veeam_95u4/What is Fast clone:https://kb.synology.com/en-id/

Backup job issue, incorrect function with Synology backup repository

JMeixnerVeeam Legend

This is the description of an unusual scenario where Backup Job Files (.vbk and .vib Files) are backed up with a File-to-Tape Job instead a Backup-to-Tape Job. This has several disadvantages, e.g., you must know on which tape your files you want to restore are residing. You cannot find your tape backups under the backups section in the “Home” view of console and many more…OK, now have a look how we get these files back from tape.See the results of the File-to-Tape job and find the tape number the files reside on. If you don’t know the tape, read further, and use the search function ( Note: the warning in the screenshot can be ignored. The filesystem is too big for VSS Snapshots, I have forgotten to switch the VSS snapshots off for this test backup job.).Then go in the Veeam Console to the “Tape Infrastructure” section. Either go to the media pool where the affected tape is in or look for it in the Media section of your tape library.Right click on the tape and select “Restore Content”.

Veeam and Tape III - Restore of Backup Job Files from Tape which were backed up with a File-to-Tape Job

beneComes here often

Its getting hot … and cheap !Welcome back after a longer break since the last blogpost.Meanwhile I`m one of the main responsible german counterparts for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365. Over the last month I saw a lot of different environments with various challenges, while there is a big transformation from on-premise repositories to object storage as well.Today I want to share my experience with the community.Whenever I`m involved in bigger projects, at some point in time we have a price discussion about repository costs with the customer. With the flexibility in Veeam you can choose whatever you want as a repository. There is no „vendor lock-in“ or any risk in loosing data if you want to change f.e the backup software in future.For sure there are some pros & cons when you are choosing your object storage repository. So let me start what you need to consider and why:ConsiderationsSize (always matters...): Your very first step to start your decision journey: Please use our c

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365: An object storage decision guide

regnorVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

For me this has been quite surprising news. With beginning of version 6a of Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, a different API will be used for backup of public Teams channel messages. The current way with EWS is getting deprecated by Microsoft and in the future “Microsoft Graph Export API for Teams” has to be used.What does this mean for VB365 users?With version 6a VB365 will no longer by default protect Teams data. In order to still being able to backup public Teams channel messages, you will have register for the “Graph Export API”. This process can take up to two weeks and in addition the usage of the Graph Export API can cause additional costs (by Microsoft).How do you register for the Graph Export API?The registration process is described in detail in the following KB article: https://www.veeam.com/kb4322What costs will be expected?Unfortunately I can’t really say what costs will be generated by Teams backup. There’s a dedicated page from Microsoft on the licensing/payment but still

VB365: Changes necessary for Teams backup in version 6a (New API)

MicoolPaulVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

In 2020, Microsoft announced the vNext editions of their popular SharePoint, Skype for Business, Project, and Exchange Server applications, due for release in the second half of 2021. However, as of the time of publication, only SharePoint and Project Server Subscription Editions are available.The other products have had their delays greeted with a wall of silence from Microsoft, until now. Whilst there’s still no word on if/when we’ll see Skype for Business Subscription Edition, the Microsoft Exchange team have provided an in-depth breakdown of what’s going on with Exchange Server Subscription Edition, and honestly, I’m impressed with their transparency. The Exchange Team Recommend Exchange Online, and 2019?It should come as no surprise that Microsoft recommend Exchange Online, after all, who knows Exchange better than Microsoft? But in Microsoft’s latest Exchange blog post, we see Microsoft also endorsing Exchange Server 2019 where there is a requirement to not utilise Exchange Onlin

Microsoft Exchange Server vNext Delayed - New Details Available

vNote42Veeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

With v12 you can add VMs to a global exclusion list. These VMs will not be backed up. Even if explicitly added to a job. Nice new feature for all those VMs that aren't worth backing up.

[What (else) is new in v12 - II] Global VM exclusion list