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1263 Topics
JMeixner
JMeixnerOn the path to Greatness
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
Data Backup Basics XII: Safeguarding Backup Systems Against Ransomware Threats

In the ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats, ransomware stands out as one of the most insidious and pervasive dangers facing organizations today. As cybercriminals use increasingly sophisticated tactics, it is essential for IT professionals to establish robust measures to securely protect their data protection solutions from ransomware attacks.In this article, we delve into specialized backup strategies and technologies tailored to combat this growing menace. Understanding the Ransomware ThreatRansomware attacks continue to plague organizations worldwide, posing significant operational and financial risks. Attackers deploy sophisticated malware to encrypt data and demand hefty ransom payments for decryption keys, often leveraging tactics such as phishing emails, exploit kits, and remote desktop protocol (RDP) vulnerabilities to infiltrate networks. In addition to encrypting files, ransomware attackers may also target backup systems, aiming to disrupt recovery efforts and ma

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randyweis
safiya
safiyaCommunity Analyst
published in Blogs and Podcasts
Veeam 100 Show - Security Unbreakable Veeam Backup Fabric: A Belgian Redefinition in two case studies

We had our 6th V100 Show this month! Can you believe it? The V100 Show highlights the innovations of our Veeam 100 members and how they are benefiting the community at large.  Hosted by @Viperian, @Nico Losschaert @WorkingHardInIT explain Belgian companies’ data protection strategies and how they were able to create an unbreakable Veeam backup fabric. Didier and Nico also share their stories of joining technical communities and the rewarding parts of community involvement. Catch the replay here!  

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Nico Losschaert
coolsport00
coolsport00Veeam Legend
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
Veeam v12.1 Hidden Features

It’s been just about 2 months since Veeam released its newest version – 12.1. I've taken a little bit of time to review their What's New document, as well as browse around the Console. A lot of us in the Community were really looking forward to this release, mostly for a couple of its anticipated security enhancements – Scan backups for malware, as well as scan using YARA rules, both of which can be done without the need of using a Surebackup job or Virtual Lab.But, there are quite a few other features in this release you may not be aware of. So I thought I'd do a follow-up to my v12 Hidden Features post, and share some potential hidden features in Veeam's v12.1 version you might not be aware of as well. Let's get started!Four Eyes AuthorizationOk, this may be cheating a bit…some of you may (probably) already know about this security feature Veeam implemented in v12.1. But, I don't think it was fully given its due as much as some of the other new security enhancements. If you're not aw

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coolsport00
MarcoLuvisi
MarcoLuvisiInfluencer
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
World Backup Day Blog - My little story

My professional experience with backup procedures starts when servers were only physical and backups only with tapes, long recovery times and a recovery rate of 70-80%.If the operating system became corrupted, you were forced to rebuild a server from scratch...Then the advent of hypervisors and a chance meeting with Veeam in the VMUG community event and it was love at first job !No hard-to-understand interfaces and incomprehensible logs and the restores worked !From version 5.0 to version 12.1, years of work and successfully completed restores have passed with the many thanks received from Customers for saving them from various disasters.  Of course, it is necessary to know it well in order to configure the jobs correctly for each environment and infrastructure, but the result is guaranteed.I really appreciate the effort made to guarantee the security features included from version 12 onwards, and I give a 10/10 to the 4-eyes feature in addition to the other YARA backup control and 'in

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Scott
marco_s
marco_sInfluencer
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
WORDL BACKUP DAY – ANOTHER STORY, SAME LESSON

This is a story that is certain to have happened in a similar way to many of you.It is a story about a topic that is unfortunately becoming more and more current and frequent for those in the sys/backup admin job: managing the response to a ransomware attack.It was a Friday morning, the business week was drawing to a conclusion, and outside a pleasant spring sun was already warming the earth.As I arrived at the office, I was immediately notified that a client whose virtual infrastructure we were managing was no longer able to access some servers.In most cases, so many reports turn out to be minor issues, sometimes all it takes is a few tiny actions and everything gets sorted out.…  But this time, I don't know why, I had a bad feeling: we connect to the vCenter, it responds, fine, but as soon as we log in we see that most of the VMs are in an "inaccessible" state..what could have happened? The storage seems ok, the datastores are mounted..looking here and there we take a browse to a VM'

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Madi.Cristil
mhmdadl
mhmdadlVeeam Vanguard
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
WORLD BACKUP DAY - Your Data, Your Responsibility

WORLD BACKUP DAY - Your Data, Your ResponsibilityIt is #WorldBackupDay again, and I wanted to tell two stories that happened to me personally as a student and as an employee. from those stories, I learned one major lesson: my data is my responsibility 1- Student A long time ago, I was in my final year of college. I really liked my study in nuclear engineering, and I assume that I was a good student (top 10). then, I had an old PC with limited storage capacity. Due to lots of materials and resources I had, I bought a CD burner and started to “burn” CDs to save my data. This wouldn’t be enough. I was afraid to lose those CDs for any reason, like accidentally breaking them.The solution comes on a silver plate, my neighbor bought a new PC with sufficient storage. We made a cross-connection over the network and started to share data together. It was a good solution for me to save my spare data on a “trusted” machine rather than CDs. That was a relief. isn’t it??!!No, it is not. My neighbor

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Iams3le
Iams3le
Iams3leVeeam Legend
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
[World Backup Day] Veeam Backup for AWS should have been released earlier!

Since this issue wasn’t specifically caused by me, I will try to coin it correctly. The takeaway here is that with “Veeam Backup for AWS”. This issue would have been fixed in a jiffy. Release Dates for Veeam Backup for AWSYes, I would love to list the various years the following versions were released and as such, most of us were left with AMI and various script options for creating backups. Veeam Backup for AWS, the solution designed to protect your Amazon Web Services (AWS) workloads, has seen several releases. Let’s take a look at the key versions and their release dates:Veeam Backup for AWS 7: Release Date: December 5, 2023 Veeam Backup for AWS 6a: Release Date: July 3, 2023 Veeam Backup for AWS 6: Release Date: July 3, 2023 Veeam Backup for AWS 5a: Release Date: December 9, 2022 Veeam Backup for AWS 5: Release Date: June 16, 2022 Veeam Backup for AWS 4a: Release Date: December 23, 2021 Veeam Backup for AWS 4: Release Date: October 5, 2021 Veeam Backup for AWS 3: Release Date: Dece

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Iams3le
Moustafa_Hindawi
Moustafa_HindawiInfluencer
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
World Backup Day Blog - My 2nd story

This is my second story with backup, I will talk about my first project, it was with Veritas, however, the challenges was pretty good to gain experience.I had a project to backup Oracle DBs at oil and gas customer. The challenge that DBs wasn’t be able to be backed up. Support could not solve the problem, and I needed to sigh out the project.After troubleshooting and following KBs, I found that each DB has its own issues. One needs to setup the time and date, another needs to configure ORATAP file, and another has issues in archival logs.After fixing issue one by one, the project has been completed and signed off

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Moustafa_Hindawi
Moustafa_Hindawi
Moustafa_HindawiInfluencer
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
Big challenge at big financial sector

I have a big challenge when a big project for Veeam was handed over to me in the middle, the project was at big financial sector, it was a migration from Networker + Data Domain to Veeam on Pure NAS storage.The first challenge was I have no choice to set the best practice, like not to backup to NAS storage, specially with huge environment with more than 30 Hyper-V host and big Oracle database.The second challenge was is to backup Hyper-V with internal policy to disable checkpoints!!!The third challenge was to backup 60TB Oracle DB with applications using same ports of Veeam to NAS storage.To overcome the first challenge, nothing to do 😂To overcome second challenge, I had to backup general VMs with Hyper-V backup jobs, and VMs with application, I had to backup them with Veeam AgentsTo overcome third challenge, I had to use Veeam Application plugin and create scale-out-repo and created 10 NAS shares to increase in parallel backup scream. 

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Scott
leduardoserrano
leduardoserranoOn the path to Greatness
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
World Back Up Day. My story: Chaos on the Network!

Organizations generally tend to think about backing up their data and applications, which is always great!However, they often forget to protect the configurations of the components of their IT environments. And this is very important as most corporations still have to deal with technology silos made up of the most diverse solutions, standards, and manufacturers.The ability to quickly restore the operation of these environments in the event of failures of any type is extremely critical to ensuring business continuity!Historically, one of the biggest challenges has always been keeping the backup of network equipment up to date. After all, companies can have hundreds or even thousands of these components in their IT environments.Some time ago, when the concept of Software Defined Network did not yet exist, this was a manual, error-prone and problematic task.As a testimony, I went through a very critical situation due to the lack of an updated configuration backup in a large, mission-criti

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MarkBoothman
JMeixner
JMeixnerOn the path to Greatness
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
Data Backup Basics XI: The importance of malware detection in backup systems

In the ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats, safeguarding data integrity within backup systems has become paramount. Malware, in its various forms, poses a significant risk to the reliability and security of critical data backups. This article delves into the pivotal role of robust malware detection in ensuring the resilience of backup solutions, emphasizing real-time scanning techniques, periodic scans, and updates to identify and contain potential threats promptly. Understanding the Threat Landscape Direct attack of the Backup SystemsMalware, including viruses, ransomware, and other malicious software, can infiltrate backup systems through various vectors. Whether through compromised network connections, infected devices, or malicious email attachments, the threat is omnipresent.Once in the backup environment, malware can lie dormant and wait for the right moment to strike, compromising the integrity of the backup data. In the worst case, the entire backup repositories ar

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Scott
TylerJurgens
TylerJurgensInfluencer
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
vCommunity Podcast

I’d like to share a new vCommunity Podcast that’s been in the works lately.We discuss all things vCommunity. A gathering place if you will of people from all walks of the tech community. Its not vendor specific, but you may find a few friendly faces from time to time. Special thanks to @keiranshelden for pushing to have this start off. Along with regular guests @tsmith,  @JoeHoughes and myself @Tyler Jurgens we tackle a range of topics and questions. Check us out! You can find us on (other platforms will be added as we can):Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@vCommunityioPodBean: https://vcommunity.podbean.com/Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vcommunity-podcast/id1733005383

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Scott
MarkBoothman
MarkBoothmanVeeam Legend
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
World Backup Day Blog – Sometimes we need a bit of luck.

I thought I’d post a slightly different take on an experience I had several years ago in a previous role, sometimes even the good guys need some luck. We had recently taken on a new client and hadn’t had a chance to review their infrastructure, unfortunately for them, everything was domain-joined and backed up locally to a NAS.The client got hit by ransomware and it ran amok encrypting the production VMs and unfortunately for the client also files stored on the NAS. This happened during the middle of the night and the client only noticed the next day when they turned up for work. Frantic calls followed to the help desk and the recovery effort started.Initial response efforts found that the backup server encrypted and it looked like the backup metadata was also affected. Upon further investigation, Lady Luck shows up. It appears that a number of the VBK files were being written at the time and were locked, so they were not affected.We deployed a new VBR server and set about importing th

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Scott
Scott
ScottVeeam Legend
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
World Back Up Day Blog - It's 3-2-1-1-0 for a reason!

Years ago, before 3-2-1 and 3-2-1-1-0 were household terms, I had a lot of photos from my early teens, and other important documents stored on my computer.  Fixing PC’s from an early age, going on college, then work for a large IT company I knew the importance of data backup, and have seen people upset when their precious photos were gone forever. I had an old Dell prebuilt PC that was cutting edge at the time. I paid thousands for it, and it had one of those nice big square monitors. I still have the recept somewhere to remind me not to keep spending so much on items the depreciate in value so fast. (as I type on a computer with a 4090 GPU and 14700k CPU🤣)  I bought a USB hard drive for backups, and copied over everything. One day, when my computer crashed I was happy when I bought a new hard drive, and restored all the files. I never really thought about it too much, and felt like my own hero for not losing all my data. I continued on, copying all my photos and files to the drive fo

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Scott
Geoff Burke
Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
Nutanix Community Edition in Proxmox, Part 1 Initial Setup

Nutanix has been around for sometime but I have only recently decided to take a peak at it.I am going to install a single node cluster nested in my Proxmox homelab.First step is to create your Nutanix account (free) and login. Head to the Nutanix Community Edition page by pressing launch.Press Launch under Community EditionISO and InstructionsDownload the ISO and then upload into your Proxmox. Now time to setup the VM. Create the VM Choose the ISO.ISODefault Settings You need at least 3 disks and 2 of them need to have SSD emulation turned on. The first disk can be relatively small but the other two mush be at least 200GB200GB diskLast disk for data.3rd diskIn my case I chose 4 sockets 2 cores for 8 vcpus and processor type hostCPUMemory AllocationNetworkSummaryAfter creating start the VM.StartAfter the boot screen completes eventually the Nutanix CE Installer will appear.The Use column should fill out automatically but you can edit if need be. Keep in mind that the Hypervisor boot dri

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coolsport00
Geoff Burke
Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard
asked in Blogs and Podcasts
How many folks here did the original VMCA ADO exam?

Hi Everyone, Quick poll here. There might be some interesting news coming.  

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JMeixner
A
AdamLipiecNew Here
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
Azure Immutable Storage

Azure PortalIn order to use Immutability with Azure Blob Storage, you must setup Storage Account creation.On the “Data protection” tab of storage account creation:Disable “soft delete for blobs” Enable “Versioning for blobs”  Select “Keep all versions”  Disable “Version-level immutability support”Set “Blob public access” to Disabled and create a container. Give the container a name and set the “Public Access Level” to “Private”.Container-Level SettingAfter creating the Storage Account with the required settings, create a new container with the following setting:Expand the Advanced section, and Enable “Version-level immutability support”Notes:Do not configure lifecycle management policies for the container`s data.Do not enable any default immutability policy at the storage account level.After the Container is created, go to Security → Networking, Access Keys and copy the key1 key. Veeam Data Platform SettingLaunch New Object Storage Repository WizardAdd Backup Repository, Object storag

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Chris.Childerhose
Geoff Burke
Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
WORLD BACKUP DAY BLOG! Backups and IT Conspiracies!

My story goes back many years ago. At the time I was working abroad for an American real estate company. My manager was a decent person but very much into the whole "I am a manager" thing. He loved playing mind games with the staff by giving them the evil eye when he was not pleased and making elusive comments about imminent cutbacks in staff with a regretful but obvious smirk on this face. He also enjoyed demonstratively taking people into the server room for confidential talks. One day he asked me to come and have a talk in the server room so I knew that something unpleasant was afoot. He explained that the branch office in K. needed to do a server upgrade and he would have gone and performed the task himself but....blah blah. In short there was obviously something wrong with that office and he did not want to go.I had a very early flight and arrived at the branch office before 8 am. Much to my surprise the local boss was already there. He immediately informed me that he was a former

813
Scott
k00laidIT
k00laidITVeeam Vanguard
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
New koolaid.info post on setting up PostgreSQL for Veeam

Hey y’all, doing a bit of testing with VB365 v8 and documented my way through getting PostgreSQL setup on a ubuntu 22.04 server for this purpose and it seems to be working very well. Here’s the link if you think it will help you out! https://www.koolaid.info/postgresql-on-ubuntu-2022-4-installation-configuration-for-veeam-purposes/

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coolsport00
regnor
regnorVeeam MVP
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
Cancel hanging task in VMware ESXi via commandline

I’ve seen this multiple times now with VMware. You cancel a task via vCenter or the ESXi UI and it just stays there hanging and nothing further happens. Normally this situation resolves itself after some time, but just last week I had a case where the task never stopped. While the Webclients weren’t really helpful in that case, we were able to cancel this task with the ESXi commandline.Warning: Interupting certain tasks, for example snapshot consolidations or Storage vMotions, can lead to issues or corrupted VMs. So only do this if you don’t have any alternatives and need the task to be canceled. And better have a backup at your hand.SolutionStart the SSH service on the ESXi host where your VM is registered Connect via SSH Query the VM ID: vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms Query all tasks for this VM: vim-cmd vmsvc/get.tasklist “VM ID”Check the Task information: vim-cmd vimsvc/task_info “haTask….” Is the task still state still active? Note: The screenshot is just an example; the task state is s

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K
CarySun
CarySunVeeam Vanguard
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
How to Migrate a Physical Machine to Hyper-V Cluster VM-P2V

Let’s walk through the steps to perform a Physical to Virtual machine (P2V) conversion using Veeam Backup and Replication (VBR) to migrate a physical server to a Cluster virtual machine.Install Veeam Agent on the Physical MachineInstall the Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows on the physical server you want to convert. Ensure the agent is properly configured and connected to your Veeam Backup and Replication server.You can also create a Protection Group to install it. We will show you how to convert it from the Veeam Backup and Replication Management Console.Create a Protection Group and add the physical machine to the protection.Ensure you select the Install Backup agent. Create a Temporary Backup JobIn the Veeam console, Select the Protection Group and create a new backup job for the physical machine.Select Server Type and Manage by Backup Server Mode.Assign Job name and Description.Select the entire computer in backup mode.This is just a temporary job. Change the Retention policy to 1

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CarySun
Nico Losschaert
Nico LosschaertOn the path to Greatness
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
Veeam Backup for M365 vs Microsoft 365 Backup and Microsoft 365 Archive

Hi allMany people in the community probably are already aware of the fact that in Q4 of 2023 Microsoft will launch in preview their own 365 Backup and Archive service.For those who doesn’t know yet, they are now informed 😎.More info can be read and viewed on following links : Welcome to Microsoft Inspire 2023: Introducing Microsoft 365 Backup and Microsoft 365 Archive - Microsoft Community HubMicrosoft 365 Backup and Microsoft 365 Archive My goal is to have a summary of pro’s and con’s of this MS service vs the proven existing Veeam solution!As a partner we are offering at this moment a Veeam SaaS solution and my idea is to keep it that way of course 😊, but therefore I have to convince the cloud team that this is still the best solution to offer to our customers.The MS backup solution is a built-in solution to backup M365 (Onedrive, Exchanage and Sharepoint).The MS archive solution is to put less frequently data on cheaper cold storage but can still be directly used.Is this Microsoft

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Chris.Childerhose
coolsport00
coolsport00Veeam Legend
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
#WorldBackupDay When Veeam Storage Snapshort Orchestration Saved the Day!

Cue Superman standing on a hill with hands on his hips, wind blowing through his hair, and cape flapping in the wind 🦸🏻😂  Ok, not really...hahaThe truth is, “sysadmin superhero-like” tactics would not have been needed if I had been a bit more meticulous in my storage configuration tasks.Veeam FlexibilityOne of the many benefits of using Veeam Backup & Replication is its flexibiltiy in how you deploy it. Personally, I use the “Advanced” deployment method, creating separate servers for Veeam and my ancillary components, Proxy and Repository. But, to save on hardware and software (OS) costs, Veeam allows you to combine the Proxy and Repository roles. I use physical hardware for these components. As such, I wanted to push my physical compute (CPU/Memory) and network (10Gb nics) resources to the limit on my hardware, so I combined them on 1 server. At the time, I also chose to use the fastest backup method → DirectSAN. One drawback of using the DirectSAN transport mode with Windows (

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Iams3le
vNote42
vNote42On the path to Greatness
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
[What (else) is new in v12 - XIV] SureBackup – Disable Windows Firewall

When it comes to SureBackup, at least a ping test is desirable. In some situations no network connection can be established to the VM under test because of the internal Windows Firewall. Now it is possible to have SureBackup disable this to reduce these kind of false positives.For more information to this feature read the documentation:https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/surebackup_job_tests_vm.html?ver=120See the list of all new features in v12: https://www.veeam.com/veeam_backup_12_0_whats_new_wn.pdf 

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jcolonfzenpr
JMeixner
JMeixnerOn the path to Greatness
posted in Blogs and Podcasts
Data Backup Basics X: The Role of Encryption in Backup Solutions

In the realm of data protection, encryption stands as a crucial line of defense against unauthorized access and breaches. This article delves into the significance of encryption within backup solutions, emphasizing its role in safeguarding sensitive data during transit and storage. We explore encryption standards, key management strategies, and the compliance implications that organizations must consider when implementing encryption in their backup infrastructure. IntroductionIn today's digital landscape, the significance of encryption in safeguarding sensitive data cannot be overstated. Encryption stands as a powerful mechanism, rendering data unreadable to unauthorized parties, whether it's in transit or at rest. Particularly within the realm of backup solutions, encryption assumes paramount importance in fortifying data security throughout its lifecycle. By encrypting data during both transit and storage, organizations can effectively mitigate the risk of exposure to a myriad of thr

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coolsport00

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