Blogs and Podcasts

With the Veeam Software Appliance and the Veeam Infrastructure Appliance, update distribution is fundamentally changing. The Veeam Appliances automatically install certain updates to ensure security and operational continuity. This represents a massive increase in security and compliance. What is updated?Operating system and security updates are installed centrally and automatically, cannot be deselected, and are mandatory for both appliances. Security updates for Veeam Backup & Replication are also installed automatically and without user intervention to ensure security.Both appliances can also optionally install feature and bug fix updates automatically, provided this is enabled in the configuration. Major updates (e.g., V14.0), minor releases (e.g., 13.x), and private fixes are optional by default.Here is a simplified overview:Mandatory updatesVeeam cumulative & security updates (e.g., 13.0.x) Operating system security updatesOptional updatesMinor product updates (e.g., 13.x

Well, even being on vacation the series must continue, so I present to you blog #5 in my series around v13.  You can read it below as well as on my blog site via the link.Blog - How I’d Monitor Veeam v13 in the First Week How I’d Monitor Veeam v13 in the First Week Introduction The first week after a rollout is where a backup platform proves whether it is stable under normal production load. A single successful backup window is a good sign, but it is not enough to establish confidence in a newly upgraded or newly deployed v13 environment.Early monitoring should focus on patterns. Repeated warnings, creeping runtimes, repository latency, or noisy alerts often tell a more useful story than one obvious failure. The goal is to establish what normal looks like before the environment becomes busy enough to hide drift. Watch Job Trends, Not Just Failures The most important view in the first week is the trend line across scheduled jobs. Administrators should look for backups that complete more

If I had to share just one tip this #SysAdminDay, it wouldn't be a Veeam feature or a PowerShell script.It would be this:Know the environment you're protecting.It may sound simple, but it's one of the biggest lessons I've learned after working on many projects and handling several incidents over the past few years.Many people see a backup administrator's job as checking whether backup jobs completed successfully. Of course that's important, but in my opinion, that's only the tip of the iceberg.Long before an incident happens, the basics need to be done right. Healthy backups, a solid 3-2-1-1-0 strategy, monitoring, restore testing, up-to-date systems, security features, and good governance. Those are the foundations that give us confidence that, when the bad day comes, we have a real chance of recovering the environment.But there's something that becomes even more valuable when everything starts going wrong.Knowing the customer's environment.When an incident happens, customers panic. A

Everybody keeps repeating the same headline numbers from the Veeam V13 release notes when it comes to the new Veeam V13 immutability model. 40% less storage, an 8x reduction in retention calls and more than 2x fewer object storage API calls in total. I recently presented this exact topic at our German Veeam Usergroup in Cologne, and the number one question afterwards was basically: “Falko, does it really work like that ?”So instead of trusting the marketing slides, I built a lab, turned on S3 audit logging and counted every single API call myself. I guess most people already know that I love object storage  In this blog post I want to walk you through what I did and what the logs actually revealed.Object Storage has quietly become the most important repository type in the whole Veeam world, and the reworked immutability engine in Veeam V13 pushes this even further. With V13, every job type can write directly to object so there are no exceptions and no workarounds. That is a pretty big

On of the large risks in IT isn’t just Ransomware, hardware faults, or even disaster recovery events.What happens when the person who knows how everything works quits? In many organizations, especially smaller ones, the Veeam Admin is not just responsible for dealing with backups and restores all day. Some of the tasks us Administrators do are:Windows Server Administrators Virtualization Administrators Storage Administrators Security Administrators Network Administrators Domain Administrators Cloud Administrators Disaster RecoveryYou get the point, we wear many hats, and have a lot of access and knowledge. Here are a few things you need to do in the case someone who is responsible for these items do. 1. Change Every password  they knew.Veeam Service accounts, Repositories, Hypervisors, OS’s, Storage, Tape libraries, Storage arrays, Switches, Firewalls, Server management, Cloud accounts, Enterprise applications, Encryption passwords…. The list goes on and on, but you don’t know what was

From Veeam 12 to Veeam 13: Building a Future-Proof Backup & Recovery PlatformIn the coming period, we will take an important step in further strengthening our digital resilience. Our current Veeam 12 environment will be migrated to Veeam 13, based on the new Virtual Appliance architecture. At the same time, we will replace our existing, technically end-of-life backup hardware with a completely new infrastructure.For VNOG (Veiligheidsregio Noord- en Oost-Gelderland), cyber resilience is essential because our services directly support public safety and crisis response, where continuity really matters. VNOG is a regional public safety organisation responsible for fire and rescue services, we provide essential fire-fighting services and assistance in the event of accidents, disasters and crises to the 870,000 citizens of North and East Gelderland in the Netherlands.The new design is distributed across two data centres. Within our vSAN environment, which hosts approximately 180 Windows

I’ve been going through an AWS course recently, and while reading about S3 versioning, I was wondering how many times people look at versioning, backup, and disaster recovery thinking they solve the same problem.It’s a very common way to think about them, but once you start breaking it down, it becomes clear they operate at completely different layers.They all fall under the broader idea of data protection, but mixing them up usually becomes obvious when something actually goes wrong.Versioning (AWS S3 Versioning)This is the most immediate layer. I think in AWS, S3 Versioning answers a simple question: “Can I recover a previous version of this object?”If something gets overwritten or deleted, S3 keeps older versions so you can roll back.It’s fast, simple, and very effective for small mistakes — an accidental overwrite, a bad update, or a quick rollback.But it’s still operating inside the same system. Same bucket, same environment, same trust boundary.So it works well for object-level r

 I got this number wrong on my first pass, so this post is partly a correction to myself. While fact checking a storage economics piece, I pulled the Block Generation figure from the unstructured data immutability page: up to 10 days added on object storage. Then I found the dedicated Block Generation page giving 30 for some providers. Same user guide, different answers, and a 20 day spread between the documented values. That seemed worth running all the way down. Short version: the feature is smart, the savings are real, and it's often missing from the capacity math I see.What Block Generation actually is Immutability on object storage is enforced object by object, and that creates a scale problem. A typical daily incremental reuses most of the blocks already sitting in the bucket. Veeam has walked through the math on the R&D Forums: at an ordinary daily change rate, nearly every block in a new restore point already exists in storage, so going back and pushing each one's lock forw

It is hard to imagine modern IT environments without snapshots. They are quick to create, can be automated, and ideally to restore very fast to an earlier state. So it is no surprise that in day-to-day operations you often hear the sentence: “We have a snapshot — so we have a backup.” But is that really true?The short answer is: usually no. The slightly longer answer:A snapshot can be a very valuable recovery point. But only through independence from the production system, defined retention, copies to another medium, protection against manipulation, and reliable recoverability does it become a resilient backup concept. So, what actually is a backup? A backup is a separate, recoverable copy of production data, systems, or applications. Its purpose is to restore a defined state after data loss, corruption, user error, attacks, or infrastructure failures.What matters is not only that data from an earlier point in time exists “somehow”. A backup should primarily fulfill the following chara

Hi everyone! I've been working in the lab on some Kubernetes deployments using MobaXterm Home Edition and Rancher. I started off using PuTTY, but found that it could be limiting for what I needed. So I began my hunt to find the best SSH client, and I ended up landing at MobaXterm. In this post, I want to talk a bit about why I opted to use MobaXterm and all of the great features it offers, especially pertaining to working with Kubernetes. Intuitive UI and Easy to NavigateWhile evaluating alternatives to PuTTY, I found that PuTTY along with other SSH terminals looked a bit dated and less approachable. Since this was my first time doing this much terminal-focused Kubernetes work, I wanted a tool I could easily navigate to reduce friction. MobaXterm has a very sleek interface that lends itself nicely to beginners and experts alike. 15 Session Settings/OptionsMobaXterm supports a wide range of session types (SSH, Telnet, RDP, etc.), which makes it useful as a single tool for connecting to

Hello everyone!This is my first contribution to the Veeam Community Hub!In the long term, I plan to start my own blog to share my thoughts and technical perspectives from my daily work, but while it is in the making, let's move on with my thoughts on the topic „how to structure jobs.“This post will cover Veeam Backup & Replication in the first place, but in the future I will also cover Veeam Microsoft 365.In my daily work, I have seen a lot of variations, like “naming schemes“ (please imagine this in very large quotation marks), like "Backup Job 1“ or „Server Backup x with Database.“Basically naming jobs like this, of course, works, but in the daily work you have to search for what this job is exactly, and when the description is the default one, you don't know anything.To prevent this situation, and because I really like to organize things:)Over time, I have developed a specific naming scheme for jobs in Veeam Backup and Replication, such as Backup to Disk or Backup Copy Jobs.This

  I'm documenting a full move from VBR v13 on Windows to the v13.1 Software Appliance, run for real in my Pure Storage lab before any of it gets called a production map. Part 2 of the series just went up, and it's the architecture conversation, so I wanted to share the highlights here where the architecture arguments actually happen.The premise: the worst time to make design decisions is mid-migration. The appliance model changes enough old defaults that the target deserves a fresh sheet of paper, not a copy of what your Windows server had. Here's what ended up on my sheet.The backup server is now an appliance you don't log into. The VSA gives you a hardened, Veeam-managed Linux base with no OS access, and after years of preaching simplicity I find that liberating rather than scary. An OS I can't touch is an OS I can't break, and one an attacker finds much less interesting. The old placement rules still apply though: keep the control plane out of the blast radius of what it protects.Pr

 Why this guide? A while back, a customer asked me for a simple step-by-step guide for restoring the Veeam Backup & Replication configuration onto a newly deployed Veeam Software Appliance. This write-up is the result. It has been a little while since then (as you can tell from the version used, 13.0.1) - but since I haven't found a similar step-by-step guide here in the Community Hub yet, this one is for you. I am well aware that most of the steps here are self-explanatory for all of us, and that most of you could get through this configuration blindfolded. My customer, however, asked for a truly foolproof guide - something to provide a rough direction in a worst-case scenario. That said, should it ever come to that, we will of course be supporting them anyway...And finally, the customer also receives a checklist to document the individual steps - you will find it at the end of this guide.  VBR / Veeam Backup Server Configuration Restore  If the entire Veeam VBR intelligence is no

 Have you ever wondered where we Veeam 100 members are distributed around the world?Based on Veeam 100 Directory | Veeam Community Resource Hub and the public location information I have from our LinkedIn profiles, I sat down and provided a world map that answers exactly the above question, or shows it on the map. In the backend, I use MapGeo and Google Sheets for this. As soon as you press directly on a member or their point on the map, the photo stored from the Veeam 100 Directory (in the Community Hub) opens.For short information such as names, titles and, if applicable, Blog URL just “hover” over the point on the Map. Below the map is a search mask, here you can jump directly to the corresponding member, which also opens the stored profile picture (see above). If you want to continue searching, just click outside the photo. Now only ​@safiya, ​@Madi.Cristil, ​@NikolaPejkova, ​@HannesK and ​@Rick Vanover need their own category in the Veeam 100 Directory with a photo, so that I can

Recently, one of our clients experienced a situation that perfectly illustrates why operational resilience must be at the heart of every IT strategy regardless of any external threat.📖 The ScenarioWe were in the middle of building a new infrastructure, which was not yet operational, when the client suffered the loss of both server rooms within 48 hours of each other.The cause? Not ransomware. Not an intrusion. Simply the simultaneous end-of-life of SSD drives after nearly 8 years of operation.The tiered storage architecture amplified the impact: as soon as the SSDs reached their endurance limit, the first site collapsed overnight. Investigation quickly confirmed the diagnosis. But the second site, running the same architecture with the same history, followed the same path two days later.Bad timing? Absolutely. ⚙️ The Operational ResponseThe situation was all the more complex as the production infrastructure was end-of-life and out of support, we were precisely in the process of buildi

Even though I am on vacation this week and next still need to keep up with the blog series of 10 in 10 weeks.  For week four we discuss the VSA and operational changes.  You can find a link to my blog and the article below.Blog - Veeam Software Appliance: What Changes Operationally Veeam Software Appliance: What Changes Operationally Introduction The Veeam software appliance is one of the more important operational shifts in the v13 release. It changes the conversation from simply installing backup software to managing a more controlled platform with a tighter lifecycle and a more opinionated security posture.That matters in production because backup teams are often measured by consistency more than flexibility. A platform that reduces configuration drift, narrows the administrative surface, and standardizes maintenance can improve reliability, but it also changes how teams troubleshoot and support the environment. Deployment Changes Traditional deployments often inherit whatever stand

Recently, a customer came to me with what seemed to be a simple question:“Our Veeam Enterprise Manager can suddenly no longer properly connect to the Veeam Backup & Replication server, and the Catalog Service no longer synchronizes. But nothing was changed. What could be the reason?”Ah, the famous IT words: Nothing was changed.Of course, I basically understand what is meant by that. But it does not necessarily mean that a person changed something. Maybe a process, an automation, an update, a migration, etc. changed something. And of course, it is also possible that another person changed something without informing anyone, or that you changed something yourself but do not remember it anymore — or you do not see the impact because, at first glance, it does not seem to have anything to do with the issue.Well then, time to roll up our sleeves and go through the checklist:Was there a Veeam update?No Was there a configuration change in Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager or Veeam Backup &am

Yesterday I got an error for two oracle databases which are backed up via the VEEAM RMAN plugin.Strange - there are several database instances on this system, all but the two are working fine. And these two had worked up to then, too…And… I did not change anything in the VEEAM and plugn configuraton  After some discussion and research with our Oracle admin - bingo.He had moved these two databases to another Home directory and did not change the corresponding entries in the /etc/oratab. So - as shown in the picture - the backup of the database and the recovery logs worked, but the creation of the AUTOBACKUP failed and the ORA-01012 error was given.After the entries were corrected all worked fine again.Perhaps some of you will face similar issues, too. I did not find anything for this problemin the forums with a quick search.

Hi everyone,I would like to share a troubleshooting case that took me a few long days to resolve. I hope this can help someone facing a similar issue in the future.The scenario was a VAW deployment to a customer Windows Server.At first, the issue looked like a standard deployment or Windows Installer problem. The Veeam Backup & Replication server was able to reach the target server and upload the MSI package, but the Agent installation never completed.The target server was also a bit unusual: it was heavily used through Remote Desktop sessions, with more than 60 users logged on. Because of that, it was not always easy to know if another MSI installation was really running, and we also had to perform all troubleshooting outside business hours. First issue: another installation already in progressThe first error we saw from the VBR console was:01/06/2026 22:34:43 Failed : [172.16.254.120] Installing package Veeam Agent for Windows Error: Another installation is already in progress. A

The ChallengeYou did everything right. You planned the maintenance window, cleared the pre-flight checks, upgraded your Veeam Backup & Replication server to v13, and expected the usual smooth ride when pushing the updated Veeam Agent to your protected workloads. Instead, the Protection Group rescan throws certificate errors, some of your agents stay on the old version, and your backup jobs on those endpoints start to look nervous.I ran into exactly this on a customer environment recently, and since the root cause was neither obvious in the logs nor documented in an easy-to-find KB, here is the short write-up. The Symptom(s)After the VBR upgrade to v13, the console tries to push the new Veeam Agent binaries to the Windows guests in a Protection Group. The deployment fails with a certificate related error, typically along the lines of:A certificate chain processed, but terminated in a root certificate which is not trusted by the trust provider. Or a signature verification failure on

If you use Remote Desktop Manager (RDM) with Devolutions Cloud, please take a few minutes to update your installation.Devolutions has identified an issue affecting RDM versions 2026.2.1 through 2026.2.12. Under certain conditions, some entries stored in Devolutions Cloud can become unreadable. While the issue only occurs after a specific set of actions, Devolutions recommends that all organizations running the affected versions install the latest release as soon as possible.Starting July 21, 2026, older affected versions will no longer connect to Devolutions Cloud. This measure helps prevent organizations from encountering the issue.What you should do:Update Remote Desktop Manager to the latest available version. I have verified my Remote Desktop Manager installation and confirmed that it is running version 2026.2.13, which is outside the affected 2026.2.1–2026.2.12 range. Therefore, I cannot show you the update process. But this is very basic and if you are not prompted to update, ple

After my previous articles on backup security and object storage on-prem, today, we'll examine the best practices for using them with Veeam.Here Why go with on-premises object storage and here The choice of storage explained my ideas about a new generation storage as a backup repository.So we'll check out the best configuration for creating a backup job and explain why we chose it.Object Storage as the main repository in Veeam v12.3.As we all know, since version 12, it's been possible to use an object storage repository as a primary destination for backups. This makes the architecture simpler and offers greater flexibility.When you're getting started with object storage as a repository, it's important to remember the backup block size (block size) that's used for writing.The size you choose in the 'Storage Optimization' tab, configuring a backup job, affects how the data is divided and stored.How do we calculate the space we need for our repository?I started using a calculation tool re

In today’s digital world, data security is a top priority for organizations. Veeam Backup & Replication has evolved to meet these needs, and one of its key innovations is the Veeam Hardened Repository ISO—a solution designed to protect backup repositories from ransomware and other cyber threats.What Is the Veeam Hardened Repository ISO?The Veeam Hardened Repository ISO is a Linux-based solution that secures backup data by making it immutable. This ensures that data cannot be modified, deleted, or encrypted by unauthorized parties, even in the event of a ransomware attack. The repository allows organizations to set a retention period during which backups remain secure and unaltered.Key Features:Immutability and Retention Locks: Ensures backups are safe from external modifications. Ransomware Protection: Protects backups from being encrypted or deleted by ransomware. Linux-based Security: Utilizes Linux’s built-in security features for enhanced protection. Enhanced Data Availability:

Having updated to Proxmox VE 9.0 below. There is a need to upgrade from  Veeam Plug-in for Proxmox VE build 12.1.3.217 to plug-In build number 12.1.5.17 to support it.The Proxmox VE Plug-in integrates the backup server with the Proxmox VE server and enables worker deployment. From version 12.3.1 and above, you do not have to manually install this plugin.You can download the Plugin for Proxmox VE directly from the referenced link, or navigate to the release Information for Veeam Plug-in for Proxmox VE v12.1.5.17 in the following KB article.To see the current version of the Veeam Backup for Proxmox plugin that you are currently using. Please launch the Control Panel or Windows Settings as you wish. As you can see, we are currently using the version 12.1.3.217 As you can see below, this meets the requirement for the Veeam Plug-in for Proxmox VE build 12.1.3.217 which can be determined via the steps below.You can check the build number in the Veeam Backup & Replication Console’s Main M

 1) In the beginning there was the password…… and of course it was created by humans—so it was often simply “1234”, “<first name><birth year>”, or “password”.“password”: A password as secure, useful, and brave as an umbrella in a hurricane — but hey, it worked for logging in. You logged in, everything was fine, and back then life didn’t yet have password policies—and luckily, at the start there also weren’t worldwide automated attacks via the internet.Then password security policies were introduced step by step—but let’s be honest: humanity is lazy and most people’s memory isn’t that great. So “password” turned into:At least 1 uppercase letter: Password At least 1 numeric character: Password1 At least 15 characters: Password1234567 At least 1 special character: Password1234567!What an evolution. Ah, humans are as simple as they are brilliantly constructed. One of the newer developments is the passphrase, which actually helps. The idea is to combine several words that are ea