Blogs and Podcasts

Morning everyone, VMware vSphere 8.0 U2 is now available, with improvements to lifecycle management, AI workloads, and DevOps amongst others!https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2023/09/vsphere-8-update-2-now-available.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vsphere-8-update-2-now-available A quick reminder to all, Veeam Backup & Replication v12 only supports up to vSphere 8.0 U1 currently. Veeam can’t start their validation until the code is available so we’ll now see Veeam begin their testing process. You can check the status of vSphere platform support here: https://www.veeam.com/kb2443Veeam typically target vSphere platform support within 90 days of release, so with the betas of VBR 12.1 functionality appearing online, I’d guess we won’t see 8.0 U2 support until 12.1 ships unless that encounters massive delays. So yes, wait for Veeam to support vSphere 8.0 U2 before you upgrade, there’s no point having all this new functionality if you can’t protect any of your work

Since we added Linux Repositories to our Veeam Backup environment in my post from last week, why not add some Linux Proxies as well? I will show you how in this post. And trust me…this one will be far less painful. But adding Repositories wasn’t so bad, was it? 😏 System RequirementsThe first thing you need to do is check what OS's, hardware, and software are supported. Supported Linux OS's are exactly the same as with Repositories and are listed below:Linux Proxy RequirementsAs far as hardware goes, your server should have a minimum 2-core CPU, plus 1 core per 2 concurrent tasks (take note, this is a peformance enhancement since v12, up from 1 core per 1 concurrent task); and minimum 2GB RAM, plus 500MB per concurrent task. But for best performance and to run multiple Jobs and tasks, you should have much more Cores and RAM than the minimum. As with the Veeam Repository, look to the Veeam Best Practice Guide for actual Proxy sizing guidelines.The remaining requirements depend on the Ba

This KB came out years ago and was updated in January.  Just a reminder to check all of your Veeam infrastructure, SQL hosts, and guest OS’s that have application aware and indexing enabled.  I found a few servers that have been created in the last few years missing a few. I don’t know if I’ll see much a performance increase, but it can’t hurt 😀  Antivirus Exclusions for Veeam Backup & Replication KB ID: 1999 Product: Veeam Backup & Replication | 11 | 12 | 12.1 Veeam Cloud Connect | 11 | 12 Published: 2015-02-03 Last Modified: 2024-01-02 Purpose This article documents antivirus exclusions that may be created to reduce the impact that antivirus software has on the functionality of Veeam Backup & Replication. These antivirus exclusions may be applied to the Windows built-in antivirus or third-party antivirus software. Note: Antiviru

When you will download data from Exchange Online – Microsoft will throttle your traffic. In previous years to change it, you should open a support ticket to MS. Now you can temporarily change this directly on Microsoft 365 admin center. This can be especially useful for initial full backup for multiple mailboxes. How to setup this? Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center and in the top right corner open help and just type “ews”. Then you have to run tests as a results you will have option to select duration 30, 60 or 90 days with higher throughput speed.select one of available value and update settings. 

Hi all,I attach the step by step procedure to perform a PostgreSQL Database upgrade. PostgreSQL: CVE-2025-1094: PostgreSQL quoting APIs miss neutralizing quoting syntax in text that fails encoding validation KB4386: Upgrading the SQL Database Engine Software (Microsoft SQL Server or PostgreSQL) Used by Veeam Backup & Replication Ensure that there are no jobs or restore tasks occurring. Manually Create a Configuration Backup. (Optional) Create a backup of the Configuration Database. Stop and Disable all Jobs Stop all Veeam services on the Veeam Backup Server Upgrade the SQL database software. After the upgrade completes, restart the Veeam Backup ServerPostgreSQL Upgrade ProcedureEnsure all jobs, policies, and tasks are stopped, and those that are scheduled to run are disabled. Stop all Veeam-related services on the Veeam Backup Server. Get-Service Veeam* | Stop-Service -ForceDownload the latest version of PostgreSQL that is compatible with Veeam Backup & Replication.Note: The mo

Continuous Data Protection (CDP) is a new feature provided by the upcoming Veeam VBR v11 mainly addressed for Tier-1 applications that cannot deal with data loss.Announced for a long time, the CDP technology allows you to configure the RPO Per Second and this can be done leveraging vSphere API for IO Filtering (VAIO). Install the Continuous Data Protection filter to hosts First step is the installation of the CDP filter to the hosts member of the cluster. The installation takes place in the Managed Servers section under Backup Infrastructure area. Before proceeding make sure your Veeam Server has been registered in your DNS infrastructure.Once the vCenter Servers have been added to the Veeam infrastructure, right click the source side vCenter and select Manage I/O filters. Configure the CDP Proxy To leverage CDP, it is required the deployment of the new CDP Proxy to handle the data. Although you can install different roles in the chosen Windows Server, make sure CDP Proxy is not alread

Veeam Backup & Replication Version 12.3.1.1139 – March 2025 Release OverviewVeeam Backup & Replication version 12.3.1.1139 was released on March 19, 2025. This update includes important security patches, new features, and enhancements. In this post, we'll cover the main highlights, such as security updates, improved platform support, and added functionalities.Security UpdatesVeeam Backup & Replication 12.3.1.1139 includes critical security patches addressing important vulnerabilities:CVE-2025-23120 (Critical - CVSS 9.9): This vulnerability allows authenticated domain users to execute remote code, making it a serious concern for domain-joined backup servers. It’s worth noting that this vulnerability only affects domain-joined backup servers, which goes against the Security & Compliance Best Practices. It's crucial for users to apply this update as soon as possible.New Features and EnhancementsThis release introduces several new features and enhancements across various pl

Microsoft dropped a surprise on us today by releasing Windows Server 2022 to no fanfare at all. It’s been released today 18th August 2021, it will have mainstream support until the 13th October 2026 and will be considered end of life on the 14th October 2031 (how are we talking about the 2030’s already?!). This is evidenced in Microsoft’s updated Windows Server Release Information document.If you’re looking to grab an evaluation copy of Windows Server 2022 you can do so here. Alternatively if you have a suitable agreement with Microsoft you can also download a copy from VLSC or MSDN.Interested to learn what’s new in Windows Server 2022? You can check out Microsoft’s post on the subject here. IMPORTANT: Microsoft are making TPM 2.0 support mandatory, if you’re looking to install onto existing hardware, be sure you meet the hardware requirements. Supported Platforms Realistically it’s going to be premature to start migrating your entire environment to Windows Server 2022, but in the inte

Greetings, friends! I want to share with you the new Grafana Dashboard for Veeam Backup & Replication, no Enterprise Manager is needed, and it uses 100% VBR API.Small note: For those familiar with the data protection scene, you might recall that we’ve already got a Grafana Dashboard dedicated to the Veeam Enterprise Manager API since 2020. Grafana Dashboard for Veeam Backup & Replication API When you finish this article, if you follow all the steps, you should have something similar to this. It might be different according to your environment, number of days you select, protected workloads, jobs, etc.Dashboard – SummaryJob Historical Information – The very first graph. The most important one in my opinion. Grouped by 24 hours, get to know the status of your policies per day, on a range in time. Job Historical Information Table – Very similar to the previous panel, but this time with more details about job name, status, date, etc. Job Historical Information Duration – Very simil

Inspired by @Geoff Burke‘s post about immutability for Kasten with Wasabi, I decided to post the same for Veeam Backup & Replication. If you want to check out Geoff’s post, then follow this link:What/who is Wasabi?Probably Wasabi doesn’t need to be introduced. But if you can only think about the paste you get with Sushi, then you should check out their cloud object storage. Besides AWS and Microsoft, Wasabi is one of the Vendors, who often gets recommended for usage with Veeam Backup. The reason for that is their really competitive pricing, combined with great functionality/quality and low complexity.How to create an immutable bucketAfter registering an account with Wasabi, the creation of an immutable bucket isn’t complicated at all.Just make sure that you select the right region for your location, and also enable bucket versioning and object locking.Afterwards you need to create an access key. For testing purposes you can use the root account key, but for production you should cr

There are new Veeam Sales Professional (VMSP) and Veeam Technical Sales Professional (VMTSP) 2023 accreditations available in ProPartner Portal.This year the two accreditations do not consist of one single learning path, but on a base “Sales Foundation” part and five different learning streams. With the completion of the base module and one learning stream you will get a badge to show off…The learning streams for the VMSP and VMTSP are:✅ Public Cloud✅ Ransomware & DR✅ Microsoft 365✅ Container Protection✅ Cloud Service ProviderSource: Veeam ProPartner Portal - Veeam IQSo Veeam ProPartners, go and get them 😊

Veeam's Malware Detection feature released with v12.1 was certainly a much-anticipated and welcomed feature by many, me included. And, if you didn't read it, I even wrote about my initial experiences with it:But since enabling Inline Entropy Scan in my environment, I've really had to micro-manage it with regards to Malware events of potential malicious activity Veeam "finds". Veeam is certainly aware of the short-comings of the Inline Scan engine and I know they are hard at work preparing an update for release which I'm confident will make it better. See this Forums post for further details.In the meantime, I've had to really dig into doing a lot of Scan Backup and manual scan tasks, as well as get creative in how I do forensics on my systems to make sure the Malware Detection events I'm receiving are false positives. And if not, take care of those issues appropriately as well. I thought I'd share some of the forensics and analyses processes I'm doing in my environment to help the Comm

Veeam Backup & Replication v13 has arrived with significant improvements in security, performance, and data governance. I recently performed the upgrade from version 12.3, and in this article I share the entire process, from preparation to post-upgrade validation, following the official Veeam documentation. The goal is to present a practical, real-world experience while highlighting what’s new in this anticipated release. Preparing for the UpgradeBefore starting the upgrade, I followed Veeam’s recommended best practices to ensure a smooth and safe process. This included: Checking system compatibility, supported OS, storage repositories, hypervisors, and all backup infrastructure components. Ensuring no backup jobs were running. Updating the Guest Catalog and cleaning up old sessions. Performing a Configuration Backup, which stores all settings from the Veeam server. Creating a server backup or snapshot as an additional safety measure—especially recommended for production en

I was installing the VBR Console on my PC, and when connecting to the backup server, there was a version mismatch that the Veeam User Guide (HelpCenter) spelt out correctly. Here is the guide on how to “Install Veeam Backup Console on a Jump Server for Secure Access”, discussing all the prerequisites, installation steps, limitations and workaround.I searched through the community but could not find any post discussing the upgrade process for the latest version of VBR. Therefore, I will be discussing these steps below.Two months ago, December 3, 2024 to be precise. Veeam launched Veeam Data Platform v12.3, introducing powerful enhancements that significantly strengthen data resilience.  This release introduces advanced capabilities that strengthen enterprise data resilience and security, as discussed in this blog post. Therefore, I will not be discussing these as there are tons of articles in the community discussing the features/capabilities as referenced below. https://community.veeam

Block Sizes As can be seen from the field, optimal value for the stripe size is often between 128 KB and 256 KB. However, it is highly recommended to test this prior to deployment whenever possible.During the backup process data blocks are processed in chunks and stored inside backup files in the backup repository. You can customize the block size during the Job Configuration using the Storage Optimization setting of the backup job.By default Veeam’s block size is set to Local Target, which is 1 MB before compression. Since compression ratio is very often around 2x, with this block size Veeam will write around 512 KB or less to the repository per Veeam block.This value can be used to better configure storage arrays; especially low-end storage systems can greatly benefit from an optimized stripe size.There are three layers where the block size can be configured: Veeam block size for the backup files, the filesystem, and the storage volumes.Let’s use a quick example: The Veeam block size

Veeam has just informed it’s customers about an existing vulnerability in Veeam Backup & Replication. Unauthorized users may be able to request encrypted credentials from the VBR service, and therefore get access to the backup infrastructure. The KB articles haven’t received updates so far, but the vulnerability did get a CVSSv3 score of 7.5.EDIT: The KB article has just been published: KB4424It’s recommended to patch VBR as soon as possible!SolutionPatches have been released for VBR V11 and V12. Please keep in mind that older releases are also affected, but no longer get fixes. So you need to upgrade your installation to a supported release.Patch for Veeam V11a KB article for V11 Patch for Veeam V12 KB article for V12WorkaroundAs a temporary workaround you can block access to TCP port 9401 on your Veeam Backup & Replication server. This will affect the connection of mount servers to the VBR server, so only use this if you don’t have a distributed Veeam environment. And still a

I recently wrote a blog about using Synology Immutable Snapshots and Replication.  Check it out below and find it on my blog as well - Just Virtualization Blog Synology - Immutable LUN Snapshots with Immutable Replication I have been using Synology NAS devices for the past two years in my homelab with VMware vSphere 8.0U2, vSAN, Intel Optane, Veeam Backup & Replication, Backup Eagle, Runecast and a host of other things. I have my newest DS923+ set up as my primary storage for my VMware environment and my older DS920+ is my backup NAS as well as Replication partner.One thing that comes with the Synology DSM 7.2 upgrade (OS) is the ability to set up snapshots on a schedule, including Immutability. With Ransomware on the rise protecting your systems with backups alone is starting to not be sufficient enough. Enter the Immutable storage snapshots with replication on the Synology NAS devices.In order to configure storage snapshots with Immutability you first need to create a LUN within

More en more companies are being a victim of malware, ransomware or even hackers.It is always important to implement the golden 3-2-1-1-0 rule (in detail explained in a former post of me - 3-2-1-1-0 Golden Backup Rule | Veeam Community Resource Hub).Next to this rule, one of the first things to keep in mind is to protect as much as possible your backups because those can save you when you are being attachked and you need them.The first thing that comes in mind, is to harden your Veeam Backup & Replication server as much as possible.I will give you here 10 tips you can implement. There are of course more things possible, but it's a start.1 - Do not domain-join the backup server in the production domainA best-practice is to put the VBR server in a workgroup and not AD domain-joined for smaller environments.Why? If ransomware is nested in a roaming profile of a domain-user connecting to the domain-joined VBR server, this malware can be activated on the VBR server and impact the backup

Yesterday I saw the error a second time, so I thought it would be helpful to others to share.Error happens when VBR tries to read vSphere information for the VM to back up. Error says "Error in the application" like you see in the screenshot.After some troubleshooting we found the reason for this. It was because TCP-port 902 was not allowed (in all firewalls) from the Veeam proxy server to the ESXi host that was hosting the VM to back up. After the port was enabled in the firewall(s), backup ran without further issues. Notes:Used ports for VBR see here: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/used_ports.html?ver=110 Vanguard @Cragdoo also shared this error some time ago. In his case the error was caused by a name-resolution problem on a new Linux Veeam proxy server.I hope this post safe others some time when this error appears.  

Did you know that you can calculate all your licenses in this link?   then a representative will contact you, it's super easy ... https://www.veeam.com/pricing-calculator?ad=vul-pricing-calc-bottom   

Last week I had to troubleshoot a backup job that was using a brand new proxy and repository server. No other job was using these components. Nonetheless just 4 VMs were processed at the same time. All other VMs showed status “Pending”. As additional information, “Resource not ready: Active snapshots limit reached for datastore” was shown too in active job log.After a short investigation we found out, all VMs were located on just one VMFS datastore. Fortunately there is a rather simple solution for this limitation. You can create a registry key on VBR server to increase the limit of active snapshots per datastore:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication\MaxSnapshotsPerDatastore For more details see this forum posts:https://forums.veeam.com/vmware-vsphere-f24/active-snapshots-limit-reached-for-datastore-t19711.htmlNice detail: The change enters into force immediately – even the job is currently running!Keep in mind, this is a global setting!  

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

​VeeamON - it’s beta time!I recently had the pleasure of attending VeeamON in San Diego, where the much-anticipated V13 of Veeam Backup & Replication was officially announced. This latest version promises to bring a host of new features and enhancements that will undoubtedly elevate our data protection strategies to a new level.In this multi-part blog series, I will guide you through the installation process and provide an in-depth overview of both the well-known and the newly introduced functionalities (as available in the beta) within Veeam Backup & Replication V13. Whether you are a seasoned Veeam user or new to the platform, this series aims to equip you with the knowledge and insights needed to make the most of this powerful data security platform.One of the standout announcements at VeeamON was the release of the Linux appliance version, albeit in beta. This exciting development will serve as the foundation for our detailed drilldown, where we will explore its capabilitie

While helping an SE with a POC, I encountered an odd obscure error when trying to install a repository on one VM and a proxy on another VM. The error message was received after we added the VMs as managed Windows servers and during the actual repository and proxy install.The error I received was:“Installing package Transport Error: Error 1920. Service Veeam Data Mover Service (VeeamTransportSvc) failed to start.  Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services.” I was a little panicked when I saw this as I have not encountered this error before, and the service installs work.After my initial panic, my attention immediately turned to an account permissions issue.  The account being used is a domain account that was a member of the local administrators group on the servers.  The account used was able to start and stop other services. A check of Google yielded little insight.  It did point me to the Veeam KB 1059 – which discusses this error.The first step it mentioned

I wanted to share a couple Veeam errors I experienced on my Replication (DR-side) server after I replaced server hardware. Not sure if anyone has experienced either of these errors, but they were quite frustrating to work through. Let me know if you had a similar experience/occurrence and what you did to resolve it. Maybe what I share here will help someone.As I was replacing hardware in my DR side vSphere Clusters, on my VBR server, I would perform a vCenter rescan to make sure VBR would see the new Hosts and my Replication jobs would run successfully. Because all the tasks involved with replacing h/w is time-consuming, I was only doing 3-4 Hosts a day (took 3 days for 10 Hosts), so I had to do this rescan several times. I think I only verified 1 or 2 jobs out of around 12 I have, but they run good. On the 2nd day, I noticed 1 of my jobs failed. The error shown was below:So, it appeared to me like Veeam didn’t actually update all references to any of my old Hosts and their associated