Blogs and Podcasts

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

Hello everyone A long time ago, I was employed as a programmer at a small hosting company. About eight weeks in, I had just returned after two weeks of absence from the office due to family matters. Out of the 3 Linux sysadmins we had, we only had one left. The only one left got tasked to replace a RAID controller on a faulty server overnight. When I came in the next morning, I got a call from the customer asking why their server was still down. Being the programmer in the company, I contacted the owner and the Windows sysadmin to see if they knew why. They gave me the cellphone number of the engineer and I reached out. All I got was a snarl from him with “I am still working on it!”Together with the Windows sysadmin, we decided to go to the data center and see if we could help him somehow. When we entered the suite, the only thing he could say was “Everything is gone, I can no longer find the partition tables”. He gave some details on what he did and we decided to send him home to get

 It's alarming to note that over the past few years, the speed at which ransomware attacks are executed has plummeted by a staggering 94%. Criminals now take an average of just 3.85 days to deploy a ransomware attack, a significant decrease that should raise serious concerns. Once triggered, the encryption process is lightning-fast, further underscoring the situation's urgency.According to a real test scenario conducted by Surge/Splunk, it takes about 5:50 minutes to encrypt 98.561 files placed in 100 directories of a Windows Server 2019 host. The LockBit is the fastest variant because it only encrypts 4KB of each file, rendering it unusable.Even more concerning is the potential for triple extortion in these attacks. Suppose the initial ransom for recovering the encrypted and exfiltrated production and backup data is not paid. In that case, criminals can escalate the situation by launching a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against the organization’s services. This adds anot

Yes, Veeam can! (sorry for this pun)Question arose today and I thought this is could be interesting to share: Is it possible to copy a backup copy job? So can a backup copy job use a backup copy job as source job? Yes and no. It is not possible to select the copy backup job directly. But it is possible to select the repository, the (second) copy job searches for backup data. How to create a copy copy job:Start the New Backup Copy Job wizard and enter a name. Here it is required to use Periodic copy (pruning) Copy mode! Note: Source copy backup job can also use Immediate copy (mirroring) mode. On next step, press Add… → From backups...  and select the job you want to copy second time.It is important to do so, otherwise, selected source repository (next step) will be ignored!Press Source… and select the repository, the first copy job uses as target. This is the repository this copy job will read backups from. The rest of the wizard can be configured as desired. In joblog you see the sour

Hi Everyone,I have changed my channel’s name. I figured everywhere I go everything nowadays is verified, except of course for my stuff because I refuse to pay more! However, I can verify myself and what’s more at no cost at all! So welcome to the Verified Vanguard! I will continue to talk about Kubernetes things as well but also introduce more Veeam and Security topics into the content.   

Hi Everyone.I was fiddling in my lab yesterday evening which is never a good idea on a Friday after a long week. Trying to setoff some security alarms with different systems that I am testing I went a little too far and somehow nuked the agent distributable package for windows. This morning when getting ready to do some testing with IAM/STS on Ootbi I ran into this error when trying to rescan a manually added  machine:ErrorAfter a short search I realized that the redistributable package for Veeam Agent for windows had been corrupted. The solution is quite simple. Mount your Veeam VBR installation ISO and run the VAWRedist.msiVAWRedist.msiRun the MSIAgent for WindowsAfter that I tried the rescan again and everything worked as is should:SuccessI can now go back to my originally planned weekend to do list! 

Recently @Julia F Morgado and I have released a blog post talking on the Best Practices to a secure AWS environment.https://www.veeam.com/blog/aws-security-best-practices.htmlIn this guide, we emphasize the significance of data encryption and utilizing the AWS Key Management Service (KMS). Encrypting data is crucial to thwart unauthorized access, and when combined with immutability, it not only protects against data theft and misuse but also guards against the malicious deletion of data.There’s also a third risk even with those two practices that I would like to share, which is the KMS key being deleted.  Say you’ve done everything right and encrypted your immutable backups with a key, then your production and/or other copy of the data (3-2-1 rule, right?) have been attacked, locked or encrypted, and someone have deleted the KMS key to your backups, how will you recover?Andreas Wittig from Cloudonaut wrote an interesting scenario where a combination of some pre-conditions could lead to

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

This document provides step by step instructions to configure Azure Active Directory for SAML authentication in Veeam Enterprise Manager. There are four editions of Azure AD (AAD): Free, Office 365 (which comes together with O365), and two Premium editions P1 and P2. Comparison for all of them can be found at https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/active-directory/Below you can find steps to setup Veeam Enterprise Manager and Azure AD integration based on AAD from Office 365.Let’s start with the Azure side. Go to Azure portal then go to Azure Active Directory. Go to Enterprise applications → New application  →  → “Create your own application” → then provide a name for our application i.e. Veeam EM, and select “Integrate any other application you don’t find in the gallery” → Create Within a few moments’ applications will be created and visible under Enterprise Application view. Open it. Now let’s add some users (Step 1). In this version of AAD, only users can be added. In Pre

World Backup Day is March 31 … April Fools Day is April 1 … So, for our April 2nd Livestream, we’d love to highlight as many crazy, chaotic, or startling backup or recovery challenges, successes, or failures, that you’ve personally experienced.   We won’t be saying full names or companies, so feel free to submit anonymously – but if you have a short story that others can learn from, we’d love to share it. So, either grab your phone, turn that camera around, and record a 15-60 second clip of some of your most challenging backups or recoveries OR write down your story.  Either way, upload your written or recorded story to https://veeam-wbd24.portal.massive.io.Then tune in April 2nd as we laugh and cry about them together. -- JBuff Ps, turns out this idea isn’t as original as I thought, as some of you are also already submitting a similar story for the Blog of the Month contest.  So now you have two reasons to tell us your best or worst stories!

 In this demonstration, we will walk through the steps required to install Veeam Backup for GCP and integrate it with Veeam Backup & Replication using a plug-in.With Google Cloud Plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication, you can add Veeam Backup for Google Cloud appliances to the backup infrastructure and perform the following operations from the Veeam Backup & Replication console:Start and stop backup policies, monitor session statistics, and perform configuration backup and restore. View created snapshots and image-level backups. Restore VM instances, individual persistent disks, and guest OS files and folders. Restore VM instances to AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Nutanix AHV. Perform Instant Recovery of VM instances to VMware vSphere, Hyper-V environments, and Nutanix AHV clusters. Restore all Cloud SQL instances and specific databases.I hope this video is helpful! 

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: 

Just a quick teaser of a project I’ve been working on since receiving my RPi 4B last week. I CAN’T OVERSTATE THIS ENOUGH, THIS IS NOT TO BE USED FOR, AND MUST NEVER BE USED WITHIN A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT. THIS IS A FUN PROJECT ONLY. I’ve managed to get Veeam’s binaries running on the Raspberry Pi, but I don’t mean the backup agent, I mean the actual Veeam Installer Service and Veeam Transport Service components.I’ve managed so far to create backup repositories directly on the RPi, though I’m having issues getting IO to flush properly to attached storage, causing backup jobs to fail.The VMware backup proxy process incorrectly identifies the Raspberry Pi as 32-bit when it’s running a 64-bit OS, and is reporting itself as x86_64.But I’ve managed to successfully use the RPi for arguably the best use-case, as a super cheap SoC for a ROBO NAS Gateway. You might be thinking at this point I’ve used qemu and ‘so what, you’re emulating x86_64’, but that’s the difference, I’m actually using box6

Hello,Today I try to update Postgre SQL and when I execute the installer, I got the error : prerunscript.command.line.errorI go to the log file on path : c:\users\username\appdata\local\temp\2 and find file "installbuilder_installer.log" It contains the reason : Windows Script Host Access Is Disabled on This Machine. Contact Your Administrator for DetailsThis happens because I follow the Veeam recommendation about hardening the server -> Disable VBS.So, to update postgreSQL, first, it's needed to update the registry key at : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Script Host\SettingsEnabled should be updated to 1No reboot is required, just need to execute again the postgreSQL setup again and after the installation complete, update the value back to 0.I create this topic because I think this could be mentionned somewhere on the documentation / forum / here.  

IntroductionVeeam Capacity Tier allows the addition of an object storage-based extent to a Veeam Scale-Out Backup Repository (SOBR). This object storage could be on-premises or could be hosted by a cloud provider. Regardless of your chosen platform, Capacity Tier provides a cost-effective way to tier backup data from on-prem 'Performance' extents to Object for longer-term storage.We encourage you to read and understand the Product documentation on Capacity Tier at https://helpcenter.veeam.comThere are a number of reasons why switching Capacity Tier vendor might make sense to you. Perhaps there was a change in your corporate strategic alliances, or perhaps a simple cost analysis has revealed that deeper savings could be found elsewhere.Switching object vendor comes with a few challenges:You need to keep your old Capacity tier around until its retention expires and you want to be able to restore from it as well. You don't have "spare" performance tier storage available and thus creating

 Veeam released a KB article on security improvements for VBN AHV appliances see link below. Veeam KB4236Note: Screenshots are from a Veeam Backup for Nutanix appliance v5.xWith security being top of mind for all our customers. The VBN has a built-in updater process. You will have to login to the appliance via the appliances IP address to get to the main dashboard (http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.) Figure 1 Once logged on the main dashboard will be displayed. If there are any updates available, you will notice the bell icon will have a red dot on it see figure 2 below. Click on the "updates are available hyperlink" Figure 3 and it will take you to the updates page. Once in the page you will see the updates. When you are ready to perform the updates if will ask you to take a configuration backup Figure 4 This is not an automatic process, you will have to take a configuration backup manually, or if you are certain that you have a scheduled one completed and have not made any recent changes. You c

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

Author’s note:This article is an extension to the fifth part of this series: Data Backup Basics V - Understanding RPO and RTO  Imagine the scenario: the hard disks or SSDs in the storage system housing your organization's critical virtual machines have failed, leaving a lot of business-critical virtual computers non-operational. Fortunately, you maintain daily, comprehensive backups, theoretically enabling prompt recovery. But is this the reality? To effectively gauge the efficacy of your disaster recovery plan, two key metrics come into play: the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and the Recovery Time Actual (RTA). The RTO delineates the target timeframe within which the affected systems must be restored to full operational status. It's a crucial aspect of business continuity planning, representing the maximum tolerable downtime for an organization. Defining this duration requires careful consideration of the organization's operational needs, criticality of systems, and potential financia

You can find my blog on this topic here - Synology NAS - SSD Storage Pools Have you ever wondered how to create a storage pool and volume using SSDs on a Synology NAS? Well today I will walk you through the process to use the SSD drives within your Synology NAS to create a storage pool and volume to use within a VMware environment.Now you must be using one of the supported NAS devices that allow you to use SSD as a Storage Pool as many just allow SSD drives to be used as Cache within a Storage Pool - Supported NAS Devices. You must be using a device on the supported list otherwise the only option you will have is to create an SSD Cache. I will discuss SSD Cache vs Storage Pools in my next article.In order to configure an SSD storage pool you need to use the Storage Manager application on the web UI. Launch the web UI and log in, from the main screen open Storage Manager and use the Create button to begin the process to create a new LUN.Storage Manager - Create button for new Storage Po

You might or might not know this, but Wasabi does have a minimum storage duration policy in place.What's that?Depending on your pricing model, each uploaded object will be billed for a minimum amount of time.Pay-as-you-go customers have 90 days, reserved capacity customers (pre-paid) will have 30 days.If you delete an object before this minimum duration is over, the remaining time will still be charged.You can find more information on this website:https://wasabi-support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360058734492-How-does-Wasabi-s-minimum-storage-duration-policy-work-ExampleYou upload 1TB of objects to Wasabi and have the 90 days minimum storage duration policy in place. After a week you decide to delete the whole 1TB.This means you pay for:7 days timed active storage 83 days timed deleted storageCan I recover deleted objects?You might think, that as you pay for deleted objects, you may be able to recover those. Unfortunately this is not the case, so you can’t use this as a recycle bin.

 This blog provides the sizing calculations for the Veeam Plugin used with Oracle and SAP. It outlines the resource requirements on the Source Server, Veeam Repository Server, and Veeam Backup Server.Source Server Specifications:Resource Utilization per Channel:Each channel consumes 1 CPU and 200 MB of RAM.Calculation:# of Channels = CPU cores required.200 MB * Number of Channels = Total Memory Required.Veeam Repository Server Specifications:Resource Utilization:Every 5 channels require 1 CPU core and 1 GB of RAM.Veeam Backup Server Specifications:Resource Requirement:For every 1 million backup files, the server requires 15 GB of RAM.Dependency:The requirement is based on the number of backup files generated by Oracle and SAP. Example Calculation: Oracle Server Configuration: 12 Channels = 12 CPU Cores 200 MB * 12 = 2400 MB Memory Veeam Repository Server: 12 Channels / 5 = 2.4 CPU Cores 2.4 GB Memory Data Transfer Speed: Channel Capacity: Each channel transfers 120 – 150 MB/s, app

Restoring a database can often be a straightforward process, but complexities arise when you're working on the same server as the active original database. A common issue encountered in such scenarios involves the database's inability to start due to conflicts with BCT file access. This blog post is designed to guide you through resolving this issue when using Veeam Explorer for Oracle database restoration. Understanding the Problem:When you restore a database with a different name on the same server where the original database is still active, you might encounter an error where the newly restored database fails to start. This issue often stems from conflicts with accessing the BCT file. The BCT file, which is crucial for database operations, might still be in use or locked by the original database, leading to access conflicts. Step-by-Step Solution:To successfully restore your database without encountering the BCT file access issue, follow these steps:   Step1: -  Just restore(and not

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

You may have seen this: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/softbank-backed-cohesity-reaches-deal-to-acquire-veritas-unit-1.2032340 I don’t know what this will mean. The backup world is huge but still. Any thoughts?