Blogs and Podcasts

Hi Folks, Being Monday I am in a bad mood and depressed about existence, questioning the meaning of life 🤣. Don’t worry it gets better by Wednesday and all cured by Friday. I have worked in IT for many years and vacations have always been an interesting intellectual study of the managerial species. I think it soon started after the year 2000. Y2K did not blow up the world so Managers everywhere decided that their many sins had gone unpunished. I can’t remember the first Manager who tried the “we are all just like family line” with me. Right away I knew that there was some horrible task that he wanted me to do during my vacation but did not want to pay more for it. He must have figured that a computer nerd social loser like myself had no friends and that my family were very happy that I was thousands of miles away. This was though back in the days before Twitter boss type sycophant  behaviour and “worship the boss for points” game, so I calmly answered that we could not be family genet

ALT TEXT: Banner with blog post title “Veeam & File Shares: Licensing & Feature Comparison” Hi!Today we’re going to talk about file shares and how to protect them. We’ll also look at how Veeam handles the various backup options available within the Veeam Universal License.File shares can take many forms, so we’re going to look at the following:A Physical/Virtual Server A NAS/SAN/Storage Device with File Share capabilities Azure Files Amazon EFS (Elastic File Systems) Physical & Virtual Servers Before Veeam introduced native file-share support for Veeam Backup & Replication, you could still backup physical or virtual servers. This was achieved via native hypervisor integrations, or the use of the Veeam Agent, on supported operating systems.When protecting servers that provide file shares from a traditional Windows/Linux/UNIX operating system, we license each server, without many considerations to the file shares themselves.There are a few considerations still to talk abo

I just had a situation in a customer environment where the customer complained that a restored VM had more disks than the one that was backed up before (6 instead of 5 for a SQL Server VM).The recovery was done using Entire VM Restore - User Guide for VMware vSphere (veeam.com).When restoring to the original location, Veeam prompts you that the original VM will be deleted first:At first, I though this was related to the user that Veeam uses to access vCenter no having the appropriate rights. For example, the user does not have permissions to delete the VM.But then I noticed that the additional disk to be 200GB in size. The old state the we wanted to restore only had 2x100, 2x300 and 1x500. So where did the 200GB disk come from?It turns out that the size of this disk was adjusted by the VMware team a few weeks ago (100 → 200). We wanted to restore from an older state with the 100GB still there. Could this be the reason? Does VBR leave resized disks being alone while recovering and adds

i am facing issue with adding linux server to backup, bakcup fail after 3 minutes with error Unable to process server: backup agent is missing. veeam v12do we miss anything else, i have added the server through job backup with the wizard and added the root user.but it failed any suggestions please. 

Hello, everyone.I am posting the guide for those who need to migrate their Enterprise Manager for various reasons.I had the need to migrate EM to consolidate VMs.The MSSQL database is a dedicated VM.KB1889: How to migrate Veeam Backup & Replication or Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager      Export all Keysets from the old Backup Enterprise Manager web console. Take note of which keyset was Active.  Uninstall Backup Enterprise Manager from the old server. Install Backup Enterprise Manager on the new server. During the installation of Backup Enterprise Manager, do the following:If presented with the Default Configuration step of the installer, check the box labeled "Let me specify different settings"For the Service Account Credentials step, provide an account with the appropriate permissions to the SQL Instance where the VeeamBackupReporting database is located.On the SQL Server Instance step, choose the option to "Use existing instance of SQL Server" and specify the SQL Server and Inst

Hi Folks,If anyone is preparing for the CKA certification feel free to share or ask me any questions. My 3 years is up and I need to redo the exam as well. I am very lucky to have been asked to lead with fellow Kodekloud Ambassador Nitish Kumar  https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitishkumar06/ a closed CKA study group over the next few Months on Kodekloud but am more than happy to try and help folks here as well. Group study makes everyone stronger! So much for taking a bit of rest in the summer. Other upcoming events and tasks, I got talked into taking part in the Tanzu hackathon which hopefully won’t be too embarrassing since I don’t feel I know Tanzu well enough to hack it :). On August 31 I will be taking part in an online panel discussion with about Kubernetes and Tanzu data protection. The Veeam contingent there is going to be very strong as also present will be @michaelcade and @HunterLAFR . In fact if I am not mistaken @HunterLAFR is the organizer even!!  As for videos I hopefully wi

Hi folks,My wanderings in the wonderful continue. I need to move an M365 repo from a REFS drive (as far as I know this is not good, NTFS is the best practice) to a new drive. I have read on the forums that the Move-VBOEntityData powershell is NOT the way to go. Instead this is the procedure: 1. Disable all backup jobs related to the repository you want to move.2. Stop all the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 services before moving any data.3. Copy the backup repository data to the backup repository location on the new repository location (using robocopy for example).4. Start the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 services.5. Add the new repository with the moved data.6. Open backup job settings and specify to use the new repository Any comments or advice from folks who have been through this. I would like to avoid any pain since I had a wisdom tooth pulled this week and have enough already :)  cheers 

My Sysadmin story is rather old, from my own beginnings in IT. It’s not directly Veeam related but the message is valuable for every backup administrator.The outageThere’s been a certain Linux VM which was running a very critical software for that company. Software updates were done by the vendor itself so there wasn’t much to take care of. Of course, besides including it in the backup process.At some point there was an outage in the datacenter which shutdown all virtual machines. After the power had been restored, all virtual machines were started again without any issues; at least almost without any issues.The Linux VM didn’t come up and stayed at the boot screen without any progress. After a bit of debugging without a solution, we decided to restore the VM as it was in the morning and no changes occurred since the nightly backup.Unfortunately, the restored VM had just the same problem and refused from booting up. And also the 2 day old restore point behaved the same.At that point we

Hi There!I've shared this story in my VUG Group, Spain,But I wanted to translate it to English and share it with all of you,It’s a Personal experience, the latest I’ve got in Prod before changing my role,and now re-publishing it for the Sysadmin month. Hi,I want to share with you my latest experience as a IT Infrastructure responsible, just a week before moving into a new company, also in a new role / position. It was August 10th 2022, enjoying my summer holidays before moving into a new company, celebrating my 37th Birthday at the Swimming pool area with my family, and surprise, my phone dings, and I just had a quick look and this came up on the screen:“We’ve got a Virus in our Systems” I felt goosebumps all over my body, I left my pint of beer (Yes, I love beer) on the table, and I addressed my wife and told he, “I gotta go” ransom! I change my clothes, from my comfortable swimming suite to jeans and a t-shirt, went to the office to get a better understanding of what was going on, an

I work already more than 6 years at my current company as a system consultant specialized in backup, DR, hypervisors and storage but at the first place being the Veeam Expert 🤣.In those 6 years I have seen a lot, but one of the things I will never forget, is a story that I want to share with you 🤗. When :  It happened more than 2 years ago Who :  It happened to a customer of us, a secondary school What happened :  They were using multiple standalone Hyper-V hosts with local storage.They all were using RAID5 on the data-volume (where the .VHDX files = HyperV virtual hard-disks are located) of their hyper-v hostsAs you know : in a RAID5 setup, only 1 disk may fail...On their most critical Hyper-V host 2 disks were stuck, so the volume was broken and all data was lost on that hyper-v server!On that server a couple of virtual machines were running including one of their most important server : their big file-server!That was not the only issue : the hyper-v host was not in warranty anymor

Hi all,for the upcoming  "System Administrator Appreciation Day," I wanted to tell you about an amazing mis-adventure that happened to me a few years ago.But first, a brief recap of my work life: I've been working in the IT world since 2012, starting in the Helpdesk of a local IT services company, and then moving to the Datacenter Team a few years later.Over the years I've encountered a variety of problems, from the simplest and least blocking, to the most complex and critical: servers that no longer boot, applications that don't work, stuck snapshots, deleted LUN..but the one I'm about to tell you about represents for me the most unusual problem I've ever faced (and unfortunately not the most critical).Our company was a Service Provider, imprinted mainly on IAAS and other related services.We managed a total of four datacenters: one at HQ, where there were a few racks with essential internal services, and three others located at an Italian supplier where we delivered the bulk of the se

Part 3 of the ‘HPE StoreOnce: Immutability with v12’ series is about a small, but very useful new feature. Before going into it, here are the links to Part 1 and Part 2, in case you’ve missed them.Thanks to Federico Venier from HPE I noticed that the latest StoreOnce release 4.3.6 did introduce two-factor authentication!StoreOnce 4.3.6 supports Two-factor authentication (2FA) which provides additional security for users logging into the StoreOnce system, granting clients access to the system only when they present at least two factors of authentication.https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docId=sd00002919en_us&page=GUID-D9CE533F-9920-4656-A77D-4210E4EC56DE.htmlUntil now, an attacker would have been able to cause damage if he got access to the Admin and Security officer credentials. I described this process in Part 2 of the series: Veeam V12: Immutability with HPE StoreOnce - Part 2Now, with 2FA, the security of HPE StoreOnce backup repositories gets a huge boost.Enable T

Rewind about 2 years. We were short staffed (still are), behind on updates and upgrades and trying our best to get rid of legacy and unsecure infrastructure. After months of work, things were getting close to the finish line. Systems were running great and we were feeling quite safe and secure. It all came to a sudden halt when someone said the service desk phone was ringing off the hook and no one could log in. I tried myself, and not only could I not log in, I couldn’t ping or lookup most of the VM’s on the network.  I rebooted one of my workstations and received a 169 address. I knew right away I was in trouble. I could tell DCHP was having issues on my desktop, but on my second PC I could still ping most of the servers with static IP’s. This told me DNS was also down. Great I thought at 4PM on a Friday. We continued to do some troubleshooting and it ended up much worse. It turns out someone decided to put a VERY large file in the sysvol folder to replicate it without confirming the

I really struggled with sharing this story because it’s quite embarrassing. But, if it helps 1 person, it’s worth it. And, not all ‘save the day’ stories are about us being flawless Systems Admins/Architects...we are human, but rather how well we’ve setup and configured our recovery processes. Thanks to @Madi.Cristil for prompting me to “go for it” and just share. 😊I did end up saving the day, but it was at the cost of my own initial negligence the issue arose in the first place, albeit an honest mistake. Interestingly enough, a fellow former Veeam Vanguard (now Veeam employee) and I were discussing this very configuration mishap potential via direct message in the Vanguard Slack channel prior to it actually happening to me.CatastropheSo, what did I actually do to cause the catastrophe at my organization? First, let me start by giving a high-level overview of my backup environment. I use physical servers, with Windows OS, as combo Repo/Proxy devices for my backup environment. I also u

Hi Folks, When I think about being a Systems/Backup Administrator all of these years I can’t single out one single story that fully represents the highs and lows of this profession. So instead I have decided to write a few short sound bytes, streams from moments of memory suffixed with rhymes like one of the those “_restored” attachment names we use in order not to overwrite production. Every moment is also and emotion. We add a taint of emotional metadata to events and memories that we often don’t fully comprehend ourselves. Our work is matrix of puzzles and problems that we face everyday with our silicon little friends. Although sometimes it feels like they are our foes.  Gratitude The call broke through the comforting calm silence of a Friday morning IT room like a waiter’s tray that gets turned over in a busy restaurant. An important file was missing. It had been erroneously deleted in one of those careless human moments of blissful neglect. The stakes were very high. First attempt

I’ve posted this before in a Friday Fun comment a few months back, but I think it bears repeating, especially because Veeam really did save the day, and maybe a few lives as well!  Details may be fuzzy, but it’s all true.  It’s a long story, so maybe set aside some time for some light reading, or maybe use it as a 15 minute distraction from working so that you can reset your brain.  And I hope you learn something too!I’ve been having issues getting this post, so as much as I hate to do it, I’m going to send you over to my blog to view the entire post.  Seems like I my have gotten a bit wordy but I’ll give you a preview below. Setting the StageLong, long ago (okay, it was 2020) in a galaxy far, far away (otherwise known as a small rural community in centralish Nebraska), there resides a community hospital who shall rename nameless.  We, an eastern Nebraska-based MSP, sourced this new client and it’s looking like the beginning of a fabulous relationship. I arrive onsite on a hot June day

Happy Tuesday to the Community! In January VMware released an updated VCP-DCV 2023 Exam Blueprint for vSphere 8. It came out in good timing, at least for me, for a couple reasons. First, I wanted to get my DCV certification up to date, since for the past 2 years was not able to because the exam version on Pearson had stayed the same since I last took the vSphere 7 version in April 2021. Second, I had a long several week recovery period at home the past 2 months so it gave me plenty of time to review all (most) of VMware's vSphere 8 User Documentation and update my VCP-DCV 2021 Study Guide to 2023.As some of you know, I've been creating various certification Study Guides for close to 15 years. I started making them for my benefit to help me in my certification preparation studies. Regardless of the vendor certification, to be able to pass a technical certification exam, you need to comb through mountains of user documentation, as well as the obvious need to get hands-on experience using

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

Veeam Backup and Replication V12 have a lot of improvements and new features in it.  If you are upgrading to V12 or installing Veeam Backup and Replication, there are many things that you should consider when planning your upgrade or installation.The following are a few of my thoughts to help guide you in forming your implementation and configuration decisions.If you are upgrading to VBR V12,  your first step should be to consult the following documents located at helpcenter.veeam.com:What’s New Release notes VBR V12 User Guide The release notes document has a good section detailing the upgrade process.Installation/Upgrade of the VBR console serverLet’s start with the installation and process and what to expect.VBR V12 uses the same  license key format as V11, so there is no need to update to a V12 on the customer portal.  The installation GUI is revamped and looks slick.  As it is new, you will notice that some options have been rearranged, so take your time and pay attention to what

With the release of Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v6 the Self Service Portal was also unleashed. In this video we run through a scenario where a new tenant is being onboarded from the Service Provider point of view as well as what steps need to be actioned by the tenants.

📢Join this webinar on July 18th for an exciting discussion featuring our CTO, @dannyallan , Opti9's own Sagi Brody, who is also one of our Veeam 100 members, and cybersecurity expert Guy Mizrahi, CEO of CyPROS. They'll be discussing how to tackle ransomware risks, why backup infrastructure is a top target for attackers, and how our Veeam+Observr solution sets us apart from other backup vendors in the battle against ransomware, revolutionizing your protection strategy. Don't miss out!Register in here: https://opti9tech.com/events/webinar-anatomy-of-ransomware-attack-preventing-attacks-on-your-backup-infrastructure/ Best, Madi

Do you actively use Veeam Replication?If so, how long has it been since you’ve implemented it? For me, I don’t currently use it, but am in the process of getting it going again after about an 8yr hiatus. Not too much has changed since then, but there has been some enhancements you might not’ve known about, or some behavior you either didn’t know about or forgot. Below, I will be sharing some tidbits & behaviors I feel you should be aware of when making design decisions when implementing Veeam Replication.Before getting into the “Don’t Know/Forgot” items, let me briefly review how Replication works from a high-level. First, they are a job-driven task. You’ll need to set up a job and configure various settings. Next, depending on the source data you’re wanting to replicate, you can either replicate data directly from your production environment, or from other locations. I’ll touch more on this later. Lastly, the first run of Replication creates a fully functional VM on the target, an

Hi Everyone,I went quiet for a few days which had some people wondering whether I had fallen into one of my Burke “everything is depressing moods” that come gleefully with middle age, but in fact I was feverishly torturing myself with learning monitoring. Prometheus is a powerful monitoring tool and can be leveraged in my many circumstances, including of course Kubernetes. I knew this certification was going to be a challenge as monitoring loves precision whereas I am by nature more of an “on the spot, off campus” type of personality thriving when it comes to figuring out fixes or trying to think out of the box which I think in my cases according to my early grade school teachers, there was never any box present in the first place.Forcing yourself to study things that are not necessarily in your natural skillset is always very useful as it stretches your mind which can only make you stronger in the end. Like brushing your teeth with the wrong hand. Yes at first it will be messy and unp

Hi Everyone, The Linux Foundation is having a fast sale 40% until July 12. The LF certifications are some of the best in the business and some of the toughest so if you want to test your knowledge now is the time to get them. I don’t really recommend their training though, I personally did not find it very helpful towards the CKA exam. Remember these are not just Kubernetes exams but Linux and other systems as well. Take a look at the catalog.Speaking of which I have to renew my CKA so I took advantage of this deal myself!! https://training.linuxfoundation.org/july-prime-day-2023-promo/?creative=665260864709&keyword=linux%20foundation%20training&matchtype=p&network=g&device=c&pi_ad_id=665260864709&utm_term=linux%20foundation%20training&utm_campaign=EMEA:+Search:+June+21+-+Sitewide+Discount&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=8666746580&hsa_cam=13435710405&hsa_grp=149869974173&hsa_ad=665260864709&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-147

One of the products I spend a lot of time working with is Veeam ONE. If you are unfamiliar, Veeam ONE provides data protection monitoring for all Veeam operations. After implementing Veeam ONE, customers gain real-time monitoring, issue resolution and reporting capabilities that help with analysis and decision making. As companies drive innovation, they are transforming their data center, not only running applications traditionally, but also utilizing the cloud to take advantage of the many benefits it has to offer. I have been working more and more in the public cloud, whether it be utilizing object storage to store my backup data or getting more familiar with running workloads and resources there. Veeam ONE is essential for any installation because you gain visibility into your backups, the infrastructure and how machines are running. Veeam ONE was built for Veeam Backup & Replication, so as businesses are moving workloads to the cloud, or storing data in object storage, ONE is g