Blogs and Podcasts

Wonderful initiative for Community and Friends.You have probably heard Danny Allan announcing at Veeam ON: Veeam Software people believe in empowering and enhancing female talent and support a more diverse environment across our ENTIRE ecosystem that is why 150 women will participate to a FREE VMCE Training.If you are interested or if you know the perfect candidate this is the registration link! 💚https://go.veeam.com/women-in-it-empowerment

Hi Folks,I just wanted to share some of my experiences and thoughts after the trip, and sitting now and reflexing of them after a crazy week! (My Inbox was packed! as many of you I guess)Lucky me, I have the “privilege” to meet and flight with @jos.maliepaard  and @mkevenaar!We met in Madrid, and instantly starting chatting and discussing like we knew each other for some time! awesome!The flight was “looooong” and we made it to Miami evening, soo tired and hungry!Back to the hotel, we were not in the mood of having dinner, so we went for a couple of drinks after the check in! The days were great, the hotel had amazing pools, ambience, people around 24x7, and I started realizing were I was located at, Miami, Florida, USA!! OMG!Next day, getting ready for registration, I met @Scott , and instantly we connected and starting chatting and exchanging time, ideas and interests! amazing buddy!The only bad thing, I can highlight, I lost my voice, I gave my best effort to continue chatting and s

Hi Folks, One topic that I don’t think has been addressed or discussed is VeeamON in relation to all of our many duties and responsibilities. How do you fit it in? How do you deal with the extra stress levels? VeeamON was a success and thoroughly enjoyed by all who attended but we would be kidding ourselves if we thought that it did not add extra pressures in our daily lives. First of all some of us might have to convince the  bosses of this world that a trip to VeeamON is not, as the British would say just a “Jolly” i.e. vacation have fun only party. Yes we have fun but there is a lot of intense activity and knowledge transfer back and forth. I personally come out of VeeamON with my head exploding with new ideas and initiatives that I have gained from the sessions but even more from simple in person one on one conversations. Then there is the fact that no one is taking away the day job. Some of the folks there were having to simultaneously work during the conference or after hours. I

Now we have a specific best practice for Veeam Backup Cloud Solutions: https://bp.veeam.com/vbcloud/

For all those that could not participate in the "VeeamOn2023", share with us your best moments in photos so that all can enjoy them visually.Pour tous ceux qu'il n’a pas pu participer au  "VeeamOn2023" , partager-nous vos meilleurs moments en photos afin que tous puis en profiter visuellement.  

At VEEAMON 2023 in Miami I had the opportunity to talk about a certain topic during a Tech Talk. At first I would like to thank @HunterLAFR and @JonahMay for joining my session and making it a interactive and informal talk!For those that have missed it, I will give you in this post a recap about the content of this session. As already said, the idea was to have an informal and interactive talk about a certain topic.The topic I have chosen was : Powering Off-Site backup a at Service Provider.The session had several elements :  IntroductionAt first we introduced ourselves.Who are we, from which country, working at a partner/service provider or at a customer. 3-2-1-1-0 golden backup ruleI explained the importance of implementing the 3-2-1-1-0 golden backup rule.It is very important to protect us against ransomware, disasters and other attacks.The topic of the day was the offsite backup copy. Different approaches for off-site backupThere are different possibilities to implement a off-site

One of the many features that Veeam Backup and Replication provide to ensure an organization can successfully recover their backups every day and in case of a malware emergency is the ability to scan your backup images for latent malware before they are restored.  This goes beyond the ability to scan for possible entropic encryption of a server during backup by scanning for the malware that has caused the encryption. If an infection is detected then the restore can be aborted, or the server can be restored but not get connected to a network.Secure Restore is the name of the Veeam Backup and Replication feature that does the malware scan before restoring. Secure restore can restore Windows servers fromVMs from any hypervisor  Physical servers that are protected with Veeam Agent for Windows. From backups stored on immutable block storage. From backups stored on immutable object storage. From backups stored on NFS/SMB shares Secure restore can be run before recovery is performed from the

As you may know, with vSphere 7 Update 1 VMware introduced the vSphere Clustering Service.The plan is to get more independent of vCenter Server for certain cluster features like for example DRS.Where you certainly notice the difference, compared to older releases, are the vCLS agent VMs shown in vCenter.https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2020/09/vsphere-7-update-1-vsphere-clustering-service-vcls.htmlThere's no need to backup them and if you have a current Veeam version (v10a Patch 20201202 or higher), they're are automatically excluded from your jobs.The agent VMs are manged by vCenter and normally you should not need to look after them.Normally…yesterday we've had the case were some of the vCLS VMs were shown as disconnected; like in this screenshot:Checking the datastore we have noticed that those agents VM had been deployed to the Veeam vPower NFS datastore.As this datastore is managed by the Veeam server and can connect/disconnect at any time, it's a very bad location for the vCLS VM

Hi Folks, Next in my “Beware” series 😂.. Beware of podiums. Why? Because podiums are generally slanted. So if you have practiced your presentation over and over again at your desk, and your presentation involves CLI work (think Kubernetes Kubeclt or K if you using aliases) then you will be entering a world of fun since you fingers are used to typing on a keyboard that is flat and not slanted. I got used to it but I was nevertheless struck by shame. The typos were flowing and I could just hear the audience whispering, “wow this person can’t type, and he is too old too blame the cell phone thumb typing condition like all of the younger generation do”.  My poor High School Grade 10 typing teacher would be heart broken. She disliked me so much for goofing off in class that she would force me to stay after and finish the tasks which in turn massively improved my typing skills. However, when doing live presentations in front of people, no matter how badly you mess up (be it typing, or lousy

Hi Folks, I recently was lucky enough to be chosen as an Auth0 Ambassador. However, I am still very much on the initial learning curve when it comes to identity management so have signed up to a few udemy courses and pulled out the documentation. When starting a new path it is always nice to take your first steps in familiar territory so I decided to try out leveraging SAML2.0 for Veeam Enterprise Manager. First we need to create a free Okta developer account: Then we will create a new app integration: VEM (Veeam Enterprise Manager supports SAML 2.0 so that will be our choice here:We need to give it a name:Next we need to enter our SAML settings. I used a laptop where I have a test VBR setup:These two settings (Single Sign On URL and Audience URI can be found in VEM here after you have ticked the Enable SAML 2.0 radio box. Don’t worry about the other settings we will import them later. Save the SAML settings in Okta then open up the App page: Further down on the right hand side you wil

Hey Everyone,A big evening in Toronto IT yesterday and Veeam was there. First @michaelcade and I went to Okta to take part in their Devday23 event (got some nice swag too!), then we had dinner with @Julia F Morgadoand headed to the Pre Kubehuddle meetup where I met some Kubernetes royalty! Of course everyone knew Julia and MIchael so I just used the occasion to shamelessly introduce myself :) . Joking aside I have to note Veeam/Kasten is making its presence felt! I saw no other backup vendors anywhere near these two events. Kubehuddle has  literally a Veeam invasion happening with Julia Morgado, Cassandra Farris, Michael Cade and of course humbly representing the Vanguard/Legend community me :). I believe these efforts are well worth it and are going to pay off. When people need backup in the Kubernetes community there first thought will be Veeam/Kasten! 

Hi everyone.If you missed it, Microsoft just released H1 2023 for Exchange Server 2019. Included in this release is the ability to use Modern Authentication in an Exchange Server only environment. In Case You Missed it, What is Modern Authentication? There are numerous resources describing the functionality of Modern Authentication in technical detail, but my goal here is to provide a conceptual overview of Basic Authentication vs Modern Authentication. Basic AuthenticationBasic Authentication, as the name might suggest, is a simplistic form of authentication. A client attempts to communicate to a resource that is protected, and the resource requests a username & password, you supply a valid username & password, and you’re granted access to the resource. Every time you want to access this resource, you need to provide the username & password. This was actually one of the main driving forces behind security considerations such as mandating HTTPS on websites, to avoid credent

 I’m returning to the VeeamON (virtual) stage this year, and I wanted to catalogue my journey within the Veeam Community so far and give thanks to the people that have helped me get to where I am today.I’d been working with Veeam products for about 7-8 years at the time, and I’d seen the Veeam Forums, now known as the Veeam R&D forums. I’d asked a few questions in there, but it never really felt like a community. The relationship within the forums was that of a customer and business. Someone would seek advice with a problem, or request a feature, and a member of staff from the Veeam forums would reply. Very transactional.Then, during the infamous lockdowns of 2020, Veeam launched their “Veeam Live” Event. During this event, Veeam revealed their new “Community Hub”. I remember frantically writing down the URL “community.veeam.com”. And I had no idea at the time how much my career was about to elevate.As the event concluded, I opened the URL to see if this was a long-standing platfor

Hi Folks, Off topic but I think worth mentioning. I had a discussion with a fellow presenter at KubeHuddle this weekend. This person has achieved a lot more than me in the Kubernetes and IT world and I have a genuine respect for them. What struck me during our conversation was an apparent lack of ego in my partner’s interactions. There was not even the slightest nuance of bragging or self aggrandisement. At one point I said “you must be very proud about having achieved so much”. To my great surprise the response was very placid. “only the insecure and fools make great importance of their achievements, a bucket that is empty is easily filled with any liquid until it overflows, but a pipe conducts the liquid through and the liquid does not spill, be the pipe not the bucket”I put down the response to the person coming from a very different cultural background than mine. After all I grew up in the Canadian/American “push push, go  harder harder, work more more, stand above the rest culture

A few weeks ago I started to build my agenda for VeeamON 2023 in Miami. As there’s lots of interesting content covering various topics, it wasn’t easy at all to decide which sessions to attend. With over 130 sessions, I had conflicting schedules and so had to leave out some of those. This was especially hard as all sessions offer valuable knowledge, so I hope that recordings of most of them will be available after VeeamON.With this post I want to highlight ‘just some’ of the sessions I’ve picked for my agenda. There are much more great sessions, more that I could list here, so be sure you check the complete agenda.In-Person10 Years Working with Veeam: How it Helped Shape Our Careers All Demo Session for Veeam Hardened Repository Architecting Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 at Scale A-Z Automation Journey with Veeam’s Automation Desk QuizMania – Veeam 100 against the World Ransomware Recovery Unplugged Tape Your Data Now! Veeam Backup & Replication v12 Hidden Features Veeam Repositor

VMware vSphere logoRecently VMware released Update 1 for both VMware vCenter and ESXi. I successfully upgraded my vCenter but had to wait on the ESXi hosts until the VMware USB NIC Fling was updated to be compatible with Update 1. It is now updated and can be downloaded from here – VMware USB NIC FlingI downloaded the fling and the Update1 ZIP file from the VMware site that I could run on the CLI of each host after enabling SSH. So I connected to my hosts via the Web UI, logged in and enabled SSH. I then used Mobaxterm to connect to each of my hosts.The steps at a high level to upgrade are as follows –Remove the current USB Fling driver from each host Reboot the host to complete the VIB removal Enable SSH again on each host Run the CLI command to process the Update1 ZIP file on each host Reboot each host to ensure Update 1 is applied Enable SSH again on each host Install the USB NIC Fling for Update 1 Reboot each host to ensure the drivers are loaded Check the Web UI to ensure the USB

"Mastering Veeam Backup & Replication 12 - Third Edition" is now in publication (since April 2023) and is ready to order either the book or e-book/kindle.Well, since writing my first book on v10 and my second one on v11, I debated to myself about writing the update of the book to v12.  It took me some time to process and think about if I wanted to do it, and after attending VeeamON 2022 in Las Vegas, where v12 was introduced, it got me excited, and I then took the plunge.  This time, the process was much smoother as I had already done the first & second books and understood the templates, formatting, etc.  The team at Packt worked with me again and my busy schedule to create something I think that everyone will enjoy reading.  Whether you are a newbie with Veeam or a seasoned expert, you can learn something from this book.Veeam 12 best practices: design and deploy a secure and resilient platformKey FeaturesGain in-depth knowledge of Core Architecture Changes, including PostgreS

Hello! In this topic I would like to cover the steps to change the default Veeam Backup for Azure worker disk size.There are some scenarios where you need to increase the volume size of the worker depending on the size of your protected VM. This change must be done via restAPI, so one of the options we have is using Swagger, which is the restAPI tool built-in the VB for Azure appliance.You can refer to this page on user guide to find detailed steps to authenticate Swagger. As soon as you are properly authenticated in Swagger you need to find and expand the Workers method: Locate the endpoint: api/v4/workers/profiles/{regionId} and click on Try it OutIn the request body, these are some of the parameters you can use:In this case we will not configure worker profiles per VM size, so we will use only the Simple type and Archive type since they are mandatory if not using different profiles.You can find more information about worker profiles here. Fill out the body request as follows:{ "min

Introduction Creating the CSR Requesting the certificate Creating the PFX Replace the certificate Introduction Some customers would like to change the self-signed certificate used by the Web Console for Veeam for Public Cloud products.In this guide I will show all the steps involved in this process: Creating the request Creating the certificate Importing CA Root certificates Changing the certificateI'm using the Veeam Backup for Azure as an example, but all the steps are the same for Veeam for GCP and Veeam for AWS. Important:This guide assumes you have a public domain and that you created the host A record for the DNS name you will use.Also, I’m using ZeroSSL just to demonstrate the process of requesting a valid certificate, some steps could be different depending on the Certificate Authority used. Creating the CSR Let's create the certificate request using OpenSSL.DigiCert has a web tool to create the command: https://www.digicert.com/easy-csr/openssl.htm  Connect to the appliance vi

Monitoring with Backup Eagle I was recently introduced to a product requiring me to do a PoC to determine if it was a viable monitoring option for my company. I was granted an NFR license to test within my HomeLab for a product named - Backup Eagle by Schmitz RZ Consult GmbH.I was curious about how the Backup Eagle product works compared to other monitoring software. It was a straightforward install for the software based on Java, including the database used to store the data.Backup Eagle is used for Backup Monitoring, Reporting, and Audit & Compliance.Backup Eagle Chart - What you can use it forInstalling the software is very simple after downloading and extracting the zip file. The latest release as of this writing is - 9.9.2.73. Begin the installation using the EXE file and click through the screens.Running the EXE to start the installation processAfter the initial screen, you can install either the BE Server or the Admin Client, a component that can be installed on other system

Hi Folks, This must be because I skipped so many classes in High School. Now, only a few years later of course :) I am forever training and being examined..I will do a write up of what I thought of the course afterwards. It has been a long time since I did formal VMware trainingTraining here I come 

With the release of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure v4, I thought now would be a good time to discuss how to handle account permission changes. This tends to be required when Veeam release updates to the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure product, typically required to support new functionality.I was greeted by the request for all of these permissions after updating from v3 to v4Once you sign into Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure after an update, you’ll likely have a notification similar to the above, depicting the missing permissions.There are two ways to update the permissions, and I’m going to take you through them both now. Method 1: Let Veeam Update its Permissions Yep, Veeam can handle this for you, and it’s really easy.Step One: Enter the Configuration section of the Web UI. Navigate to Administration > Accounts. Find your Azure account, select ‘Edit’.Step Two: Within the Edit Azure Account screen, edit any name & description details if required, otherwise click next to en

I'm sure you all have heard about a lot of great features Veeam has added to its latest release like - ability to backup directly to Object Storage instead of the need to use SOBR tiers, choice to use PostgreSQL as your VBR configuration database, introduction of VeeaMover technology to move Backup files to new jobs or Repositories, increased security such as Multi-Factor Authentication, and many others. But there are quite a few features in Veeam v12 you may not know about. I'll be sharing what some of those are in this post PostgreSQL - AAIPAs mentioned above, Veeam now gives you the choice to use PostgreSQL for your VBR configuration database. This removes some limitations, such as the SQLExpress 10GB size limit as well as some performance limitations. But, did you know Veeam now includes PostgreSQL as an application-aware image processing (better known as AAIP) option? This includes transaction logs for point-in-time recoveries for PostgreSQL on Linux as well. PostgreSQL AAIP Synth

Today, I’d like to talk about creating and scoping realistic and enforceable RPOs and RTOs for your Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR) policies and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) within your organization. As every organization will have different requirements the focus of this blog post is on general considerations for shaping your policy.Additionally this blog post is focused around policy design as opposed to backup technologies and should be vendor agnostic for the most part, though where I am aware of features from my backup solution of choice (Veeam of course!!!) I have referenced improvements that solutions such as Veeam can bring to the process.The assumption is made that you’re already aware of the applications, operating systems and data within the organisation/environment you’re designing these policies for. Step One: Define Recovery Priority Before we start to consider recovery point objectives, we should consider the recovery time objectives of our workloa

One rule of backup is to always have more than one copy of data. This has often been defined as following the 3-2-1 rule, which states, to ensure recoverability in the face of disaster, you need to have 3 copies of data, on 2 different medias, with 1 copy offsite. By following this strategy for backups, businesses gain three different copies of data that they can recover from. However, with the continued threat of ransomware in today’s IT landscape, we need to evolve this rule to meet the challenges that face businesses today. As data is the lifeline for every business, putting in the necessary steps to  keep backups protected from malicious attacks is imperative. To do this, having a immutable storage option that prohibits backups from being altered or deleted should be an added element to a long standing rule for backups. With the addition of adding a copy of data that is offline and/or immutable, businesses can ensure that at least one copy is locked from being changed or deleted. H