Blogs and Podcasts

Reflections from my MC2MC Rocket Talk – 21 May 2026  On 21 May 2026, I had the opportunity and privilege to speak at the MC2MC Community event, proudly sponsored by my company ORBID. During my rocket talk, I shared insights into a topic that is becoming increasingly critical for organizations operating in the cloud:How can we move beyond native Azure backup capabilities to achieve true data resilience?As more businesses migrate workloads to Microsoft Azure, protecting data is no longer just about creating backups—it is about ensuring business continuity, cyber resilience, and recovery flexibility.  Why Data Protection Matters More Than EverThe session started with a reality check.Today's organizations face a growing number of threats and challenges:89% of ransomware attacks explicitly target backups. 33% of production workloads experienced unexpected outages last year. 82% of organizations cannot recover fast enough to meet business requirements. 82% cite a skills shortage as their num

Hi everyone,I am delighted to present my first blog post and my first contribution to the Veeam community today. I would be very grateful for any feedback 😊 When working with Veeam Recovery Orchestrator (VRO), you might occasionally run into situations where the system makes decisions that aren’t immediately intuitive. Recently, a partner approached us with a scenario that raised exactly that kind of question: How does VRO choose which backup copy to use when multiple copies exist? Let’s walk through the use case, the unexpected behavior, and what we learned from digging into it. The Scenario In this environment, VRO is running at the disaster recovery site and orchestrating a vSphere-to-vSphere restore plan. The plan uses the following steps:  A backup-to-disk job writes backups to a local backup repository. Immediately afterward, two backup copy jobs run in parallel to copy the backup data to two additional repositories — let’s call them Repository A and Repository B. The restor

Recently, some of us received email notifications regarding the vulnerabilities listed below. A few members of the community have already shared updates as shown below.In this guide, we shall update our Veeam Backup and Replciation Server to version 13.0.2.29.To learn more about these security issues, refer to the following Veeam Knowledge Base (KB) articles: “4852 (affects v13.0.1.2067), while, 4831 (affects 13.0.1.1071 and earlier), and 4858 (affects Veeam ONE). Veeam Security Updates and Build References OverviewThe table below provides an overview of the latest Veeam security updates, cumulative patches, and build references affecting Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam ONE deployments. These updates address multiple security vulnerabilities, platform stability issues, and operational improvements that you should review and apply to safeguard your systems.KB Update Type Affected Product Purpose / Fix Severity Requires Reboot Recommended Action Notes KB4831 Sec

AI in Production on OpenShift: Designing for Resilience, Portability, and Control At Red Hat Summit 2026 in Atlanta, Veeam delivered a lightning talk that reframes how platform engineers should think about AI workloads on OpenShift.The core shift: AI placement is no longer a technical decision — it's a business and risk decision."The question is no longer 'Can I run AI here?' — it's 'Where should this workload run, and under whose control?'" This post covers the key architectural principles from that session, the data that backs them up, and a concrete use case that shows what this looks like in practice. Why Placement Matters More Than EverThe assumption that AI lives in the public cloud is already outdated. The actual distribution of AI/ML workloads today:65% on-prem, colocation, specialist GPU clouds, or network operatorsAnd placement has real operational consequences: The driver behind this is a shift toward AI sovereignty — and it goes well beyond data residency.Sovereign AI: Cont

Data is at the forefront of what drives organizations today. It drives businesses, powering operations, assisting with decision making and providing a competitive edge. At its core, Veeam Data Platform protects organization’s data, giving it resiliency and the strength to bounce back from disruption. To achieve ultimate resiliency, organizations need to encompass more than just backup, they need to think about recovery, security, intelligence and automation. With this, the monitoring and analytics provided within the Platform, empowers organizations to shift from reactive to proactive data resilience. This latest release continues to innovate, giving customers more options on how they want to consume Veeam.Veeam is all about giving customers choice, giving them the option to self-manage their backup environment, consume it as-a-Service, or utilize a Service Provider to help them manage data protection operations. With the latest news from Veeam, now you can utilize the Veeam Software A

... how to successfully use Windows Server 2025 with Veeam v13 in a workgroupA well-known song by the famous Italian singer Domenico Modugno, called 'Meraviglioso', began like this:È veroCredetemi è accadutoDi notte su di un ponteGuardavo l'acqua scuraCon la dannata vogliaDi fare un tuffo giùIntroductionToday I’m going to tell you a true story.Last Saturday, a former colleague contacted me in order to request my help to resolve a complex situation involving one of his clients. I'm turning into a superhero!SituationThe architecture has been implemented with a Veeam Backup & Replication v13 server and a Veeam ONE server, both of which are operating in Workgroup on Windows Server 2025. The customer does not have a domain, and therefore no Active Directory from which vulnerabilities could be inherited. They don't have a DNS server, so I've configured hosts files on both servers.Having verified that static IP addresses were configured as part of the same VLAN and that firewalls on the V

Veeam released a new Cumulative Patch for Veeam Backup & Replication 11a: 11.0.1.1261 P20211211Includes a lot of new platform support and a few fixes. See detailed release notes:https://www.veeam.com/kb4245

Are you planning to build Veeam 13 environment on appliances only? Veeam 13 offers backup environment via appliances. VBR and VEM via VSA appliance and proxy with gateway servers via VIA appliance. Hmm, probably you need to consider windows component in backup environment. Of course if you are planning functionality of backup environment like:FLR for Windows Server Application backup  Guest Interaction Proxy (gMSA) Item-level Restore  FLR for Windows ServerIt is needed to define Windows “Mount Server” for repository for usecases:VMware replication job with Re-IP rules Instant Recovery of  Microsoft Windows workloads Instant Disk Recovery for Microsoft Windows workloads Application item restore Secure restore for workloads with ReFS volumes Scan Backup for workloads with ReFS volumes SureBackup Guest OS file restore for Microsoft Windows workloads with ReFS volumes, or from workloads with data deduplication enabled for some volumes  Guest Interaction Proxy Based on KB you can use:appli

I think part of the confusion around high availability comes from how universally we try to apply it.Once it works well at the application layer, the instinct is to push the same thinking everywhere else. If something matters, it should be highly available. Reduce downtime, remove single points of failure, make everything seamless.That logic starts to break down when you look at systems that aren’t serving users directly, like backup systems.There’s a discussion in the Veeam community where someone asked a straightforward question: how do you make Veeam for AWS highly available?One of the answers pointed in a different direction. Instead of treating it as something that must always stay up, the focus was on backing up its configuration and, if needed, redeploying a new instance and restoring it.At first, that feels counterintuitive. If everything else is designed for high availability, why not this as well?But it makes more sense once you think about what problem you’re actually trying

 In this guide, we will discuss the steps to Update Veeam Backup & Replication to Build 13.0.1.2067 due to the following security Vulnerabilities. Veeam Backup & Replication 13.0.1.2067 delivers critical updates focused on strengthening security, improving platform stability, and enhancing integration across backup, cloud, and storage environments.If you have still not patched your VBR yet, you will find this guide very useful: https://techdirectarchive.com/2026/05/19/how-to-patch-vbr-server/

This article is intentionally for one specific scenario: upgrading an existing Windows-based Veeam Backup & Replication installation from v12.x to v13—including the issues that can come up in real-world upgrades.I already wrote a general blog post about patches/upgrades that serves as a guideline for practically all Veeam updates (pre-checks, order of operations, typical pitfalls, rollback strategy, change window, etc.). That guidance is still fully valid.   What about the VSA (Veeam Software/Server Appliance)?If you can/want to move directly to the VSA, the best approach is usually a greenfield installation: deploy a new VSA and rebuild your jobs step by step according to current best practices. This is not only the cleanest migration path, but also a great opportunity to remove legacy baggage and review/update your configuration in detail — aligned with best practices and your specific use cases.There is also a migration path from Windows (e.g., 12.3) to VSA 13.0.1, but it comes

Hi Community! If you use Veeam Backup & Replication to protect Linux environments, you may have encountered the strict requirements of its kernel modules. I recently had an interesting problem with a Oracle Linux 8.9 system running Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK).SituationThe plan was simple: use the Veeam Agent for Linux (VAL) in managed mode to backup some Folders and a PostgreSQL database. I needed something called "Application-Aware Processing" (AAP) to make sure the database was consistent, so I couldn't use 'nosnap mode' (which doesn't require the kernel module).TaskHere is what the environment looked like: Veeam Agent for Linux (VAL): 6.3.2 OS: Oracle Linux 8.9 Kernel (UEK): 5.15.0-205.149.5.1.el8uek.x86_64 Veeam module status: veeamsnap, 6.3.2.1207: added (via dkms status)IssueWhen starting the backup job from the VBR server, the task fails, returning this sequence of errors:Failed to create volume snapshot Failed to take volume snapshot Failed to perform managed b

 In this post, I intend to explore key concepts of Agentic AI, outline the risks posed by autonomous agents, and discuss mitigation strategies and emerging global standards that shape responsible agent deployment.This is a fascinating topic that goes beyond the traditional borders of IT cybersecurity.For each concept, threat, and mitigation strategy presented in the text, a practical example will simulate a customer interacting with an airline AI agent to manage a seat.Most of the content below is based on the “State of Agentic AI Security and Governance” and “Agentic AI – Threats and Mitigations” reports from the OWASP GenAI Security Project – Agentic Security Initiative (ASI).You can also get access to this article on my blog: Agentic AI Security: Managing the Autonomous Risk - CloudnRollContext of the New Agentic Era ChallengesAgentic AI represents the next evolution of artificial intelligence, building on foundational components such as Large Language Models (LLMs) and Retrieval-Au

 In this article, we will discuss how to Leverage Azure Blob Storage as an Object Storage Repo in Veeam. Azure Storage Accounts provide the foundational management layer for storing cloud data in Microsoft Azure. For the entire blogpost, please see https://techdirectarchive.com/2026/05/16/leverage-azure-blob-storage-as-an-object-storage-repo-in-veeam/They create a unique, secure, highly scalable, and globally accessible namespace for your data. Azure Storage Account give you access to Azure’s core storage services. Such as the Blob Storage (object storage), Azure Files (SMB file shares), Queue Storage (messaging), and Table Storage (NoSQL key-value data).Types of storage accountsAs mentioned above, Azure Storage offers several types of storage accounts. Each type supports different features and has its own pricing model. To learn more about blob storage, please take a look at this Microsoft Learn article. This matrix below outlines the different Azure storage account tiers. It shows th

I have been recently reading a great book on German philosophy and hit upon a debate on language that can be easily time travelled to today with all the questions surrounding AI. After all they are not called Large Language Models for nothing.  Yesterday evening when reading about Johann Gottfried (ha that is my first name in German Geoffrey 😁)Herder and Johann Georg Hamman both born in the 17 hundreds it suddenly struck me the debates going on back then have taken on a whole new meaning with LLMS. Do LLMs think? I asked AI about Herder and Hamann’s views:“Philosophers like Herder and Hamann argued that meaning is rooted in embodied, social, historical experience you can't separate words from the life lived around them. On this view, LLMs produce the shape of language without the substance.”This is opposed by the Functionalists: The most well known modern one being Alan Turing who broke the German enigma code in WW2:“if a machine is behaviourally indistinguishable from a thinking huma

Digital Sovereignty  A few weeks ago, I was at the Women in Tech Global Summit in Cape Town, and one topic kept coming up in almost every conversation: digital sovereignty.I went into it expecting the usual conversations—compliance, regulations, cloud regions. And yeah, those came up.But that’s not really what people leaned into.The discussion felt different. It was less about frameworks and more about control.It felt more like a question than a concept: if you don’t control your data and infrastructure, do you really control your future?What made it even more interesting is that this wasn’t just coming from one event. Around the same time, the TDGI Africa Symposium was bringing together policymakers and technologists to talk about very similar topics—how to reduce dependence on externally defined models, how to build data protection and AI frameworks that actually reflect local needs, and how Africa positions itself as a real participant in shaping the global digital landscape.So it d

With Veeam Backup & Replication v13, we’re not only getting a new version number and plenty of new features — we’re also seeing a deliberate clean-up of the product: some capabilities are now deprecated (no longer available for new configurations), while others have been discontinued (removed completely). That’s not unusual for a major release, but in practice it can affect the areas where environments have “organically” grown over many years: job designs, repository settings, restore habits, and legacy workflows that somehow always worked.So this article is not an upgrade how-to. Instead, it focuses specifically on these features: What changes? What did the feature do? Why might you still run into it operationally? And what’s the modern path forward? I’ll go through each deprecated and discontinued feature, outline the impact, and share practical recommendations—so you don’t find out only when creating a new job or during an actual recovery that: „Wait… this isn’t available anymor

Hi there,After the first part of this topic, now is time to jump into the good stuff, the main thing here is to be notified every time something changes or goes "wrong".Lets follow u the screenshots, from Setup, to Notifications setup, to finally monitor a couple servers and services.As I said before, this is basic "alive" monitoring, not statistics and deep monitoring, there are other cool tools for that, the topic here is first line, quick and easy! lets go:This is my Uptime-Kuma Dashboard, after install, lets go to Settings, click on your name up right, and click settings, under Settings, we will find an easy and clear menu to config the tool, from appearance to proxy, etc. Im going to deep dive into the Notifications menu:Click on Setup Notification Now, let's check it out, in the main menu, at the very bottom, we have the option to monitor TLS certificates and Domains expiracy, this is awesome! Im super happy Im not missing a cert renovation anymore, and no entries into my calenda

Hi Everyone, Last Tuesday I was lucky enough to attend VeeamON in NYC. This time I had to be on the best Burke behavior since I would be at the bar. Before you are shocked, this was the experts bar so no worries about Geoff’s infamously bad bartending skills for those who might have heard about them.I flew into Kennedy airport on an extra early flight to make sure that nothing went wrong. Flights and airports are not immutable unlike good backups so you never know when they will hit you with Delayware or even worse Cancelware! Flying in over the city I saw down below the Verrazzano bridge and it occurred to me that I had never seen it up close. I packed light (Vanguard Backpack!) so took the subway to Bay Ridge station in Brooklyn. Since joining marketing I have changed from the introvert, photo shy personality to a more extravert nature and I am always thinking of that perfect marketing shot (which can then be lowered somewhat in quality by my selfie!).Verrazzano Bridge​​​ Landed and

If the backup jobs fail and show an error message is “Unable to allocate processing resources. Error: Unable to find Hyper-V hosts where VM 'xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx' is registered: Failed to connect to Hyper-V Integration Service on host, port 6163”. I tried to review the settings, and all of them look fine, but the backup jobs failed always. I have run into these issues sometimes, it’s easy to solve, you just need to reboot the Veeam management server or restart the Veeam services of the Veeam management server.

While upgrading to Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 8.4, you might notice the following message: Connection to PostgreSQL is not encrypted. Enable TLS in PostgreSQL for secure communication.  VB365 checks whether the connection to the PostgreSQL database uses TLS.If TLS is not explicitly enabled, the warning is shown regardless of whether PostgreSQL is local or remote. If the PostgreSQL database is locally hosted on the vb365 server itself, this traffic does not leave the host. But if you have multiple proxies, those proxies also connect to the database, and this traffic leaves the network. So in those scenarios, it might be good to have this traffic encrypted. I will describe here how you can enable this traffic to be encrypted. Step 1 - backup config filesOn all hosts (vb365 server and proxies), back up the following files:C:\ProgramData\Veeam\Backup365\config.xmlC:\ProgramData\Veeam\Backup365\proxy.xmlC:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\<YOUR POSTGRESQL VERSION>\data\postgresql.confC:\P

 I ran into a situation recently where one of our VSPC servers stopped working after a Windows patch update. The portal was dead. I went ahead and upgraded to VSPC 9.2 and that brought everything back online. Except the April license usage report never got generated. It was stuck. I could not finalize it or submit it. If you are using VCSP /w rental licensing, you know that the report has to go to Veeam every month. A missing one is not something you can just ignore (Not for lack of trying 😊). I opened a support case and Veeam Support gave me a procedure to regenerate the report. It worked. I am documenting it here because I could not find this written up anywhere and I know other providers might encounter something similar. Step 1. Back up the VSPC SQL database.Take a fresh backup of the VSPC database first. Veeam covers this in KB1471. If the SQL work later goes bad you want something clean to restore. Step 2. Update the configuration overrides file.Open this file on your VSPC serve

 VBR v13 defaults to PostgreSQL for new installs, so for a lot of environments the question is no longer “Should we care about PostgreSQL?” It is “When do we move, and what do we need to fix after we do?”If you are still running SQL Express, the answer is usually sooner than later. If you are running a licensed SQL Server only because VBR needs it, there is a good chance you are carrying cost and patching overhead you no longer need. And if you already migrated but the console feels slower than it used to, that is usually not because PostgreSQL is a bad fit. It is because the default PostgreSQL settings are conservative and generic, while VBR is not.This is the part people miss. The migration itself is usually the easy piece. The performance conversation starts after the restore, not before it. First question: do you actually need to migrate now? Not every environment needs to sprint into this.If you are on SQL Express and comfortably below the 10 GB limit, there is no emergency. It st

Field Experience — When the Human Link Becomes the Missing LinkBy a cybersecurity consultant, from the field.The Day Everything Stopped… Without a CyberattackImagine the scene.No ransomware. No server failure. No fire in the server room. And yet, an entire company's information system finds itself in total disarray.The cause? Two simultaneous, extended sick leaves. The only two people who made up the internal IT department.This is exactly the scenario I discovered when I arrived at this client's site. A scenario that nobody had anticipated, that nobody had recorded in a risk register, and which nevertheless caused an operational paralysis as severe as a major cyberattack. A Deafening Digital SilenceWithin the first few hours of my assignment, the situation was alarming:No more daily IT infrastructure management: no monitoring, no updates, no ticket handling. Zero visibility on backup status: Are the jobs still running? When did someone last check them? Are the storage media healthy? No

Migration from VMware vSphere to HPE HVM with Veeam As organizations modernize their infrastructure strategies and reduce dependence on legacy virtualization platforms, many are evaluating alternatives to VMware vSphere that preserve operational continuity, performance, and data protection. HPE Morpheus Software VM Essentials, combined with Veeam Backup & Replication, delivers a validated and enterprise‑ready path to migrate workloads with confidence, minimal risk, and a clearly defined rollback strategy. This guide describes migration from VMware vSphere to HPE VM Essentials leveraging Veeam Backup & Replication to move workloads to HVM clusters (HPE’s hypervisor). Fundamental to this joint solution is the Veeam Plug‑In for Morpheus VM Essentials, which provides agentless, host‑level backup and recovery operations for HPE HVM. This plug‑in allows Veeam to work directly with Morpheus infrastructure, ensuring that virtual machines can be seamlessly protected with Veeam after mig