Blogs and Podcasts

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 brings a redesigned architecture that changes how private cloud infrastructure is structured and managed. Whether you're coming from earlier VCF versions or looking at the platform for the first time, this guide breaks down what’s new and how it works in practice. At a high level, VCF 9.0 is a hierarchical system that scales from a single site to globally distributed infrastructure. Here’s how it’s organized and how each layer fits into day-to-day operations. Three-Layer Hierarchy of VCF 9.0VCF 9.0 structures infrastructure into three layers, each serving a clear purpose: Layer 1: Private Cloud (Top-Level)This is the entire footprint of your private cloud environment. It encapsulates everything…your regions, Fleets, and Instances. You can think of it as the top-level container where policy and strategy decisions

For my first Veeam Community post, I thought I would share with you all something I’ve been doing for over a decade - an exam prep Study Guide; this one being for VMware VCP-DCV 2021. For those who haven’t followed me over the years, I started creating these “outlines”, i.e. Study Guides, for my own benefit to help me with tech cert exam prep. I then thought others in the community may benefit using them, so I decided to share them online. I generally post them on Twitter, so if you’d like to follow me, you can do so from here.When reviewing the VMware ‘Blueprint’ for the DCV 2021 exam as compared to the 2020 exam, I was initially overwhelmed by the additional content for 2021. As I dove deeper into the 2021 exam Objectives, it turns out a lot of them were similar to what was asked to know for the 2020 exam, so it wasn’t too bad to review. As with most of my

 Using Veeam we can have various types of files. But do you know all of those file extensions? Here is a list of the main files: .vbm - backup chain metadata file.vbk - full backup file.vib - incremental backup file.vrb - reverse incremental backup file.bco - configuration backup file.lde - veeam explorer exported file.ldf - Microsoft SQL Server Log file

Default behavior in VBR (incl. v11!): When a VM gets application-aware backed up, runtime components gets installed at start of job and are removed at the end. With v11 we have the option to install them persistent!  This increases security! No Admin-Share and VIX-access is necessary any more. But it is required to deploy the Veeam Installer Service on the VMs you want to use persistent components.  This can be done by manual installation, Group policy roll-out, or by adding the VM to managed Servers. When everything works fine, components are installed persistently: 

Microsoft has announced, that they are disabling basic auth on October 1st, 2022 for all tenants. It doesn‘t matter if you use it now or not. It gets disabled after October 1st, 2022. From the announcement post:Today, we are announcing that, effective October 1, 2022, we will begin to permanently disable Basic Auth in all tenants, regardless of usage (with the exception of SMTP Auth, which can still be re-enabled after that).Source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/basic-authentication-and-exchange-online-september-2021-update/ba-p/2772210 How is this relevant to our Veeam Backup Office 365 Installations?Today, Veeam can backup Office 365 data without basic auth (modern Auth On

Azure AD is a cloud-based multi-tenant directory and identity service that provides identity and access management capabilities in the cloud.Since choosing the correct authentication method is the first concern for organisations wanting to move their apps to the cloud. The following section helps you decide which authentication method is right for you by using a decision tree. It helps you determine whether to deploy cloud or federated authentication for your Azure AD hybrid identity solution.Scr: MicrosoftTo choose an authentication method, you need to consider the time, existing infrastructure, complexity, and cost of implementing your choice. These factors are different are different from Organisation to organisation. Because of this, I will be highlighting on the different authentication me

Veeam GFS Backup:The GFS (Grandfather-Father-Son) backup strategy included in Veeam Backup & Replication software is an optimized method for regular and long-term retention of data. It is important for some companies, especially those in the financial sector, to keep long-term data. With GFS, we can take our Annual, Monthly and Weekly Backups and store these backups for as long as we request.Grandfather-Father-Son Hierarchy:Grandfather: At this level, monthly backups are typically stored. It is used to take a full backup on the first and last day of each month and for long-term storage.Father: This is the level where weekly backups are stored. This level of storage can be achieved by taking a full backup any day of the week.Last: This is the level where daily backups are stored. For example, daily backups are provided by taking a full backup at the end of each day.The Schedule of GFS Backup can be seen in t

The importance of Veeam Data Movers  Veeam Data Mover performs data processing tasks on behalf of Veeam Backup & Replication, such as retrieving source machine data, performing data deduplication and compression, and storing backed-up data on the target storage.For Microsoft Windows servers, Veeam Data Movers are persistent, that is, Veeam Data Mover is uploaded and installed on a server only once. Veeam Backup & Replication automatically installs Veeam D

With the recent announcement of HPE VM Essentials, now generally available in a standalone version in January 2025 and in HPE Private Cloud later this year, I’ve received many inquiries from Veeam and HPE sellers eager to understand the current state of Veeam's support for this new hypervisor offering. Although direct integration between Veeam and HPE VM Essentials is not yet available, addressing these questions now is crucial for sellers and customers considering this new offering.We need to provide clarity on Veeam's position, ensuring that HPE and Veeam sellers have the information they need to communicate effectively with customers. While there isn't yet native integration with the HPE VME hypervisor, Veeam remains competitive and on par with other HPE data protection partners in offering a robust solution through its agent-based approach. This ensures that organizations considering HPE VM Essentials have reliable options for securing their data while Veeam explores deep

VMCE v12 trainingA brand new VMCE v12 training course was launched in September. The 3-day training now includes many of the great things that have been implemented in this version.Find your training here: Veeam Certified Engineer (VMCE) Training VMCE v12 examThe associated VMCE v12 exam has been available since 1 October. As a Veeam certified trainer myself, I have to be compliant within the next 60 days. That's why I planned a tough schedule and scheduled the exam just one day after this year’s Veeam100 summit in Prague 😀.Schedule your exam here: Get Veeam Certified Now! Exam flavorsThis time I took an online protored exam with PearsonVUE. I used to like on-site exams better, but since Covid

 It’s that time of the IT lifecycle again, where we talk upgrades and decommissioning.On the 12th July 2022, Microsoft SQL Server 2012 will go End of Life. Not just to extended/security patch support, but completely out of support.So, why am I talking about Veeam? If you’ve got an installation of Veeam that utilised a SQL Server Express database, and you installed Veeam prior to 9.5 Update 4, odds are you’ve got a SQL Server 2012 Express database. This creates a security risk as of the next Microsoft patch cycle, scheduled for the 12th July 2022.I would also like to state that whilst this isn’t the focus of the article, if you’ve got a Veeam Backup & Replication or Veeam ON

Hello everyone,Due to Im working in improving my lab a little bit, I dismatle the whole thing, and I started from Scratch,I already posted my Windows server 2025 Installation, and now, is time to connect to those machines in a “confortable” way. (Spanish)Also I had in the past Apache Guacamle, wich work great, but I wanted to give it a try to have more tools and experiences. I do like HTML 5 due to the compatibility with all my devices, Macbook, PC, iPhone, Ipad, etc…So, today, I want to show you this little tool:

With Microsoft releasing Windows Server 2022, Veeam have delivered support for this in Veeam B&R and Veeam ONE v11a. This includes support not just for protecting Hyper-V VMs on the OS, or guest OS support, but also running all the relevant Veeam Components and services on Windows Server 2022. This is truly a great milestone that Veeam have achieved so promptly after the release of this operating system.There’s more to this story however, Veeam currently ships with SQL Server 2016 Express edition as its default database if you don’t choose to install your own first. This will leave you in an unsupported state with Microsoft as only SQL Server editions still within mainstream support are supported for Windows Server 2022,

Protecting DB2 servers with Veeam Backup and Replication is pretty straightforward. The IBM DB2 can be protected with the following Veeam jobs:Classic VM backup jobs Veeam  Agent for Linux (VAL) jobs Enhanced NAS backup jobsTo ensure that the DB2 DBs are in a consistent state, IBM DB2 commands will need to be called to either create a native DB2 database backup or to put database(s) in a quiesced state so that a clean application backup of the database can be made. DB2 has several ways to perform backups from the CLI that make backups of the database reasonably simple.Native flat file backup can be performed against an offline or online DB. The options include using full, incremental, and differential backups A simple pause and resume of the DB2 writer that can be used to store (and VMware) snapshots that Veeam Backup and Replication can leverage. The ability to leverage storage arra

ReFS (Resilient File System) is a file system by Microsoft that provides - since Windows Server 2016 - a feature named Block cloning. Basically it uses pointers to already existing blocks instead of copying or re-creating them. This saves time and disk space. Veeam uses this feature for synthetic operations like merging incremental backups with full or synthetic full.In my opinion Microsoft does not offer a proper utility to analyse ReFS space savings with Block cloning. I think there are at least three ways to show the space benefit of Block cloning:Windows explorer Application that makes use of Block cloning

Happy monday everyone!Are you considering integrating the feature direct-to-Object Storage into your backup plan, which allows you to add Object Storage as a primary backup repository?Perhaps you'd like to test it locally on-premise first, on a Windows Server environment, without having to purchase, or testing purposes, paid cloud solutions? Or maybe you're specifically seeking a reliable On-Premise Object Storage solution that can also run on a Windows Server?Well, this guide is just for you.In this example I used:VMware ESXi 8.0 U2 Windows Server 2022 VM with 2 disks MinIO 2023-11-15Prepare your Object Storage Windows serverLet's set up and update a Windows Server 2022 VM. Keep it in a Workgroup. Then partition two disks: a smaller one for the OS and a larger one for data. In my example, I allocated 50GB to the OS

I wrote already a post about checking Microsoft ReFS space savings. Now I want to show some basics to check XFS savings too.To check space savings on repository layer go to the repository directory and run: ls -lhsYou can see the size of each file and the total size of all files. If there a way to much files, run ls -lhs | grep total Compare this to the size allocated on the volume. To show this, run df -h In this example you see space savings of: (86 - 35) = 51G

 Backups of VMware vSphere VMs can be done with one of three transport modes. Each of these modes also provide the possibility to restore data. This post is about 3 reasons why direct SAN restore failover to NBD. Incorrect VMDK typeVeeam can only perform direct SAN restore with thick provisioned VMDKs. If any disk of a VM is thin provisioned, restore will not leverage SAN directly. Both, thick eager and lazy zeroed are supported. In my experience, eager zeroed is much faster from a restore point of view! So I recommend, to use this format.Note: you should not rely on the provisioning type you chose at VMDK creation: 

Hi!I would like to share with y’all my initial “hands on” the VBR13 - Linux Based OVAPublishing the entry here, so you dont have to leave the Community Site:-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I want to share my initial screenshots of the Linux-based Veeam Backup & Replication Server.Tech Preview: VBR on Linux (v13)Private technology preview for Veeam 100, for non-production use only. Let’s get started:As you may know, let’s deploy the OVA in our Vsphere Host:As always, follow the wizard…Select where the VM is going to be stored

 How to avoid an Immutability MigraineWith direct to object storage backups coming in Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR) v12, we expect to see many more folks using object storage for their backup repositories.  This means there will be folks using object storage for the 1st time.  If they are like me they will probably use the graphical user interface (GUI) native to the object storage platform to manage their object storage.The native GUI will definately make the management easier, but it can also cause some headaches that you don’t expect.  The reason I am writing this is to help you avoid one such migraine when you are using your object storage’s native GUI to configure your object storage bucket to create an immutable object storage repository in VBR.The ScenarioThe 1st thing you need to do to create your immutable object storage repository is to create t

 Ever had your backups fail? I sure have! But it’s all part of the fun & games of learning exactly how these systems work.Recently I spun up another instance of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure, and as part of my security mindset, I configured some elements of hardening to my infrastructure. Well, I missed a setting that I’m going to share with you today. Worker Job Completed with Error So, I had Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure working, my daily snapshot job was also running fine, but it was the daily backup that wasn’t working. Some of the key terms I could pick out from the logs were ‘Worker: <Resource Name> (IP Address:Port): job completed with error’, ‘Error: This request is not authorised to perform this operation’, ‘Status 403’, and ‘ErrorCode AuthorizationFailur

Greetings, today I wanted to share with you some amazing news. I am talking about an unofficial Veeam icon library for Excalidraw.Excalidraw is a tool that helps you draw technical diagrams with a great hand-made look, made every diagram much more user-friendly, as it really looks like if somebody has drawn it with their own hands.After a few months, and many nights on this, I have finished adding around 60+ Veeam unofficial shapes in total that have been carefully created inspired by the official shapes. Sorry to repeat myself, but again, these shapes are unofficial and not linked in any way to Veeam Software, use them, edit them, change them as you like.

Quite a cool new feature is the ability to enable Multi-factor authentication (MFA) for the VBR console login. With this a user has to enter username, password and an additional confirmation code that comes from a Authenticator app like Google Authenticator.At first login, User can add VBR to his Authenticator app.It is really simple to use.BUT

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.

Hey everyone,Starting the beginning of January 2021 we're going to see Veeam simplify the license offerings available to customers. Historically Veeam have always offered a "per socket" perpetual licensing model, which was great when we were just considering protecting our vSphere & Hyper-V infrastructure, but as Veeam has grown and produced additional feature capabilities such as NAS Backup, Cloud-native Backups for AWS and Azure and Physical server and workstation protection options, this licensing model hasn't suited them all. Then Veeam introduced the Veeam Universal License (VUL) subscription, streamlining the licensing experience for customers by offering a "per workload" backup model, allowing customers to mix and match different products as part of their overall Veeam licensing. This license becomes increasingly appealing as customers wish to test adoption of different clouds, they protect their workloads, regardless of