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Cloud adoption continues to increase as organisations are either taking their first steps into the cloud, or progressing their IT strategies, whether it’s a full cloud migration, multi-cloud or delivering a hybrid architecture.A great workload to leverage the cloud has been as a backup repository. By using the cloud, we can meet multiple improvements to our 3-2-1-1-0 minimum strategy for backups. In case you aren’t familiar with the 3-2-1-1-0 strategy, it is:3 copies of data, across 2 different backup media types, 1 of which must be off-site to the production environment, 1 backup at least must be offline or “immutable”, with 0 backup validation errors. Security BoundariesOne threat that the 3-2-1-1-0 strategy doesn’t cover explicitly is the concept of security boundaries. It is entirely possible to achieve all 3-2-1-1-0 objectives purely within your own environment, or exclusively within a single cloud, but there are problems with either approach, as we’ll look into now. Internally Ma

A Veeam storage plugin needs to control your storage device in a way. Therefore you need a user account inside your storage system. The same of course is true for the DataCore plugin.From a security standpoint one always wants to have only the least amount of permissions to be allowed to the user. Avoid using a global admin here to minimize your attack surface!Here I will describe how to achieve that with the Veeam storage plugin for DataCore:First create a new role inside your DataCore console. In the screenshot the permissions to attach to the role are shown:Veeam storage plugin for DataCore - Role permissionsOnce the role is setup, you can create the user inside DataCore and select the role to assign it to:Veeam storage plugin for DataCore - Create the user for Veeam accessFinally you will have to create a local user of the exact same name inside all Windows servers involved in your DataCore cluster. Usually one has two nodes in a mirrored cluster. As the nodes are not supposed to b

Recently, I had to create a Disaster Recovery (DR) Plan for my organization. It’s actually quite surprising none had ever been created. Part of that is on me since I’ve been here long enough to have done so, and am responsible for most of the systems we would need to recover in the event of a disaster. But let’s be honest, creating DR Plans isn’t one of those “exotic” tasks a Systems Architect likes to do. Working with and playing with the tech we manage is what we get excited about! Regardless, it still *needs* to be done. One may ask why does creating a DR Plan need to be done? It may seem obvious to most, but some it may not. I thought I’d answer that question here, as well as provide a “skeleton” list of items to consider when building out your own DR Plan.First, having a DR Plan brings a sense of “calm” for the IT staff. In the event of a disaster of any sort - site outage; mal-intent via ransomware, disgruntled employee, or major hardware outage; etc - chaos can surely take over.

An attacker can not immediately delete or change backup files located on Hardened Repositories. But with more time the attacker can do some damage. So it is important to keep a regular eye on it. A efficient way is to monitor Hardened Repository with Veeam ONE v11a. In this version some enhancements have been added which we will now take a look at. Monitoring immutability enabledWhen Veeam hardened repository is setup correctly, immutability is enabled and a appropriate number of days is chosen. When an attacker has access to the backup server, he could try to disable immutability. After some time all backups would be free to delete or modify. Therefore it is important to keep it enabled.In Veeam ONE v11a there is a new alarm for checking the state of immutability: Immutability state. Alarm is assigned by default to whole Backup Infrastructure. When Immutability state becomes disabled, alarm will trigger. Use this to be notified by mail. If you prefer reports for notification, Backup O

Are you backing up your Office 365? And… why not?I’m not going into the lengthy and exhausting discussion of why you should take care of your data, even if it’s stored in something unbreakable like “the cloud”, at least not in this post. I would like to focus on one of the features of the new Veeam Backup for Office 365 v4, which was released just the other day. This feature is “object storage support“, as you may have guessed it already from the title of this fine post!So, this means that you can take Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure Blob Storage or even IBM Cloud Object Storage and use it for your Veeam Backup for Office 365. And even better – you can use any S3-compatible storage to do the same! How cool is that?!To test this, I decided to use the Exoscale SOS (also S3-compatible) storage for backups of my personal Office 365 via Veeam Backup for Office 365.I’ve created a small environment to support this test (and later production, if it works as it should) and basically done the followi

For some reason and to come to speed with all the Veeam components, I decided to revive my Veeam Lab and during the process, I encountered the following error “Error 1064 - An exception occurred in the service when handling the control request : No connection can be made because the active machine rejected it “. Before I proceed to fix this issue, I would love to discuss the capabilities of Veeam for anyone that may stumble on this article. Veeam Backup & Replication is comprehensive data protection and disaster recovery solution that provides a centralized console for administering backup, restore, replication operations in all supported platforms (virtual, physical, cloud). Regardless of what your needs are ranging from flexible hybrid cloud capabilities from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, or the most robust ransomware protection and recovery options. Veeam brings hardened immutable storage options, dependable cloud-native backup options, Continuous Data Protection, and much more

I had some – in review stupid – error with an backup of a single private computer with the free version of the Veeam Agent for Windows.I had told the owner of this machine to use the Veeam Agent for backup, because it is free and reliable. That I am using the products of this company professionally and didn’t have much problems with them and that they are very easy to use.So this poor little owner downloaded the agent, installed it and configured a backup job according to the procedure and recommendations I have given to him.The he tried to run the backup and after a short time – BANG Error.He called me and told me that there is a problem. I asked him to send the error message to me and I will have a look at it.19.02.2022 14:29:59 :: Error: Shared memory connection was closed. Failed to upload disk. Agent failed to process method {DataTransfer.SyncDisk}. Exception from server: There is not enough storage space available on the data medium. Failed to write data to the file [S:\VeeamBack

This post is about a not working application backup that does not show any errors. I share this because it could easily happen without notice. It is about a backup of a MS Exchange VM. Backup worked fine but Exchange wasn’t backed up as application and therefore logs wasn't truncated too. Exchange was a single system, configured without cluster feature. After the job run, there was no option to restore Exchange Application Item, like you see here with SQL Server.  Essential with application backup in Windows VMs is a triggered VSS snapshot. This can be done by Veeam Guest Processing or VMware tools quiescence. But when there is no VSS writer registered for a specific application, no application backup will be performed. Don't get me wrong: whole VM - all files within - will be backed up, but application itself will not. Therefore it is not possible to restore application by right-click appropriate restore point. Which can be overcome by starting the appropriate Veeam Explorer:  and ope

In case you missed it, VMware is currently offering a FREE 12-month access to the VMware Customer Connect Learning Premium Package. The catch? You must sign up before October 31st, 2020 so don’t delay!While you will get access to all the content from the basic subscription which includes free access to for example:1.357 videos 67 eLearning courses Fundamental courses VMware Certified Associate trainingThe premium package will also get you:All their official exam prep courses (650+ videos) Access to the just launched VMware Certified Technical Associate (VCTA) trainingIf you are not yet VMware certified, going for the VCTA certification is a great way to learn and also get started on their certification program - this will without a doubt help progress your career. BONUS!Just in case you didn’t know, VMware also offers free hands-on lab access. This is a great way to try out and learn about all their new technologies or simply learn more about the vSphere basics and get more out of what

Great news! The pre-registration for VeeamON 2022 is open!https://www.veeamon.comThis year VeeamON will be a hybrid event, which means you can either attend virtually (for free!) or in-person. If you go for the later you’ll have to hurry as the seats are limited (1500). Also there’s a bonus option to add VMCE/VMCA training for a very good price. If you need to justify the costs for attending the in-persion event and the training, there’s even a template you can download and fill in our details. This will sure make it easier to get the budget for the trip to Vegas  So regardless if your planing for the virtual or in-person event, go to www.veeamon.com and register yourself!Also don’t overlook @MicoolPaul’s post with more details below  

Based on my original script from 2020 where I created a vCenter role for Veeam Backup & Replication with PowerCLI, I decided to do the same for Veeam ONE. You can find the other script for VBR here:As a result the blog post here with the new script was born !This PowerShell / PowerCLI script lets you create a new vCenter server role with all the cumulative privileges and permissions to use them with Veeam ONE V11.The privileges used are based on the recommendations out of the Veeam Help Center which you can find here: Connection to Virtualization ServersSimply execute the script and follow the steps to fill in the relevant data. Most importantly your vCenter server name, the username and your password. The script will then ask you to choose a name for your new role and automatically creates it. The script in action :DAfter you have created the role you need to assign a user to it. As a result, continue within Veeam ONE where you add your vCenter Server. Veeam ONE vCenter “add”The p

Error message is about a missing restore point for a certain VM. Because of this catalog replication job fails.  Cause and solutionOne possible cause is the deactivation of VMs guest indexing in backup job during a period of time when Enterprise Manager did not have access to the VBR server. In a specific case the password of the user that was used by Enterprise Manager to communicate with VBR server was changed.Fortunately, the solution here is also quite simple. At least I found a quite simple way to solve the problem. You need enable guest indexing and run the backup job. After this run make sure catalog replication runs without an issue. Now you can disable indexing again. From now on catalog should be replicated without problems.

Hey everyone, ACG are offering some free training courses again this month, some of them are looking really good!Disclaimer, haven’t watched all of the courses yet, but wanted to share early enough in the month that everyone gets a chance to review! AWS: AWS EssentialsIntroduction to AWSIntroduction to the AWS MarketplaceHow to Properly Secure an S3 BucketEKS Basics (Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service) Azure: Azure ConceptsIntroduction to Azure SecurityIntroduction to Networking on Azure GCP: Google Cloud ConceptsGoogle Cloud Security EssentialsIntro to GCP for AWS AdminsGKE Basics (Google Kubernetes Engine) Kubernetes: Hands-on Kubernetes Troubleshooting Linux: Linux Operating System Fundamentals Want to see the whole list available? Click here!

As the headline suggests, Veeam recently released a “version 3a“ of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure.Whilst there are your usual mixture of security fixes and bugs resolved, it actually brings a new (and welcome) change to the licensing structure around protecting Azure SQL workloads (not to be confused with Azure virtual machines running SQL Server). Licensing Per Server, not Per Database It’s not unusual to see Veeam adapt their pricing models over time to provide better value for customers. We’ve seen this historically when, for example, Veeam adjusted their NAS licensing to increase the amount of storage protected per instance license. However I was certainly surprised when Veeam released the latest version of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure and included a change to the way they process Azure SQL Workloads.First of all, this isn’t to be confused with the “traditional” approach to running SQL Server workloads in Azure, aka, running a virtual machine with SQL Server installed. That

The following error can occur in Veeam Enterprise Manger during catalog replication. Catalog replication is needed to transfer guest indexing information from the VBR server to the Enterprise Manager server.By default, replication task runs automatically after each backup job. You can trigger it manually within Enterprise Manager GUI. Just enter the Configuration section, select Settings and press Update Now.Log files can be seen beneath Sessions.Meta-file errorThis error is about the meta-file that does not contain a certain attribute.Cause and solutionThere is a meta-file for catalog replication on Enterprise Manager server. In some situations it may happen that this file is empty. I do not know exactly under what circumstances this can happen but the solution is simple. Just delete, or rename the empty file. File is located on the Enterprise Manager server in directory C:\VBRCatalog\Replication\InConnectors and is named VbrServerName.uuid.con.The next replication task should not sto

The walkthrough of the official #VMCA 2022 practice exam question 39 is ready.Are you starting to see a flow in how to answer the questions?The final video in this series will be available tomorrow :-)

I was recently made aware that Veeam have released the 2021 edition of the Veeam Certified Engineer (VMCE) exam. If you’ve already got a VMCE 2020 certification, or have taken the VMCE 2020 training course within the past year, (or even been lucky enough to already take a seat on the VMCE 2021 training course) you’re eligible to take the exam.To take the exam simply head to the VMCE certification page, sign in with your company email address that was used for either your training course or previous exam and you should see the below.Description: An image showing the VMCE certification page with a button labelled “Manage VMCE 2021 Exam”Simply click on “Manage VMCE 2021 Exam” and you’ll be taken to the PearsonVUE website to organise either a remote exam or in-person exam. The Exam Online Proctor Experience Over the course of the pandemic, PeasonVUE have got repeatedly better at delivering the remote training sessions, they’ve slowly adapted their security measures too, when the pandemic h

Hi Folks, I think I remember hearing that Veeam was coming out with their own Self Service Portal for O365. I can’t remember where I heard this (VeeamONUpdate?). Does anyone remember? And would this be based on the previous unofficial Portal that was on the VeeamGitHub site? cheers Geoff

The walkthrough of the official #VMCA 2022 practice exam question 38 is ready.Are you starting to see a flow in how to answer the questions? 

The walkthrough of the official #VMCA 2022 practice exam question 26 is ready.Did you have to check the scenario document? Which section did you locate the information inside? 

The walkthrough of the official #VMCA 2022 practice exam question 37 is ready.Are you starting to see a flow in how to answer the questions? 

The walkthrough of the official #VMCA 2022 practice exam question 36 is ready.Did you have to check the scenario document? Which section did you locate the information inside? 

In this week's episode of #HomelabWednesdays, I show you how to set up and perform a VMware vMotion.Don’t forget to subscribe to get automatic notifications whenever a new video is released. 

New LTO-9 for HPE products are available:LTO-9 is available as of January 10, 2022, for the following entry and mid-range HPE StoreEver solutions:HPE StoreEver LTO-9 45000 internal and external standalone tape drives HPE StoreEver MSL 1/8 autoloader HPE StoreEver MSL 2024 tape library HPE StoreEver MSL3040 tape library HPE StoreEver MSL6480 tape library https://community.hpe.com/t5/Around-the-Storage-Block/Great-news-for-the-new-year-LTO-9-comes-to-HPE-StoreEver-tape/ba-p/7157794