Blogs and Podcasts

Since majority of us use Windows for our day to day operations, in this guide, you will learn about Windows update expiration policy.By expiring older, redundant packages, you will get better performance, shorter scan times, a faster user experience, and a reduced risk of deploying older updates that have been superseded with newer, more secure ones.Note: This policy only applies to Windows updates. Updates for other Microsoft software or firmware may have different policies and should be considered separately.An expired package will not appear in Windows Update scan results thereby reducing internet data usage.Kindly visit this link to learn more. 

Recently, I have noticed on this platform that most of us work with Windows Server 2016, 2019, and now 2022. Also even Windows 10. In this guide, I will be showing you how to update the Windows installation image (install.wim) file with the latest security intelligence package available. I have successfully tested this on Windows 10 Enterprise, Pro und Home-Edition and Windows Server 2016 and 2019. Here is a detailed guide on "how to install ADK, MDT, and WDS: How to deploy Windows images via Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and Windows Deployment Services".How do you provision your new servers? Regardless of how this is done, you may also find this guide useful.Microsoft Defender Antivirus, formerly known as Windows Defender, is an antivirus protection program that’s included with Windows 10. Unlike other antivirus programs like McAfee, Microsoft Defender is free and doesn’t require any additional installation. After the installation of Windows 10, the built-in version of Microsoft Defend

Listen to "Veeam Backup for AWS v4 and Azure v3" by Virtualization is Life!  

Listen to "Veeam Backup for Salesforce" by Virtualization is Life!.  

We all know Veeam as a great solution for Backup and Recovery. But besides that, Veeam can help us with many different Sysadmin tasks. Here are some for which I’ve used Veeam in the past. In most cases Veeam is just faster than any other way and, most important, it just works Test Updates & Troubleshoot problemsWith SureBackup and the Virtual Labs you can not only regularly check your backups, but also test certain updates before deploying them to production. If something fails, you can start debugging the problem without any hurry or restart the whole lab with just a few clicks.Also, when troubleshooting problems in your production environment, why not take a Quick Backup and start a lab? From there you can try any adjustments or workarounds, without fearing to cause (much worse) problems in your production. Or, if you already have a workaround for a problem, but want to find the root cause, then backup the faulty state.Migrate SystemsWe can’t use online migration in every environ

Greetings guys, a few months ago I already showed you an incredible, powerful, yet free and open source Grafana Dashboard for your Veeam Backup for AWS.As you know, Veeam has released Veeam Backup for AWS v4, here you can know more about it, plus take a look at a great video deploying it from scratch, creating policies, etc.So I have decided to take a look at the new RESTful API endpoints, or to check the ones where updated, and, of course, I have spend the Saturday updating the Grafana Dashboard, introducing Unofficial Grafana Dashboard for Veeam Backup for AWS v3How does the Dashboard look like for VBA AWS v4After you finish the configuration steps, which you can find on the other Community post linked at the top, you will see something as beautiful and useful like this:Grafana Dashboard - Summary of featuresSummary - Total number of Repositories, Policies, Protected VMs, VBA Appliance version. Unprotected VMs - Both, in one handy list with size, region and name. And with a great vis

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 whether they are physical, cloud or virtual. Earlier t

Hi,Today I’m excited to finally share my blog series that I’ve been working on for some time, a deep dive into the object storage solutions available from the “big three” public cloud hyperscalers (Azure/AWS/GCP). Part one is available now over at the Veeam Blog and I’ll be updating this post as the other sections become available over the coming days! I won’t spoil the reading but part one focuses on a review of these three services, where they are similar or differentiate so you can start to align yourself with a suitable cloud!UPDATE 25/08/2021: Part two is now available!UPDATE 04/10/2021: Part three is now available!Cloud Object Storage Deep Dive - Part One, ComparisonCloud Object Storage Deep Dive - Part Two, ImplementationCloud Object Storage Deep Dive - Part Three, Benchmarks Any questions? Did it help? Please feel free to give feedback!

Microsoft dropped a surprise on us today by releasing Windows Server 2022 to no fanfare at all. It’s been released today 18th August 2021, it will have mainstream support until the 13th October 2026 and will be considered end of life on the 14th October 2031 (how are we talking about the 2030’s already?!). This is evidenced in Microsoft’s updated Windows Server Release Information document.If you’re looking to grab an evaluation copy of Windows Server 2022 you can do so here. Alternatively if you have a suitable agreement with Microsoft you can also download a copy from VLSC or MSDN.Interested to learn what’s new in Windows Server 2022? You can check out Microsoft’s post on the subject here. IMPORTANT: Microsoft are making TPM 2.0 support mandatory, if you’re looking to install onto existing hardware, be sure you meet the hardware requirements. Supported Platforms Realistically it’s going to be premature to start migrating your entire environment to Windows Server 2022, but in the inte

Greetings everyone, Veeam Backup for Azure v3 is finally GA, meaning that you can go ahead and download it directly from the Azure Marketplace.Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure can now back up and restore SQL databases running either on a SQL Server or as an Azure SQL Managed Instance. A flexible policy-based schedule allows Azure users to perform database-consistent backups via pre-configure staging servers. The resulted backup file (BACPAC) can be used as a backup or an opportunity to test out any changes to SQL databases avoiding the interaction with the production servers.Veeam Backup for Azure v3 - Video Deep-Dive including What's new, Deployment, Configuration, and Veeam Backup and Replication v11a IntegrationIf same as me, you like the video tutorials, with a description of what's new, a deep-dive, and now even with the sections on the video to move between them, look no further, I have prepared for you a 30 minutes video with everything you need to know: Veeam Backup for Azure v

Greetings everyone, Veeam Backup for AWS v4 is GA! It can be found on the AWS Marketplace, on the Official Veeam Website, and Helpcenter.Veeam Backup for AWS v4 delivers native, fully automated AWS backup and disaster recovery to effortlessly protect and manage Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Relational Database Services (Amazon RDS), and Amazon Elastic File Systems (Amazon EFS) data. Built with cost-effectiveness, security, and scalability in mind, you can eliminate the risk of data loss for all your AWS data while saving big!Note: Veeam Backup for AWS v4 as a standalone offering is officially GA as of now. It is also integrated with Veeam Backup & Replication v11a which is currently in Early Availability, with General Availability scheduled for later this month. Veeam Backup for AWS v4 - Video Deep-Dive including What's new, Deployment, Configuration, and Veeam Backup and Replication v11a IntegrationIf you like video tutorials, with a description of what's new,

I guess a lot of the community members know this piece of IT-history:Other will even know this guy: Its a floppy disk! First of these were able to safe 0,24MB (!) And these first ones came out 1971! Is such a disk still in use? Yes it is! Here are a few examples:MS Office Older Boeing 747-400 planes still gets their software update on disksDEF CON 28 Aerospace Village: 747-400 Walk through From a Hacker’s Perspective at about 7:53 Some industry machines still uses disk  You can still buy new disk? Of course, but at a rather high price.For those not knowing disks, you can listen here how they sound.Want to use them to make music?! Yes you can!

Listen as I talk through what’s new and enhanced in Veeam Service Provider Console v6https://anchor.fm/virtualization-is-life/episodes/Veeam-Service-Provider-Console-v6-Release-e181pu3/a-a6jub86This is sourced from the sister podcast to the blog, Virtualization if Life! by Anthony Spiteri https://anthonyspiteri.net/console-v6-service-providers/ 

Listen as I talk through what’s new and enhanced in Veeam Backup & Replication v11a.https://anchor.fm/virtualization-is-life/episodes/Veeam-Backup--Replication-v11a-Release-e181pln/a-a6jua5bThis is sourced from the sister podcast to the blog, Virtualization if Life! by Anthony Spiteri https://anthonyspiteri.net/backup-replication-v11a-release/

Veeam ONE is a comprehensive solution developed by Veeam Software and it enables real-time monitoring, business documentation, and management reporting for Veeam Backup & Replication, VMware vSphere, VMware vCloud Director, and Microsoft Hyper-V. Veeam ONE is designed to give IT administrators peace of mind to manage every aspect of the modern virtual environment.Do not turn your eyes away from unknown issues lurking in your environment. Mitigate potential issues even before they occur (threats) with 340+ preset alarms and 150+ prebuilt reports available in Veeam One.Veeam ONE brings deep visibility that helps you prevent common backup problems, stay informed about your storage trends and cut costs through better storage usage and planning, thanks to new insights for NAS data.In the typical deployment scenario, all Veeam ONE components are installed on a single machine, and this comprises of the Veeam ONE Client and Veeam ONE Web Client.– Veeam ONE Client is the primary tool used f

Testing this great tool that he left us @jorge.delacruz , it occurred to me to do in a single photo what would be the scenario for a 3 2 1 rule in VMware Cloud on AWS with Veeam     

I thought it would be good to share this here, although this is already covered on many news sites.Yesterday VMware did publish a Security Advisory regarding multiple vulnerabilities in vCenter Server. The most critical one "CVE-2021-22005” did receive a CVSSv3 score of 9.8 (of 10) and an attacker could take over the control just be uploading a file via port 443. Although vCenter shouldn’t be reachable from the WAN/internet, the vulnerabilities should still be seen as very critical; an inside attacker could already be waiting.All together there were 19 CVEs published and fixed by VMware. All currently supported vCenter Server releases are more or less affected:vCenter 7: <7.0 U2c: affected by all vulnerabilities → Patch to 7.0 U2d 7.0 U2c: “only affected” by the minor vulnerabilities → Patch to 7.0 U2d vCenter 6.7: all 6.7 releases are affected → patch to 6.7 U3o vCenter 6.5: “only affected” by the minor vulnerabilities → Patch to 6.5 U3q → the minior vulnerabilities are still cr

Today I want to talk about backups, and the importance of encrypting them, everywhere. When people think of encrypted backups, the usual first thoughts are around portable backups such as tape and USB or backups outside of your trust domain such as cloud storage.This is a great starting point, and if you’re not currently encrypting these I urge you to do so as these are normally your highest risk backups. But here’s a an emerging scenario to consider.Security is a constant battle of escalations, attempting to out-do the efforts of each other. Whilst we’re seeing an industry reacting to ransomware threats with immutability, these malicious actors have also moved on from just encrypting your data. Now these bad actors are attempting to steal your data and extort a ransom to prevent leaking the data.Scary stuff right? It’s for this reason and more that backups are being targeted for data exfiltration. Consider the positives a good backup meets. Storage and Bandwidth Efficiency Now malicio

HiIn the 2 days during VEEAMON 2021, there was often the question from new members why to choose Veeam over other competitors…Therefore my own top-15. There will be more reasons, but I think it will cover a lot of the reasons and I don’t think someone has to hesitate anymore ;-) PortabilitySomething I like very hard! All necessary information is built into the backup-file.You are not dependent of your backup-server to restore something. In case of emergency of disaster it’s just sufficient to install VBR Community Edition (free), import your backup-file and restore. You can even extract your backup-file (without VBR) to the .VMDK or .VHDX files.Next to that : the format is interchangeable : you can for example restore a VM (backup taken from vSphere on-premises) to Azure or to HyperV, or restore a backup taken with a Veeam Agent to Amazon EC2 or HyperV, … and so on, the list is very long!  Not always possible with other backup vendors in my experience. Universal licensesIf you use univ

Greetings everyone, for years we all have been configuring our SMTP notifications on Veeam Backup and Replication to start receiving emails about the jobs, etc. Probably is the second or third thing we do after installing VBR.Now, that is great, but at the same time is true that Veeam Backup for AWS/Azure/Office 365 SMTP Notifications are not the same as what we are used in VBR, until today!I am pleased to share here with you, some Community work I have built using the comprehensive, feature-rich, RESTful API these products include, keen to hear your feedback. The how-to of every script it is something similar to this:We have our products which exposes RESTful API We have a bash shell script to collect data from the API The bash shell script sends the data to the specified address, or addressesThis post might be a bit long, so keep scrolling to the HTML Report you need.Enhanced HTML Report for Veeam Backup for AWSThis Script will query the Veeam Backup for AWS API and save the job sess

Afternoon everyone! I just found out that Veeam have released the VMCA 2022 course and exam. We’ve had a few discussions around this exam within the community as originally Veeam were intending for everyone to take the VMCA 2022 course prior to sitting the exam, however between then and now they’ve changed it. I checked my portal this morning and it showed the “Step 1. Attend a training course” as ticked. I checked with my account manager that this was intentional and they confirmed it’s no longer mandatory to redo the course if you’ve already got a VMCA v1.To find out more simply go to: Get Veeam Certified Now! and then click on the “Veeam Certified Architect” tab. FAQs:I took the VMCA v1 training course but never took the exam, what should I do? The VMCA v1 is expected to retire on 31st December 2021, either sit the exam or take the VMCA 2022 training course and work on that instead. Should I take the training course? Of course, it’s not always cost-effective for some people to take

"Mastering Veeam Backup & Replication 10" was released earlier this year in February 2021.  The book can be seen at the following link and ordered:Version 10 Book is here - Mastering Veeam Backup & Replication 10I have since been approached to write an update to the book for Version 11 and have accepted the challenge.  The current book will get updates, some things removed and definitely all the new goodies that are in the latest release of @Veeam. Mastering Veeam Backup & Replication v11 -- Coming Soon I will update my blog as my journey progresses with the new version.  I hope to create an updated book that was as good as the first one which everyone enjoyed that gave me feedback.  It will be fun writing about the newest features of Veeam v11 and updating existing stuff to make it current.Keep an eye out for further updates and other blog posts.

HPE announced their launch of LTO-9 Ultrium data cartridges.Could not find much more information about it. No release-dates of LTO-9 drives. As discussed earlier here with LTO-9 drives does not provide double-capacity compared to previous version. 

VBO Calculator Community Edition V2 First we want to thank you for the great feedback and your input for Version 1 of the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Calculator Community Edition! We already added some new features and bugfixes which we want to share with you.Click here to download the new version:Download(If you missed the first post where you can find all instructions, please follow: https://www.backupbros.com/2020/09/22/veeam-backup-for-microsoft-office-365-calculator/)To keep this short let me introduce the new features:Price ComparisonWe are now able to do a price comparision with on-premise-storage (where the compression is a bit lower) and your preferred object storage. As well as a second object storage vendor.You can enter your on-premise-storage costs (local object storage and local direct storage) in the input sheet:If you want to compare your preferred cloud object storage vendor with another one, just select the second vendor in the dropdown above the chart.VM eg

Veeam launched the veeamazing new v11 last week and with it, some amazing new features. In this blog post I’ll be highlighting the licensing requirements for these new features and a few other pre-requisites to use them. Veeam Continuous Data Protection (CDP)Veeam CDP enables organisations to achieve aggressively low RPO whilst still retaining the flexibility required by organisations for their retention needs. To utilise Veeam CDP your environment needs to be:VMware Environment using vSphere 6.5 or newer. Veeam needs to have either a Veeam Universal License or Enterprise Plus when using a socket-based license. Replication target can’t be a Veeam Cloud Connect Replica. Veeam Hardened RepositoryThe Veeam hardened repository is designed to help keep backups safe and data integrity assured. It’s great to see this feature requires no specific licensing from Veeam, however there are some pre-requisites to be considered:Only Linux repositories currently provide immutability Only certain task