Blogs and Podcasts

As probably everyone at this awesome community knows : instant recovery of Veeam is great!!! This is one of the many reasons why Veeam has to be chosen over the competitors : you can read this in a previous sticky post of mine : Recap : 15 reasons to choose Veeam over competitors | Veeam Community Resource Hub Well I have a true time story showing that this functionality can save a company big time!!! At the service-desk of my company (an MSP), a priority 1 incident case came in of one of our customers, so SD First Line created an P1 incident case.By chance that day I was planned at third line of SD and was not planned for projects at customers...Regarding the urgency and the fact that our companies Veeam backup-expert  was present that day at SD, the case came directly to me...Who is the customer : the customer is a secondary school Used infrastructure : they are using standalone Hyper-V hosts with local storage (don’t ask me why they are not using shared storage, but that’s another

  BR v.11 - Step by step Install & Configure (Best Practice) | Veeam Community Resource Hub#########################################################   CREATE NEW JOB add multiple VM 15 restore point Incr Weekly sinth full Saturday  ######################################################### #Create new Job:$test2 = Find-VBRViEntity -Name "spc*"$repository = Get-VBRBackupRepository -ScaleOut -Name *****-SOBRAdd-VBRViBackupJob -Name "D002-TEST2" -Entity $test2 -BackupRepository $repository #Set 15 restore point:$retention = New-VBRJobOptions -ForBackupJob$retention.BackupStorageOptions.RetainCycles = 15$job = Get-VBRJob -Name "D002-TEST2"Set-VBRJobOptions -Job $job -Options $retention#Configure job schedule and enable it:Get-VBRJob -Name "D002-TEST2" | Set-VBRJobSchedule -Daily -At "23:30" -DailyKind Everyday | Enable-VBRJobSchedule#Set Forever Incremental:Get-VBRJob -Name "D002-TEST2" | Set-VBRJobAdvancedBackupOptions -Algorithm Incremental -TransformFullToSyntethic $true -TransformIn

The virtual machines I use for the deployment are generated from a Template (Golden Image) through a configuration file unattend.xml Answer files (unattend.xml)https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/update-windows-settings-and-scripts-create-your-own-answer-file-sxs What is Windows System Image Manager?https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-vista/cc766347(v=ws.10) Useful links for sizingVeeam Architects Site https://www.veeambp.com/ Veeam Size Estimation Tool (VSE)https://vse.veeambp.com/#/ The Restore Point Simulatorhttp://rps.dewin.me/ Veeam Ports Calculatorhttps://www.veeambp.com/ports/ REFS Calculatorhttp://dewin.me/calculator/ Bandwidth Calculatorhttp://rps.dewin.me/bandwidth/ Pricing calculator for small businesshttps://www.veeam.com/pricing-calculator NAS Calculatorhttps://cloudoasis.com.au/nas-calculator/ Veeam Clikable Demoshttps://veeamclick.be/ Prerequisite: System Requirements - Veeam Backup Guide for vSphere

I see one more change in VBR V11 Beta - the handling of exported backups and of backups with no associated backup job. Exported Backups:Up to V10 exported (disk) backups were put in the section “Disk (imported)”In V11 the exported backups are put in another section - “Disk (VeeamZIP)”. Up to V10 I have seen this section when creating a VeeamZip archive intentionally only. Backups from deleted backup jobs:Backups which were created from deleted backup jobs were put in the section “Disk (Imported)”, too. In V11 there is a new section: “Disk (Orphaned)” I think this describes the status of these backups much better than before.

Because backup of a vSphere VM almost always involves taking a vSphere snapshot, this VMware blog post will be interesting for every backup administrator. https://blogs.vmware.com/performance/2021/06/performance-best-practices-for-vmware-snapshots.htmlVMware has tested the performance impact of snapshots. Baseline performance is a VM without a snapshot. After that, performance testing is done with 1, 2 and more snapshots. Tested was default IO-tests and java application performance (SPECjbb). Tests included: vVOL, VMFS and vSAN.Test Results:Impact on vVOL depends on the storage system, because snapshots are taken there. VMs on VMFS have a huge performance penalty even with one snapshot. To be more exact: the first snapshot has the greatest impact! vSAN does not suffer much from snapshot with sequential workload. To be honest I think this is interesting to know but has no meaning in reality. SPECjbb does not show worse performance at all.Recommendations:Let snapshots exist as short as p

It is being found that the official app used in installing SteelSeries devices on Windows 10 can be exploited to grant Admin rights as discovered by some security research “Lawrence Amer“. As stated by BleepingComputers, the bug can be leveraged during the device startup process using a link in the License Agreement screen that is opened with SYSTEM privileges. A real SteelSeries device is not necessary to exploit the bug. Also, a bug was discovered in the Razer Synapse software that granted unauthorised admin access. Now, a similar bug was found in SteelSeries software that gives anyone who plugs in a device complete control over a Windows 10 PC with admin rights. Emulating a device also works: This discovery became known after news broke out about the Razer Synapse software as it was able to grant administrative privileges when connecting a Razer mouse or keyboard. This motivated the research from Jorhat, offensive security researcher Lawrence Amer (research team leader at 0xsp) foun

Another video from the quick and nerdy series. This video is half how-to half showcase of the true flexibility of Veeam and cloud data protection. It starts with taking a backup of an EC2 instance with VBAWS, using a VBR server to backup copy job to a SOBR with Wasabi and finally using that Wasabi bucket to Natively restore to Azure. This one had a lot of moving parts so it went a little over the 10-15 minute structure but it’s worth a watch! 

Greetings Community,I have been working for a few weeks on parsing all things Veeam Logs, deep stuff that is for sure. On this specific Post I want to cover the Monitoring of the Capacity Tier Jobs and Tasks.This is work in progress, so I am writing this post seeking help from you, to try it on your lab, or on your environments (always remembering it is Community Stuff and not supported)System RequirementsYou should have Telegraf+InfluxDB+Grafana installed Grafana should be the version 8.0.2 - In case you have an inferior version, or superior, please just run this sudo apt-get install grafana=8.0.2 You should have telegraf installed on the VBR, I hope properly configured sending metrics to your InfluxDB. Ping me if need anything. But it is really simple. The telegraf.conf at the end should contain this at the end of the file (this is the fairy dust that makes us fly :))# Offload Job - ID and final status[[inputs.tail]] files = ["C:\\ProgramData\\Veeam\\Backup\\*\\Offload*.log"] from_

Microsoft has issued an advisory for another zero-day Windows print spooler vulnerability tracked as CVE-2021-36958 that allows local attackers to gain SYSTEM privileges on a computer. As stated by Microsoft, an attacker who successfully exploits this vulnerability could run arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges.I you wish to have more detailed information on the development of this vulnerability, when it was first discovered, its workaround and patches released so far, please visit the following links.Unlike the previous exploits, this vulnerability affects for the Windows print spooler, Windows print drivers, and Windows Point and Print.  For a detailed guide, please refer to this link. Here is a link to the video (Twitter trend) as discovered by Benjamin Delpy. How do you mitigate this issue? There isn’t a patch (update) as at the time of this writing. The good thing is, there is always a workaround.– You can disable the Print Spooler service or allow your device to install printers

Big News compliance Junkies have taken over NKGG’s and JuniorJoe’s company!!NKGG’s and JuniorJoe’s company was grabbed in a hostile takeover. A group of venture compliance junkies are now at the helm. The firm is now call Drdisasters.com. They specialize in taking DR testing to the limit so that it conforms completely with a compliance junkie’s dream, that is, Drdisasters.com will test your DR Plan by creating real life DR situations for your company. The next time an auditor asks, “how sure are you that the DR plan will work?” you can answer well we burned down our server room and implemented our DR plan and it worked wonderfully!!Now more than ever NKGG had to finalize his Kasten authorization setup. Come audit time the compliance gang would surely drill him on every aspect and he needed full control. Time to ditch the external authentication service and create his own.After some research he decided on using keycloak and the bitnami helm chart: https://bitnami.com/stack/keycloak/helm

Good day everyone !In November 2020 I created a PowerCLI script which creates a vSphere role with cumulative permissions for Veeam Backup & Replication version 10.In the meantime VBR v11 was released and I needed to update that script and wanted to create “new awareness” of it. The fact that I see A LOT of Administrator@vsphere.local users being used with adding the vCenter to Veeam makes me nervous, that’s why I wanted to fight against this with a simple script so no one needs to manually go through the privileges. Now there is no excuse to use highly privileged user accounts !This PowerShell / PowerCLI script lets you create a new vCenter server role with all the cumulative privileges and permissions to use them with Veeam Backup & Replication V11.The privileges used are based on the recommendations out of the Veeam Help Center which you can find here: Cumulative Permission for VMware vSphere – Veeam Help CenterSimply execute the script and follow the steps to fill in the rel

This is a short story I recently experienced with a customer of mine…Some months ago we got a request from Veeam 😉 with an opportunity for a new customer. This customer was using a lot of standalone Hyper-V hosts in combination with Oracle databases and was using a competitor software as their backup solution.They were not happy about the stability of the product and neither about the delivered support of the backup-vendor. Therefore they were searching for other backup-vendors and of course they ended up at Veeam.They contacted Veeam because they wanted more information about the product and if Veeam could deliver a design that perfectly matches the requirements of the customer. Veeam transferred this opportunity to my company (being a gold MSP).The accountmanager of my company and myself had a meeting with this customer to know what their requirements were. Afterwards I created a design that perfectly matched all their requirements and even more 😉. The customer was very happy with

Recently on July 21st, there was a new storage plugin release by @Veeam for the Hitachi storage arrays.  It can be found here - Veeam - Hitachi Plugin.  This plugin allows you to connect Veeam to your Hitachi storage arrays to leverage the SAN-based snapshots for your backups.  Hitachi has also released documentation which can be found here - Hitachi - Veeam Plugin.Hitachi Plug-In for Veeam Backup & Replication supports integration with the following storage systems:VSP E590, E790, E990 (93-03-01-60/00 or later), VSP F350, F370, F700, F900 (88-07-01-x0/00 or later), VSP G350, G370, G700, G900 (88-07-01-x0/00 or later), VSP 5000 series (90-05-01-00/00 or later)Today I am going to walk through the installation and configuration of the plugin within the Veeam software.  This will show how easy the plugin is to install and configure within the Veeam environment.  One thing to note is that you need to take a look at the Hitachi documentation so that you can configure the access for the

A few days ago @Link State posted how to migrate MS AD-controllers using Veeam Replication. Therefore I thought it would be interesting to get to know the new vSphere Advanced Cross vCenter Server vMotion (XVM).What is Cross vMotion about?First, there is a difference between Cross vCenter Server vMotion (xvMotion) and  Advanced xvMotion. xvMotion was already introduced (and supported) for migration of VMs between vCenters within the same Single-SignOn (SSO) Domain in vSphere 6.0. With Advanced xvMotion it is possible to migrate VMs between vCenters in different SSO Domains!Advanced xvMotion is not completely new. Actually it exists for about 5 years as a fling. Now it is introduced in the latest version of vSphere: 7.0 U1c (notice the "c"!) How does it work?For demo I use a vCenter 6.7 U3 as source and a 7.0 U1c vCenter as destination.To start the wizard, right click the resource, you want to move VM(s) to and select Import VMs. Provide data of source vCenter. And press Login. When cre

This quick and nerdy video is 10 mins long and shows you how to add a wasabi bucket to VBO365 and use powershell to migrate the backups from on-prem to the cloud.  

This is a recent research by security specialists of the Dolos Group to determine if an attacker can access the organisation network from a stolen device and also perform lateral network movement.They were handed a Levovo Laptop preconfigured with the standard security stack for this organization. No prior information about the laptop, test credentials, configuration details, etc were given. They stated it was a 100% blackbox test.Once the got hold of the device, they headed straight to work and performed some reconnaissance of the laptop (BIOS settings, normal boot operation, hardware details, etc) and noted a lot of best practices were being followed, negating many common attacks. For example:Pcileech/DMA attacks were blocked because Intel’s VT-d BIOS setting was enabled. All BIOS settings were locked with a password. The BIOS boot order was locked to prevent booting from USB or CD. Secureboot was fully enabled and prevented any non-signed operating systems. Kon-boot auth bypass did

The Notorious Kube Genius Geoff had a problem.After saving the company's Kasten setup by doing a DR restore he was told that Junior Joe’s full access to the cluster would be removed but he still needed access to Kasten to perform his duties which involved only certain functions with policies.  NKGG referenced the Kasten documentation concerning Authentication and decided it was time to leverage Open ID connect to do this and in that manner limit Junior Joe’s access.https://docs.kasten.io/latest/access/authentication.html#openid-connect-authenticationThis was going to be no walk in the park. NKGG had never ventured into this area of IT before so he decided to read up on the protocol itself and found a great free resource:https://auth0.com/resources/ebooks/the-openid-connect-handbookThe handbook was offered by Auth0 and they had a free plan to start out with so NKGG decided to give their service a try. You can sign up for free here:http://Auth0: Secure access for everyone. But not just a

Veeam Backup and Replication is comprehensive data protection and disaster recovery solution which is capable of creating image-level backups of virtual, physical servers, cloud machines, and restoration as well. The technology used in the product optimizes data transfer and resource consumption, which helps to minimize storage costs and the recovery time in case of a disaster. Veeam Backup and Replication provides a centralized console for administering backup, restore, and replication operations in all supported platforms (virtual, physical, and cloud environments).  The prerequisite requires you to have a SQL Server already running in your environment. Please see "how to download and install Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Express Edition and Microsoft Management Studio on Windows Server", how to install Microsoft SQL Server 2019 and MsSQL Command line tools on Ubuntu Linux, and how to install MSSQL Server 2019 Developer Edition and SQL Server Management Studio on Windows. With Veeam Back

Recently, Lionel Gilles, a French-based Offensive Computer Security researcher based in Paris, France published a PoC tool on NTLM Relay Attack known as PetitPotam that exploits the MS-EFSRPC (Encrypting File Services Remote Protocol). PetitPotam is a classic NTLM Relay Attack, and such attacks have been previously documented by Microsoft along with numerous mitigation options to protect users. Here is an example of such documents: NT LAN Manager: How to prevent NTLM credentials from being sent to remote servers. Below are some related guides: Active Directory Authentication methods: How do Kerberos and NTLM work? how does cached domain logon work?, and What is Pass the Hash Attack and how to mitigate the attack. PetitPotam takes advantage of servers where the Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) is not configured with protections for NTLM Relay Attacks. The mitigations below outline to customers how to protect their AD CS servers from such attacks and help in mitigating the W

Windows 11 enables security by design from the chip to the cloud. Recently, Windows 11 was announced to raise security baselines with new built-in hardware security requirements that will give customers the confidence that they are even more protected from the chip to the cloud on certified devices. Windows 11 is redesigned for hybrid work and security with built-in hardware-based isolation, proven encryption, and our strongest protection against malware. Also, Windows 11 makes it easier for customers to get the most protection from these advanced attacks out of the box with the requirement of a TPM 2.0 chip to help ensure they benefit from security backed by a hardware root-of-trust. You may want to see Measured Boot, Secure Boot, Trusted Boot, and Early Launch Anti-Malware: How to secure the Windows 10 boot process, and Windows 11 Feature-specific, Hardware and Software Requirements: How to upgrade to Windows 11 from Windows 10 as a Windows Insider.  Windows 11 focuses on increasing

Much has been said about backup and data protection. However, little is said about Backup Policy. In today's post I decided to address what are the aspects that surround a backup policy and why it is important to have one. What is Backup Policy?The backup policy is nothing more than a document that gathers all aspects related to the workload that the backup exerts on an IT environment. On this document we can gather all the information that is considered useful during the backup process or even during a moment of disaster that involves the failure of one or more IT services to operate. So I decided to talk about some topics that I consider important to include in any backup policy. Forget TemplatesA backup policy is a document about your backup routine. So, forget about any kind of templates or pre-made documents about backup policy. You are responsible for the backup. So, no one better than you to understand the data protection environment and landscape. Write a document from scratch

Hi all,a new 0Day vulnerability for Windows 10 clients has been released, the article also recommends deleting all the vss restore points and recreating themSecurity Update Guide - Loading - MicrosoftCheck Windows 10 for SeriousSAM and HiveNightmare Vulnerability Fix - Virtualization Howtohttps://github.com/GossiTheDog/HiveNightmarecommad check : icacls c:\windows\system32\config\samWorkaroundsRestrict access to the contents of %windir%\system32\configCommand Prompt (Run as administrator): icacls %windir%\system32\config\*.* /inheritance:eWindows PowerShell (Run as administrator): icacls $env:windir\system32\config\*.* /inheritance:eDelete Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) shadow copiesDelete any System Restore points and Shadow volumes that existed prior to restricting access to %windir%\system32\config. Create a new System Restore point (if desired).Impact of workaround Deleting shadow copies could impact restore operations, including the ability to restore data with third-party backu

This video is part of a series to help MSPs get their veeam service offerings up and running. 10-15 minute videos. This one is on Cloud Connect deployment. What to deploy and where, basic sizing, and some tips and tricks.  

Yes, it is no backup topic. But because we discussed a reason for my testing here already:I thought it could be interesting. In this post I investigate what happens when a VMware vSphere ESXi host loses its boot device. This device is meant to be a persistent device. For non-persistent devices like USB- and SD-card, behavior is quite clear: whole ESXi OS runs in memory, no mass-write operations should be directed to the device. When it breaks, ESXi isn’t missing it and keeps running.With a persistent device I was convinced that ESXi would die when it broke. BUT: ESXi survives. Not such a clean behavior like with non-persistent devices, but it survived. Reason for testingThere is a concrete reason for this testing. I want to answer the question, if it is safe to boot a ESXi host from a single disk. No Raid, just a single disk connected to a HBA. This would be an additional option for ESXi boot device. Why? Because VMware and other server vendors do not recommend to use non-persistent bo

Hi all,We all love VEEAM .But why is it called like that?Originally Ratmir Timashev and Andrei Baronov founded Veeam in 2006.They called their company from the phonetic pronunciation of the letters VM (stands for Virtual Machine)!In the meanwhile everybody knows that the company is owned by US Insight Partners and has it’s headquarters in Baar (Switzerland) and in Columbus, Ohio (US). I think that this is too simple, the name V.E.E.A.M. stands for much more... VVirtual Machines / Virtualization. Yes correct, it all started at the beginning with monitoring and reporting for a virtual infrastructure.Virtual machines and virtualization is probably still the most used asset with the veeam products.Versatile. It’s more than clear that Veeam tries to have a solution for every demand, so it has definitely versatile products.Vision. Veeam has a great vision : To be the most trusted provider of Backup solutions that deliver Cloud Data Management! EEliminate Data Loss. VBR brings balance to you