Blogs and Podcasts

Not long ago we setup a single node test Kubernetes cluster on our laptop using Minikube.Now let’s install the next generation of backup technology! Kasten.Kasten means box or container in German just in case you were wondering about the funny name :)We have already installed Chocolatey on our Windows laptop so we can go ahead and use it to install Helm. Helm is like a Linux software package manager but for Kubernetes: choco install Kubernetes-helm We will now use Helm to install the Kasten Helm Chart. You can find out more about Helm here: https://helm.sh/First, we must create a kasten-io namespace:kubectl create ns kasten-ioA namespace is a segregated area where only the pods for this setup will run. Next we need to add the Kasten repository to Helm so that it knows where to get our Kasten images: helm repo add kasten https://charts.kasten.io/ We are all set and ready to go.The install command is pretty straight forward but if you will remember we setup local storage in Minikube usin

Update: Patch 20210525 brings CDP support for 7.0 U2The long-awaited patch for Veeam Backup&Replication v11, which brings support for vSphere 7.0 U2, has been released.https://www.veeam.com/kb4126It's important to note that CDP won't work with 7.0 U2 as there's a driver signing issue. So if you're working with Veeam CDP then you still should wait before updating.Added VMware vSphere 7.0 U2 support including new vSphere API version awareness and virtual hardware version 19 compatibility. Note: CDP functionality is not yet supported with vSphere 7.0 U2 due to the I/O filter drivers signing infrastructure issue at VMware, support will be added in the next cumulative patch.More information on the vSphere 7.0U2 support can be found in the forums: https://forums.veeam.com/vmware-vsphere-f24/vsphere-7-0-u2-support-t72668.html

Download Here 🔥💯  🙌 Everything you need to know about protecting Teams data in one handy e-Book. Download Conversational Geek #MicrosoftTeams Backup by Brien Posey today. NEW in version 5: Microsoft Teams support   

Hello!! My post today is dedicated to everyone who needs to have a guide to perform sizing and understand good Veeam practices. All doubts are answered in this site. https://www.veeambp.com/       I await your comments and Likes !! See you soon in a new post!! 

Recently I’ve been testing and used Kasten K10 by Veeam. The container data management tool from Kasten. I must say I’ve been very impressed with the software and also the releases keep coming with more functionality.Below is the content I’ve posted on this over the past few months, and I’ve even been delighted to ask to present at a number of user groups for this, culminating at a Session for VeeamON! Below are the posts I’ve wrote up.Installing Kasten on; Red Hat OpenShift running ontop of vSphere Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Configuring Kasten backup policies, protecting data and restoring data How to upgrade your Kasten environment Kubestr – Open-Source Kubernetes Storage benchmarking tool  VMware User Group Recording - Protecting your Tanzu Kubernetes Workload with Kasten by Veeam I am more focused on the VMware Tanzu of the side of the house for what I’ve learned, but more than happy for feedback, and to answer any questions.

NEW Veeam Agent for Mac, included with Veeam Backup & Replication, delivers easy and scalable Mac backup and recovery for even the most demanding organizations.Veeam Backup & Replication introduces another new agent (Veeam Agent for MacOS). I wanted to go through a very quick look at the install of the Agent and what it looks like at the Backup & Replication end. My MacBook Air thought add this to the home Veeam Backup & Replication server v11. Veeam Agent for Mac Overview Veeam Agent for Mac New Features and Enhancements System Requirement Release Notes User Guide To install Veeam Agent for Mac and all the required components Preparing the Agent for MacOSDue to managed by VBR, a NEW Protection Group needs to be created under Physical Infrastructure of Type Computers with pre-installed agents. We need to add to NEW Protection group and get the package files to install locally on our MacBook Air. Give your protection group a name first.You have to choose a local path to

Are all my virtual machines being backed up correctly and within the required RPO? Of course!I think..., or not 😉? Do I implement best practices in creating jobs?If using vSphere, do I use folders or tags or use whole clusters to add virtual machines to the job?If using HyperV, do I use whole clusters or hosts or in case of using SCVMM do I use tags? Yes, OK, that ’s fine, did I not forget a new VM giving the correct tag or putting in the correct vSphere folder?Yes it can happen to everyone to forget a VM putting correctly to the backup job (automatically or manually). Especially if you are working with colleagues (1 person is creating a new VM but is not aware about the backup and forgets to tell a colleague...). It happens.Everyone is very busy so can forget to add the new VM at the backup job or vSphere folder or tag or... To be sure we have several options to verify :Using Veeam ONE If you are using already Veeam ONE : perfect!You can schedule the report Protected VMs so you can v

How to get started with Veeam  for a student?

In this post I’m going to show you how to do SAP DB2 databases backup on Linux with Veeam. I came across a SAP DB2 installation during one of my last projects and wanted to share with you how to backup these databases. Introduction on pre-freeze and post-thaw scriptsSince there is no native integration of SAP DB2 in Veeam, we need to use pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts within the guest processing options.Pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts are being used, when an application does not support VSS for example. The pre-freeze script is used to quiesce the VM file system or the application prior Veeam triggers a VMware snapshot. After the VMware snapshot is created, the post-thaw script triggers and brings the VM and the corresponding application back to the initial state. How do the scripts work ?Pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts are used on backup jobs, replication jobs and VM copy jobs.Furthermore, you need to create the scripts beforehand. When the specific job starts, Veeam uploads the s

More en more companies are being a victim of malware, ransomware or even hackers.It is always important to implement the golden 3-2-1-1-0 rule (in detail explained in a former post of me - 3-2-1-1-0 Golden Backup Rule | Veeam Community Resource Hub).Next to this rule, one of the first things to keep in mind is to protect as much as possible your backups because those can save you when you are being attachked and you need them.The first thing that comes in mind, is to harden your Veeam Backup & Replication server as much as possible.I will give you here 10 tips you can implement. There are of course more things possible, but it's a start.1 - Do not domain-join the backup server in the production domainA best-practice is to put the VBR server in a workgroup and not AD domain-joined for smaller environments.Why? If ransomware is nested in a roaming profile of a domain-user connecting to the domain-joined VBR server, this malware can be activated on the VBR server and impact the backup

Why should a customer choose VEEAM Cloud Connect as BaaS with a service provider?10 reasons why it’s such an asset to put a backup copy to a service provider using Veeam Cloud Connect 1 – Offsite backup copyYou all are familiar with the 3-2-1-1-0 golden rule (see my post at 3-2-1-1-0 Golden Backup Rule | Veeam Community Resource Hub), there should always be a backup copy available at an offsite location. Not all customers have the luxury having multiple sites with IT infrastructure available. In that case syncing a backup copy to a Veeam Service Provider is a perfect option having an offsite backup copy available. 2 – Secure end-to-end encryptionBe assured that all data is encrypted at the source (before it leaves the network of the customer), in transit and in storage at the service provider. This without affecting the data reduction ratios of built-in compression. When using a small bandwidth in comparison with the volume of data, a WAN Accelerator is a possible option to use. 3 – Pr

Hi all I hope you all read my post about the 3-2-1-1-0 golden rule - 3-2-1-1-0 Golden Backup Rule | Veeam Community Resource Hub.Perfect in combination with Veeam Backup & Replication to save your backups as good as possible to protect them against ransomware, hackers, ...But what with Veeam Backup for Office 365 ?There is no built-in option for creating backup copy jobs, so there is by my knowledge no option to copy the backups on your primary repository to a secondary repository.I know, Office 365 is running on high-available infrastructure but in case of ransomware or a hacker on your VBO365 server, all your backups can be deleted. So the rule 3-2-1-1-0 should also be implemented in this case.An option could be : create a second job with the same settings as the primary job except writing to another repository. Then you have a second copy of your O365 data. In my opinion that is not a good solution : twice the network-traffic needed (not ideal if VBO365 is running on-premises an

Good afternoon!Though this is a Veeam Community site, not everyone may know, or have heard, Veeam is having their big yearly conference next month - May 25-26 (26-27 APJ). As with last year’s event, this year will also be of the online variety. Hopefully next year we’ll get to meet in person! You may be asking, “why should I attend?” Well, let me provide a few very good reasons why:Knowledge is power! And Veeam will have a lot of it on display via deep-dive sessions and demos. Veeam Solutions Architects, such as Tim Smith, and Senior Director of Product  Strategy @Rick Vanover and his team of amazing professionals will deliver on-point content to help you implement Veeam in your environmet according to best practices and recommendations. What’s New? Every year @Anton Gostev gives his “staple” What’s New session about what you can expect in the next Veeam version release. Though I haven’t seen any detailed schedule or agenda on the VeeamON content, I’m sure this session will still be gi

If you do no know much about Hardened Repository in Veeam VBR v11, read here to learn more about:I was asked, if a hardened repository can be a extent of a Scale Out Repository (SOBR). Good news: yes it can! But you have to take some facts into account.Hardened repositories can be Performance Tiers of SOBR. A SOBR can contain a mix of repositories: ReFS, XFS, Immutable and mutable. Even in mixed SOBR, Performance Placement Policy can be set. That leads to, for example, immutable increments and mutable fulls. When you mix, for example, ReFS with immutable extents, you can use Evacuate backups to free an extent.   I would not recommend any points 1 - 3!In my opinion the point 4 is the most important. With evacuating an extent you can easily migrate from ReFS to XFS with immutability.Notice: If you evacuate an immutable repository, Veeam performs a copy, not a move operation! Which makes perfect sense! When backups are evacuated to a hardened repository, files will be immutable as long as

This short video starts with the 6 reasons why you need an O365 backup, then goes into deployment and setup, followed by how to offer self-service restore for your tenants through Cloud Connect. 

Just wanted to share a VM recovery tip with you all I recently discovered when needing to recover a VM no longer being processed by a VBR Backup Job it was in due to Deleted VM Maintenance Schedule. To assist with my recovery, you have to be utilizing Storage Integration technology with Veeam. My specific environment uses Nimble Adaptive Flash Arrays, so be sure to understand how your Storage Vendor’s snapshot technology works before assuming my “tip” will apply to your environment. Let’s assume you’re backing up VMs with vSphere Tags and during tag maintenance you mis-apply a tag, or forget to (re) apply a tag to a VM needing to be backed up. Or maybe you use vSphere “containers” to back up your VMs (i.e. Datastores, VM Folders), and you mistakingly move a VM out of the Container and the VM is no longer getting backed up. As a good Backup Admin does, such that you are, you review your VBR jobs daily to verify they succeeded: BOOM! Well done, Backup Admin!   But, you weren’t being as t

The following post is not directly related to backup. I hope it is helpful anyway.At a customers backup server a very strange behavior was observed. After a few days without problems, scheduled tasks never seem to get finished. So a current running – never ending – task prevents the next run from starting. A reboot of the server resolved the problem – for a few days.SolutionAfter a research I found out, scheduled tasks get started with a lower priority than interactively started tasks. See my scheduled PowerShell script in screenshot here.Normally this is not a big deal. It does not matter when tasks like reports last longer than manually started. Nevertheless they should at least finish.The solution is to rise the priority of scheduled tasks. Unfortunately this cannot simply be set in the GUI. It can be done in a few steps, I list here.Start Windows Task Scheduler, right-click your task and select Export… and save XML file to a temporary location. Edit XML file with an editor of your

It is not uncommon to reset root password in VMware VCSA (vCenter Service Appliance). This can be necessary when account is locked or password is expired. Normally, you have to shut it down, enter GRUB and edit start parameter to boot into bash. There you can reset root password. Afterwards you boot VM again. Here is the link to this procedere: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2147144With vCenter 6.7 U1 it us much easier! Since then it is possible to use a Single-Sign On (SSO) administrator account (for example: administrator@vsphere.local) to login to Appliance Interface (Port 5480) and shell. And exactly this can be used to reset the root password. In short it goes like this: Take a snapshot/backup of VCSA - it is always a good idea to start with a backup  Login as a SSO-administrator using a SSH client or console. Enable and start shell: shell.set --enable true shell Change root password sudo passwd root​​​​​​​​ DoneHere is the link to the more detailed VMware KB-article: https:/

Hi Everyone, I wanted to start sharing some of the content and learning paths I have been taking to get a better grasp on Kubernetes and Cloud Native technologies.   First of all I am going to be putting my learning and findings on this page as I continue to navigate these new technologies.  And then I will keep adding if possible to this post with the latest blog posts.  Part 1 - Choosing your platform Part 2 - Setting up your Kubernetes cluster Part 3 - Playing with stateless workloadsPart 4 - Setting up dynamic shared storagePart 5 - Helm & MinIOPart 6 - Context is ImportantPart 7 - Load Balancing your Kubernetes Home Lab with MetalLBPart 8 – Deploying KubeApps the visual marketplace for all your Kubernetes AppsPart 9 – A Mission Critial App - PacmanPart 10 – Backups in a Kubernetes worldI would love to get your feedback useful links to add or things we should share with the community. 

See here how it works in a step by step guide.To start in Instant SQL Recovery wizard, select your server and choose Restore application items.Here you choose if you want to restore to the latest available restore point, or select a listed one. At the end of wizard press Browse. Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server starts.Choose the database you want instantly recovered and select to do so. You have these options to choose from: Latest restore point. Point-in-time state. Recover to another server. This you can used to recover DB using a different name while original DB is still in place. In this demo, I selected point-in-time state to show additional options.Select point-in-time state you want recover to.Notice:First option recovers to date and time, recovery point was created. Second option lets you choose the exact date and time to restore to. As noted, transaction log backup is required here. Checking option to restore to a specific transaction, lets you choose a marked tran

Why do you think Veeam is in this place today?   

With the recent topic of how to change the IP/DNS Name of the vCenter recently posted I wanted to share for those with experience in SQL how you can modify the vCloud URL within Veeam.This requires some SQL knowledge and that you shut down the Veeam services during the process.  The main query is as follows:SELECT * FROM Hosts WHERE type=1 OR type=6 OR type=14; Under the "options" column for the relevant row(s) we're going to see the reference(s) to the old cell hostname. Then once you are ready follow these steps:0) Veeam Configuration Backup1) Stop Veeam Services2) Backup VeeamBackup SQL DB3) SELECT * FROM Hosts WHERE type=1 OR type=6 OR type=14;4) Copy the "options" value5) Modify the copied "options" column value to have the new VCD URL6) Note the id column of the related row7) Perform the update query on the objects that need the new URL:UPDATE Hosts SET options='NEW_options_VALUE' WHERE id='ID_FROM_STEP_6';8) Start Services9) Open Console, and "next" through the properties of the

From Veeam Backup & Replication restore Mac OS FileOpen Veeam Backup & Replication console and click Backups, Disk. You will see the Mac Agent Backup. Right-click “Your Mac Device Name”, Restore guest Files, Linux, and other…Select the available restore point.A new feature of v11 is the ability to leverage an existing managed Linux server to act as the file-level recovery appliance, you can choose a Linux host that I have in my environment.v11 will open the Veeam Backup Browser, which enables the ability to see the structure and the ability to recover your files and folders.You can restore folder or file to the v11 Desktop only, If you need direct restore the Mac device, please continue to see “Step by step of Veeam Agent for Mac 1.0 @ Part 3 (Restore from MacOS)” Coming Soon…Reference Link: https://vexperthk.com/2021/03/09/step-by-step-of-veeam-agent-for-mac-1-0-part-2-restore-from-vbr-v11/

Hey everyone,I wanted to share this recent blog post I made with yourselves as whilst it’s not directly related to Veeam, I was helping someone that had locked themselves out of a Veeam database and needed to take a native backup for a support case with Veeam.  I was recently helping a customer create a SQL database backup for a support ticket and noticed that they had an interesting SQL Server configuration. There was only a single account with sysadmin rights, the sa account, but this account wasn’t allowed to sign in. The SQL Server was domain joined but there was just a single group allowed with Windows Authentication and that had the “public” server role only.There are a few reasons this could happen, accidental permission changes, or groups and/or user accounts being deleted from the domain that had been assigned the sysadmin role as examples. Thankfully it’s not the end of the world for you if you find yourself in this situation. Breaking Back into your database! This will invol

Hello There, I just wanted to share an issue I had on one of my customer to avoid others the problem:We setup a standard Veeam Backup & replication Server on a W2019 VM and a Std SQL 2019 on another one to host the DBs from VBR and Enterprise Manager.The DBA from the customer insisted to setup an alias for the DB server when pointing Veeam to its Database server as it’s their best practice to facilitate migration (He was obviously not aware how easy it is to move Veeam Database). So he setup a CNAME that pointed to the real SQL server.The setup went well using the CNAME. We created a “management job” to save Veeam by itself, VBR+SQL servers. The job detected the roles and proceeded as normal but failed on SQL VSS processing. We spent a lot of time to validate that permissions were right (the DBA didn't gave us the sysadmin rights on the backup service account, wise guy) and that the service account on the SQL had the proper permissions too for the VSS writers. Long Story short: I f