Blogs and Podcasts

Hello everyone!In this post, I will explain how to utilize one of the key features of Veeam Backup & Replication, which is the ability to test the integrity of created backups. Introduction Creating the Virtual Lab Creating the Application Group Creating the SureBackup Job Testing the SureBackup Job Introduction SureBackup uses created backups to initiate VMs in an isolated environment within the hypervisor and then perform tests like heartbeat, ping, and application validation using scripts. It's a fantastic functionality to ensure that your backups are intact when needed.SureBackup utilizes the following components:Application Group - Group of VMs to be tested together. With the Application Group, we can define the startup order of VMs and set tests for each of them. Virtual Lab - The Virtual Lab is an appliance created by Veeam B&R on the hypervisor to act as the gateway of the isolated network that will be created. SureBackup job - The SureBackup job where you can schedule

Sometime last year, ​@ertelle1 created the below blogpost where she stated Veeam Recovery Ochestrator now supports Microsoft Hyper-V “Veeam Recovery Orchestrator 7.2 - Available Now!”With the current opportunity available to some of us as documented below, I have decided to create various articles to reinforce my knowledge.Since the Orchestrator server must be connected to the SCVMM servers or Hyper-V Cluster (which I no longer have in my lab) enviionrment. I will be showing you guys the steps to install System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) in this guide, and how to connect SCVMM to VRO in a subsequent article. VMM 2025 supports Windows Server 2025 hosts and Virtual Machines. It works with TLS 1.3, and the dependency on legacy authentication protocols, such as NTLM and CredSSP, has reduced significantly. Also, if you are running System Center 2025. The Service Provider Foundation (SPF) will be discontinued as its capabilities are now built into Azure Arc-enabled System Center

This is part four of the blogpost. If you want to read it from the beginning, head here: SOBR Archive Tier – Explained and Configured – Part 1 of 4 | Veeam Community Resource HubIn this last part, we will cover the free section of our feat and put things together in VBR.Setup within VBRNow it’s time to create the new object storage inside your VBR console. Add a backup repository of the type “Object storage”.Add new object repository to be used as archive tier. Choose the appropriate hyperscaler. For the archive tier currently only AWS and Azure are supported. We’ve used Azure in the example.Only Amazon S3 (AWS) and Azure can leverage the archive tier.Now the differentiation from capacity tier is made by selecting “Azure Blob Storage Archive Tier” instead of just “Azure Blob Storage”.Make sure to select the special option for the archive tier.Give the new repository a nice name and description within VBR.Very inventive name, isn’t it?And provide your storage account name and the shared

Hallo everyoneI am trying to figure out what the best way to transfer Running backup jobs with tons of restore points pr. job, to a new Veeam server, without loosing any backup data/historyThe “old” Veeam server has to be decommissioned - and so will the current repository, over time.The new Veeam server should have all jobs and backup data (restore points) from “old” Veeam server and run on new repository/storage as wellWhat will be the best way on migrating all, from old to new server - and from old repo to new repo, with out loosing vital backup data and historyAnyone ?

In this Link https://bp.veeam.com/vbo/ you can find everything related to:Best Practice Guide for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365This guide is intended to provide best practices for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365. It is not meant as a full documentation or detailed explanation of features. Please refer to the Veeam Help Center for this kind of documents.The best practice guide is inteded for professionals who search for a best practice answer to different topics. To allow deeper understanding of why we recommend specific best practices we add deeper information on the topics where applicable.Be aware that a best practice is not the only answer available. It will fit in the majority of cases but can also be totally wrong under different circumstances. Make sure you understand the implications of the advised best practices or ask someone who does. This time we will seeConfiguration Maximums This section covers the supported VBO configuration maximums. Numbers might vary depe

Complementing my last post highlighting the Veeam software releases reaching end of support in 2023, I’m once again providing an expanded list of software that Veeam works with, that will be approaching end of life in 2023. Why does this matter when I’m just trying to protect the data? Times change, and software changes with them, until it’s no longer supported. At any point, a patch to an operating system, a .NET framework update, or anything else really, could end up with the software no longer being backed up properly, or not working at all in production. Without valid support there’s no process to get a fix, and whilst your backup software may still be in support with Veeam, if the vendor won’t fix the problem, it’s time to start panicking.With this in mind, let’s explore the software & operating systems being declared end of life in 2023 so we can start planning our upgrades/migrations if necessary. Microsoft We may as well start with one of, or potentially the largest softwar

@PValsecchi already showed how to use vSphere tags for VM selection in VBR. New in v11 is the possibility to combine vSphere tags. I want to show how this work. For that, I created two tag categories. One for Location and one for Backup. I defined datacenter A and B locations; and Gold, Silver and Bronze backup priority. These tags are assigned to my 4 test VMs:So: VM01 and VM03 (odd numbers) are located in DC A. VM02 and VM04 (even numbers) are in DC B. VM01 and VM02 are defined for Gold-Backup, VM03 for Silver, VM04 for Bronze. First, I select one Tag for VM selection: DC A. This can be done either with single tag selection or with new combination of tags but just select one.As expected, when backup runs, VM01 and VM03 are selected:Next, I want to backup all Gold-Backup VMs in DC B and select these tags: Objects shown in Job definition:Just VM02 has all tags assigned: Fine, works as expected! And now, backup all VMs in DC A and B:Eventually here is a pitfall. Because now nothing will

Hello everyone, I'm continuing my exploration of Veeam v13. Today, I'm sharing with you a presentation of the Web UI and the thick client. In this first section, we will cover:Configuring a component via the WebUI Configuring a component via the thick client Configuring a backup job from the WebUI Performing a restore from the WebUIEnjoy the read!Find my previous article here :  1. Veeam Software Appliance WEB UI / Console⚠️ Reminder: We are testing a beta version here. Some features are still missing, incomplete, or may not be included in the final release.Deployment: In this Beta version, to deploy V13 as a virtual machine, the following prerequisites are required:Two hard drives of at least 256 GB each are mandatory. I have allocated 4 vCPUs and 16 GB of vRAM. Rocky Linux is used as the OS type, as this is what Veeam uses here. A paravirtualized SCSI adapter will be used by default.Additional Information:The design of the WebUI interface is 80% complete. The thick client interface i

I’ve just seen VMware has announced a revision to their expected release date of vSphere & vSAN 8, and for the right reasons! The VMware vSphere 7.0 Legacy I won’t go on a bashing spree of VMware vSphere 7 release, but… it wasn’t good. The highlights of which include aggressive wear & tear, and subsequent killing of, SD cards and lower durability storage. Additionally, VMware had to temporarily pull some v7 U3 releases due to Quality Assurance (QA) issues.With the issues mentioned above being part of the story of the infamous v7 release history, I felt positive when my RSS reader pulled [UPDATE: Link has been pulled by VMware] this article [/UPDATE] from VMware this morning. In summary, General Availability (GA) of vSphere & vSAN 8.0 have both been pushed to the 11th October 2022, with VMware specifically calling out addition time wanted for QA. [UPDATE] As this link has been pulled, I can't confirm if this is still VMware's proposed date, or if it was a placeholder. [/UPDA

These days I invested the possibility to programmatically export the same job log shown in VBR console (GUI). @JMeixner gave me the missing link. Now I want to share my outcome here.First, select the backup session of the job you want to get the log from. To select the job session run latest, you can do this with a command like this:$BackupSession = Get-VBRBackupSession -Name "Job 1*" | Sort-Object CreationTime | Select-Object -last 1Here the name of the job is actually "Job 1". But -Name is the name of the running job. This means it includes a postfix like "(Incremental)", therefore *. I use -Name because this is much faster than using | where {$_.jobname -eq "Job 1"}When you have the backup session, run this to get the logs for each VM in this job.foreach ($Task in ($BackupSession | Get-VBRTaskSession)) { $Task.logger.getlog().updatedrecords | select @{N="VM"; e={$task.name}}, starttime, status, title | sort starttime}  By the way, there is a hidden feature in the VBR console: If

Alt Text: Title “In The Lab With: Windows” Subtitle: “Endpoint Management” Subtitle Two: “Delaying Windows Feature Updates with Group Policy”There was recently a lively discussion on the Veeam R&D forums that inspired me to write this post. The essence of the disagreement on there was about Veeam’s inability to support new Windows Feature Updates sooner. I won’t repeat all of my points on the topic as they’re available for reading freely on the R&D forums already. What I do want to focus on however, is providing support to the thinly-stretched sysadmin who needs to get a grip on the Windows Update Lifecycle, to avoid issues with the Veeam Agent, and other applications that don’t have ‘Day One’ support for a new Operating System (Yes, Feature Updates are considered upgrades).So, what is a feature update? Please the quote below directly from Microsoft’s own documentation.Feature updates: Previously referred to as “upgrades,” feature updates contain not only security and quality r

One of the things that we have in all our projects and backup environments are Backups Jobs.After deploying all components and servers on our Veeam infrastructure, the first thing that we do is the creation of our backup jobs.Thinking of that, I write this post telling you what is the main nomenclatures that I’ve been used on my Veeam Backup & Replication. B2D - Backup to DiskBackup jobs that we use to send data to any disk repository. B2T - Backup to TapeBackup jobs that we use to send data to tape libraries. B2C - Backup to CloudBackup jobs that we use to send data to cloud. On V11 we need a SOBR to send data to public cloud like AWS, Azure and GCP. However, if we have a Veeam Cloud Connect repository, we can send data to this kind of 'cloud' and use B2C name on backup job. BC - Backup CopyBackup copy jobs we often use to make one or more copies of data between repositories or sites. LTR - Longe Term RetentionBackup copy jobs we can have to attend a long-term retention on data ar

Author's note:Today's article lays the foundation for best practices for a general backup strategy. The description mentions many terms and procedures that will be discussed in more detail in later articles. In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, the importance of a comprehensive data backup strategy cannot be overstated. IT experts tasked with safeguarding valuable data understand the critical role that backups play in ensuring business continuity and mitigating potential risks associated with data loss or corruption. To establish a reliable data protection solution, it's essential to embrace key best practices that encompass robust strategies, security measures, automation, and seamless integration into disaster recovery plans. Align Backup Strategies with Business NeedsA fundamental step in crafting an effective backup strategy is aligning it with the specific needs and objectives of the business. Understanding the criticality of various data sets, applications, and systems

VBR 12.3 had a pretty big payload across our alliance partners. One of those is the NetApp with the ONTAP SnapDiff API. This is a native change file tracking capability built into the ONTAP OS (differencing engine). This will help customers reduce the amount of time it takes for a NAS backup with changes to complete. This improvement was highly requested by our customers. It is easy to enable when you are adding an “Unstructured Data source” in VBR see link and figure 1 below. Once enabled, you will see messages in the job log on incremental backups figure 2. Please spread the word to your ONTAP customers. This is a v1 version of SnapDiiff more features coming (TBD)😀.Adding Enterprise Storage System as NAS Filer Figure 1 Figure 2Note: There are a few restrictions mentioned in the link above listed below.Native changed files tracking (CFT) is not supported for NetApp ONTAP versions from 9.10.1 to 9.10.1P10. Native changed files tracking (CFT) is not supported for NetApp ONTAP FlexGroup

!-->If you've ever worked with tape backups, you probably know that setting up a tape library with Veeam can seem a bit complicated at first.!-->However, once you understand how everything fits together and follow the correct steps, the whole process becomes much more manageable.!-->In this post, I’d like to share my hands-on experience with this integration, from detecting the library, configuring the environment, creating tape jobs. !-->Installing the Medium Changer Driver !-->Before anything else, it’s important that Veeam correctly detects both the tape library and the tape drives.!-->After connecting the device via SAS or FC through the HBA, installing the correct drivers is a critical step.!-->Go to IBM Fix Central and download the drivers for the SO, library and your LTO drive models.!--> !-->!-->On Windows, make sure the Medium Changer is listed as IBM 3573-TLMedium Changer. If it shows up as Unknown Medium Changer, Veeam might not be able to ident

INTRODUCTIONInformation, now mostly in the form of digital data, is a critical asset for all companies, from the smallest to the largest.The ISO/IEC 27001 standard reminds us what the requirements and best practices are for best managing the security of this information.The three core principles are:Confidentiality: not everyone can access a particular piece of private information, only people with the right permissions Integrity of information: the data that the organization uses to conduct its business or that it keeps safe for others must be stored reliably, ensuring that it is not deleted or damaged Availability of data: data must be available at all times, so that anyone with authorization can access the information whenever necessary VEEAM'S ROLETo protect this data, software solutions like Veeam Backup & Replication are crucial because they help to achieve the three mentioned cardinal principles of information security.Specifically, Veeam allows us to:create backups and repl

Hi! In the recent Veeam Backup & Replication v12.1, Veeam brings many new features and capabilities related to data security and integrations with cybersec tools. One of them is the capability to scan backup files with Yara rules.This is a great feature due to the native flexibility of Yara rules and its wide use in the community.In this demonstration, we will see how to create a simple Yara rule, associate a malicious file with a VM, and obtain uncompromised recovery points through a scan operation. Everything is effortless and intuitive. I hope it is helpful for the community!  

Hi allI already read and know different articles and posts of different people like @MicoolPaul, @olivier.rossi, @Chris.Arceneaux and others regarding object storage and the used block size.In this article a bit more about that in combination with Veeam Cloud Connect. Goal : My goal is to setup a new Veeam Cloud Connect infrastructure for multiple hundreds of customers. Setup : The setup of the Veeam Cloud Connect is a infrastructure that consists of several SOBR’s that consists of multiple extents (performant block-storage physical servers with REFS - 64K) in a performance tier in 1 datacenter and a capacity tier with object storage (performant physical object storage devices) in another datacenter with using the copy-mode and immutability.Of course there is a performant interconnection between the 2 datacenters. Advantages of this setup : There are a lot of advantages in my opinion in using that setup : we use 2 datacenters and all data is being copied from 1 datacenter to another da

Yesterday I got an error for two oracle databases which are backed up via the VEEAM RMAN plugin.Strange - there are several database instances on this system, all but the two are working fine. And these two had worked up to then, too…And… I did not change anything in the VEEAM and plugn configuraton  After some discussion and research with our Oracle admin - bingo.He had moved these two databases to another Home directory and did not change the corresponding entries in the /etc/oratab. So - as shown in the picture - the backup of the database and the recovery logs worked, but the creation of the AUTOBACKUP failed and the ORA-01012 error was given.After the entries were corrected all worked fine again.Perhaps some of you will face similar issues, too. I did not find anything for this problemin the forums with a quick search.

An interesting question arose some time ago. A customer changed permissions of files on a Windows file-server VM. Changes were replicated using DFS. So far so good, but the amount of data that was processed at next incremental backup of target VM was even more than a full backup. Because incremental backup is based on VMware Changed Block Tracking (CBT) feature, it was suddenly interesting to know whats the size of a CBT block. After some recherche I did not find an answer to this question. But I did find a great script that calculates CBT incremental backup size. Based on this script I created the following script to list the amount and the size of blocks changed in between of two snapshots. Outcome in shortWhen using the script – described in detail later – to show CBT blocks I was surprised. I thought there will be a number of fix-sized blocks that are marked to be backed up. But – assumed, script works correct – there isn’t a fixed size of CBT blocks. There seems to be a wide varia

Finding Indexed JobsWhen many users start with Veeam, they turn indexing on for everything not understanding what it does or that it requires Enterprise Manager. The environment I inherited had this exact issue.  I have modified the jobs that the file servers are still indexed for quick search/restore but here is a handy little PS command to find all of the jobs using indexing on your Veeam Server. Script Get-VBRJob | where {$_.GetVSSOptions().WinGuestFSIndexingOptions.IsIndexingRequired -eq $True}   Listing all VM backup sizesAnother helpful PS script is to get the size of all of the VM backups. I often want to know which VM’s are taking up the most room, and having a total of the VBK’s and VIB’s without doing math on 30+ incrementals.This will gather all the required info and can be exported if needed. If you have multiple repositories the jobs may show up more than 1 time as there will be a separate entry for each repo.  It’s still a great way to charge back to the VM owners.    Scr

Since AD Recovery is not a routine operation performed daily, many of us lack experience with it. This is evident in the article below.​​​ Recently, my lab environments have been repeatedly restarting due to a faulty switch. After extensive research to resolve this issue before performing VM recovery, I discovered that the Hyper-V host was experiencing unplanned restarts. This can cause the virtual hard disks connected to a virtual IDE controller to become inconsistent if they are being used by virtual machines.According to Microsoft, when you virtualise your domain controller (DC) on a Hyper-V host server, a crash or power outage on the Hyper-V host can lead to several issues. The Active Directory database may become corrupted, or the virtual machine may fail to start, resulting in an error message like the one shown below.Troubleshoot via DSRMDSRM (Directory Services Repair Mode or Directory Services Restore Mode in versions prior to Windows Server 2012) is a special boot mode for Wi

Hello Community! I am in the middle of modifying my Backup/DR environment →  adding infrastructure, upgrading VBR servers, etc, etc...basically a refresh cycle as it were. One of my VBR Servers is used for DR purposes using Veeam Replication. I created a new server for it on the newest server OS (2022) and did a Configuration Backup migration. This was the first time I performed a DB migration and was pleasantly surprised by the ease of this task. Well done Veeam! As for my other VBR server, I’m not wanting to do a DB migration. I’m going to recreate most everything from scratch for various reasons. But, out of just under 30 jobs I have on this server, I do want to retain 7 of them. Sadly, as some of you know based off a Hub post from a yr or so ago by @shawnl :..exporting Jobs isn’t really possible. I really would like a Backup/Copy Job export function in the Console personally. Anybody else concur this would be a useful feature add?But, I digress. My main purpose here is to provide t

Azure PortalIn order to use Immutability with Azure Blob Storage, you must setup Storage Account creation.On the “Data protection” tab of storage account creation:Disable “soft delete for blobs” Enable “Versioning for blobs”  Select “Keep all versions”  Disable “Version-level immutability support”Set “Blob public access” to Disabled and create a container. Give the container a name and set the “Public Access Level” to “Private”.Container-Level SettingAfter creating the Storage Account with the required settings, create a new container with the following setting:Expand the Advanced section, and Enable “Version-level immutability support”Notes:Do not configure lifecycle management policies for the container`s data.Do not enable any default immutability policy at the storage account level.After the Container is created, go to Security → Networking, Access Keys and copy the key1 key. Veeam Data Platform SettingLaunch New Object Storage Repository WizardAdd Backup Repository, Object storag

 IntroductionIn the first of 4 blog posts of this [Migrate Veeam Infrastructure Off Production Domain series], we described the fundamental security reasons behind moving the Veeam infrastructure components OFF Production domain.  Disclaimer: This is not intended to be a complete Security Best practice reference, nor does it address every possible scenario. A Veeam Solutions Architect can be engaged as needed to assist with VBR Security Best Practices, especially with complex deployments. Setup  Namespaces:Veeamhol.local (this is the ‘Production domain’) Backupdomain.local (this is the domain in the separate forest, referred to as the ‘Backup Domain’)The scenario is comprised of the following servers:A Production Domain Controller / DNS server A Backup Domain Controller (with 1-way trust from the Backup Domain to the Production Domain) 2 ESX hosts and 1 vCenter Veeam Backup and Replication server (VBR) with local PostgreSQL database Veeam Enterprise Manager server (VBEM) with local Pos