Blogs and podcasts

vNote42Veeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

I spent some time in testing a new great feature in v11: Hardened Repository. Read here about:What is immutability is about Requirements Setup How it works What is immutability is aboutImmutability in this context means, a backup file cannot be changed or deleted without having root access within hosing Linux OS. So, even the backup administrator is not able to delete backups on such a repository.Why is this important? Think about ransomware. This software is that smart these days, it is able to recognize backup systems. It can trigger tasks like deletion of backup files. But when they are immutable, this cannot be done! RequirementsWhat is needed to get immutable backups? First of all: Veeam Backup&Replication v11. This is the first version supporting hardened repositories. Secondly a Linux server hosting repository volumes.What about the filesystem? Veeam is using immutable flag. So every filesystem supporting this flag can be used. These are pretty much all. Veeam supports refli

Veeam v11 - Hardened Repository aka Immutable backups

regnorVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Veeam has just informed it’s customers about an existing vulnerability in Veeam Backup & Replication. Unauthorized users may be able to request encrypted credentials from the VBR service, and therefore get access to the backup infrastructure. The KB articles haven’t received updates so far, but the vulnerability did get a CVSSv3 score of 7.5.EDIT: The KB article has just been published: KB4424It’s recommended to patch VBR as soon as possible!SolutionPatches have been released for VBR V11 and V12. Please keep in mind that older releases are also affected, but no longer get fixes. So you need to upgrade your installation to a supported release.Patch for Veeam V11a KB article for V11 Patch for Veeam V12 KB article for V12WorkaroundAs a temporary workaround you can block access to TCP port 9401 on your Veeam Backup & Replication server. This will affect the connection of mount servers to the VBR server, so only use this if you don’t have a distributed Veeam environment. And still a

Vulnerability in Veeam Backup & Replication - March 2023

MicoolPaulVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Hi, I don’t know if anyone else was aware but @haslund highlighted to me today that the new VMCE 2021 exam is now available for everyone looking to take/upgrade! Information on the training course is available hereInformation on the certification is available here FAQs:Do I need to attend the training course before taking the exam?If you don’t hold a valid VMCE 2020 certification, it is mandatory.If you do have a VMCE 2020 certification, it is recommended but not required.The one exception is if you took the VMCE 2020 class within the last year but have not passed the exam, you can take the VMCE 2021 exam until your class was sat one year ago. Can I still take the VMCE 2020 exam?Whilst Veeam continue to offer it, but it will be discontinued. Do I need to take the VMCE to do the VMCA?No, but it is recommended!Full FAQs from Veeam available here Planning on doing your VMCE/VMCA, or already taken it? Let me know your thoughts!

VMCE 2021 Released!

MicoolPaulVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

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

Windows Server 2022 Released – What to remember before you start upgrading!

MicoolPaulVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

The Veeam Legend programme is due to have its second intake in the coming weeks/months, and I wanted to put together a small collection of resources for people to find out more about this amazing sub-community. What is the Veeam Legends Programme? The Veeam Legends programme is at its heart, a Veeam community, its a sub-group of the wider Veeam Community Hub & R&D forums’ users. It was created as part of the ongoing recognition that Veeam wanted to give to its most active Veeam experts within these spaces.The Veeam Legends programme is one of three sub-communities within the ‘Veeam 100’ collective, with the other two being Veeam Vanguard and VeeaMVP. But whilst Veeam Vanguard focuses on external evangelism & activity, and VeeaMVP celebrates Veeam staff that contribute externally to the Veeam community, Veeam Legends is focused on Veeam platform-based activity. Are there perks to becoming a Veeam Legend? Of course there are! To date I’ve witnessed the following perks from th

Thinking of becoming a Veeam Legend 2022?

4 months ago

coolsport00Veeam Legend

While attending the VeeamON conference in Las Vegas back in May, Veeam announced they will be releasing Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR) v12 later in the year, and gave several sessions presenting what some of those features will be in the new release. I thought I’d do a write-up of what v12 features I’m looking forward to most, as well as provide a few extra lines of other notable features coming.Security-Veeam is upping its security game by implementing Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and Group Managed Service Accounts (gMSA). MFA is self-explanatory. From the VBR Menu > Users and Roles option, a Security window opens for you to select MFA for your Veeam user accounts (see figure below). But what about the gMSA? gMSA is a fantastic concept as it allows Veeam to use Active Directory service accounts while not storing the password locally on the Veeam server (i.e. when using for AAIP). Instead, VBR retrieves gMSA passwords on-demand from organization domain controllers. Platfo

Veeam Backup & Replication v12 – My Top v12 Features

MicoolPaulVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

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

VMCA 2022 Released!

pomidorokhovaNot a newbie anymore

Hello, Veeam Community!For the most experienced users of Veeam products this post won’t be a big news, but this will surely be a big help for those taking their first steps with Veeam.Often times we are asked “where do I start with my new Veeam product?” or “does Veeam offer free certification?”, and our answer is go “back to Veeam University!”Veeam University is a FREE online training portal for all users of Veeam products and it offers a wide range of on-demand educational resources. No matter how well you know Veeam products, you will find something for yourself:Guided product onboarding pathways from A to Z for your first-time deployment for Veeam Data Platform (all editions) for Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 These FREE online onboarding pathways were compiled together based on customer feedback and coupled with best practices from Veeam Technical Onboarding Managers and Solutions Architects.They feature everything you need to know from day one of using the product, all in bite

Back to Veeam University!

Chris.ChilderhoseVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

"Mastering Veeam Backup & Replication 11" is now in publication (since February 2022) and is ready to order either the book or e-book/kindle.Well, since writing my first book on v10, I debated to myself about writing the update of the book to v11. It took me some time to process and think about if I wanted to do it, which I then took the plunge. This time, the process was much smoother as I had already done the first book and understood the templates, formatting, etc. The team at Packt worked with me again and my busy schedule to create something I think that everyone will enjoy reading. Whether you are a newbie with Veeam or a seasoned expert, you can learn something I think from this book.Protect your cloud, virtual, and on-premises environments by implementing Veeam's powerful backup and replication technologyKey FeaturesGain in-depth knowledge of CDP and Hardened Repositories to use in your virtual environment Explore Veeam's monitoring and reporting utility - Veeam ONE - a

Mastering Veeam Backup & Replication v11 -- PUBLISHED

vNote42Veeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Default behavior in VBR (incl. v11!): When a VM gets application-aware backed up, runtime components gets installed at start of job and are removed at the end. With v11 we have the option to install them persistent! This increases security! No Admin-Share and VIX-access is necessary any more. But it is required to deploy the Veeam Installer Service on the VMs you want to use persistent components. This can be done by manual installation, Group policy roll-out, or by adding the VM to managed Servers. When everything works fine, components are installed persistently: If you enable this feature and something does not work (as installer is not deployed, ..), VBR tries to run non-persistent components.

[What (else) is new in v11 - VII] Persistent guest agent

MicoolPaulVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

SPOILER Warning if you’re awaiting your swag, don’t watch the video!I was lucky enough to be selected as a Veeam Legend this year and luckier still to be one of the first to receive the swag by the amazing @Kseniya & @Rick Vanover (and of course Alfred).Check out my unboxing video below to see all the goodies If you’re still on the fence about the Veeam Legend programme, it’s been an amazing experience so far, I whole heartedly recommend it!

Veeam Legend SWAG Revealed & Unboxed!

Kseniya✨

If you are a certified IT pro, trainer or blogger, Veeam is happy to provide you with a FREE NFR license (Not-For-Resale keys).This license allows for non production use of Veeam Availability Suite in your home lab, without any feature limitations for one year and 20 workloads (VMs/Servers/Workstations) or of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 in your home lab without any feature limitations for up to 10 users.Here is a list of IT members eligible for a free Veeam NFR license key:Veeam Certified Engineers (VMCEs) AWS Heroes AWS Community Builders AWS Heroes AWS Certified Pros Google Cloud Developer Advocates VMware vExperts VMware Certified Professionals (VCPs) VMware Certified Advanced Professionals (VCAPs) Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals - Office 365 (MVPs) Microsoft Certified Solutions Experts (MCSEs) VMware, Microsoft, AWS trainers And more!Free NFR for Veeam Availability Suite https://go.veeam.com/free-nfr-veeam-availability-su

FREE Veeam NFR Keys

11 days ago

vNote42Veeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

It is always interesting, when thinking of special situations, to ask: What happens, when …Here are the answers to at least a few of these questions - for immutable backups in VBR v11:What happens, when…… removing immutable restore points?Task starts and ends up with errors. No restore point is removed.Warning when trying to remove immutable files… hacker changes date/time on Veeam server to remove files with next backup run?Excellent question! But it will not work! Configured period of time is checked at Linux server, not at Veeam B&R Server! So a job running one year in the future will create new files, it cannot delete old ones.… enabling feature at existing repository, not compatible with hardened repository?Veeam checks if there are backup jobs configured with an incompatible backup chain. If found, error is shown:Error with not compatible backups… changing a backup job writing to immutable repository?When backup chain is changed to an incompatible one, error is shown:… days

Veeam v11 - Hardened Repository - how it behaves

vNote42Veeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

The Tape Storage Council has released summary of 2020’s usage of tapes and a future outlook:https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/12/07/tape-storage-council-2020-outlook/Summary:Capacity shipments rose to record amounts in 2019 >225 million LTO cartridges >4.4 million drives [IBM and Oracle enterprise tape shipments are not included] Tapes are still cheaper than disk Several public cloud deep archives use tape, such as AWS’s Glacier ESG found a majority increasing their commitment to tape (61%) Tape’s two big advantages: low cost longevity Big drawback: lengthy file access time

"Still" use tape for backup? Interesting reading about tape usage in 2020 and in future.

2 years ago

wolff.mateusVeeam Legend

How can we see here, vCenter IP/FQDN is not possible to change inside of Veeam B&R. In my case I put the IP of vCenter server on Veeam Backup & Replication and now I’d like to change it to a hostname accordingly the DNS server name. So, first of all we need to open the Console / PowerShell on burger menu of Veeam B&R. So, at this moment we need type the command:$Servers = Get-VBRServer -name "old-name-or-ip"On my case the IP of my vCenter server is 192.168.10.100. After that we just need type the following command:$Servers.SetName("new-name-or-ip")On my scenario it is ROM2SRVVLVC01. And now, with this two only commands we can see that the vCenter name was changed on Veeam Backup & Replication: To finish I just rescan the vCenter server again to see all the set up is ok.

Changing vCenter Name on Veeam

vNote42Veeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

We are proud to announce the release of our first joint Legends project: Veeam Backup & Replication Pocketbook v1.It is a collection of best practices from the field.The following topics are covered:Backup Basics Security Hardened Repository and Immutability Performance SOBR Capacity Tier Offload SureBackupWe are discussing each recommendation with benefits, disadvantages and links to more information. Currently the Pocketbook can be downloaded here as a pdf-file. We are looking forward to your feedback!Enjoy reading! Contributors (in alphabetic order): @falkob, @Geoff Burke, @JMeixner, @Link State, @MicoolPaul, @regnor, @vNote42, @wolff.mateus

Veeam Legends - Veeam Backup & Replication Pocketbook v1

3 months ago

StabzVeeam Legend

Hello guys 😄Hope everyone are well ! In my side I'm in vacation 🤙. I wanted to share with you some tests done with the beta of Veeam v12 (build 12.0.0.817) and the incredible new feature backup directly to Object Storage.Object StorageFor my test I used Wasabi as cloud object storage. You can find really great posts about Wasabi:Wasabi is now available in the list of providers when you want to add an object storage repositoryWe have less information to enter, it's appreciable You will find your repository with Wasabi Cloud Storage Type. Backup JobThe advantages of this kind of backup are multiple:Financial: you can use on-prem object storage, object storage can be cheaper than SAN Built-in durability & reliability Reduce hardware to manageLet's take a look at the setup, because there are technical side effects.As usual you select your repository, the GFS part still available and you could configure a backup copy job if necessaryIn the advanced options, it’s simplified ! Bye backu

[v12 Let's See - Backup Directly to Object Storage]

6 months ago

coolsport00Veeam Legend

For my first Veeam Community post, I thought I would share with you all something I’ve been doing for over a decade - an exam prep Study Guide; this one being for VMware VCP-DCV 2021. For those who haven’t followed me over the years, I started creating these “outlines”, i.e. Study Guides, for my own benefit to help me with tech cert exam prep. I then thought others in the community may benefit using them, so I decided to share them online. I generally post them on Twitter, so if you’d like to follow me, you can do so from here.When reviewing the VMware ‘Blueprint’ for the DCV 2021 exam as compared to the 2020 exam, I was initially overwhelmed by the additional content for 2021. As I dove deeper into the 2021 exam Objectives, it turns out a lot of them were similar to what was asked to know for the 2020 exam, so it wasn’t too bad to review. As with most of my Guides, I enjoyed learning about the new tech VMware implemented with vSphere 7 - e.g. Identity Federation & Lifecycle Manage

VMware Certified Professional DCV 2021 Study Guide

5 months ago

Nico LosschaertVeeam Legend

Hi all In this post I want to describe my personal experience in preparing and taking the VMCE exam.I know that there are some other topics written about the VMCE exam, like a good post of our top legend @MicoolPaul 😉, but I also want to share my personal experience.It’s very hot these days because some of our legends have recently received a free VMCE course of VEEAM. How cool is that from Veeam 😊.So especially for these co-legends (and in the meantime I luckily have met them in person at the Veeam 100 Summit event 😊) and hopefully other people wanting to take the course and exam. Requirement : Yes, indeed taking an official 3-day VMCE course is a requirement before taking the VMCE exam.For me it’s almost 5 years ago that I took the VMCE course – version 9.5 at that time. Because I work for a certified Veeam reseller and service provider, one of the requirements is that we have to have at least 1 VMCE in the company if we want to keep a Gold Partnership with Veeam.Because I’m the o

VMCE exam personal experience

5 months ago

MicoolPaulVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Morning all! With under 8 hours to the launch event, make sure to sign up!Join the Live Event for V11 Launch (veeam.com) Here’s the time the launch event kicks off in some time zones: AWST (Australian Western Standard Time): Midnight (25th Feb)EET (Eastern European Time): 6PMEST (Eastern Standard Time): 11AMGMT (Greenwich Mean Time): 4PMPST (Pacific Standard Time): 8AM Time to level up to 11!

Veeam v11 Launch Event

2 years ago

MicoolPaulVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Hi Everyone, Vulnerabilities wait for no-one, so whilst some are enjoying a weekend off, others are patching to protect against the latest risk. Log4j. This post has two objectives. Firstly I’m sharing my write up regarding the issues I’m aware DO have an impact to VMware, secondly what does this mean to the Veeam products… First up: VMwareI don’t often dedicate a blog post to a particular security vulnerability, but since it has scored a perfect 10 CVE rating, it’s important to be aware ASAP.VMware have identified multiple products that utilise the Apache technology that are vulnerable to the Log4j vulnerability. What is this “Log4j” vulnerability?A Remote Code Execution (RCE) has been discovered in Apache’s Log4j Java Library. It is possible to insert maliciously crafted strings into fields that will be logged, which then leverages the “message lookup substitution” function of Log4j to execute code. This can be used to deploy and execute payloads, or execute commands at a heightened

Log4j Vulnerability - What do you need to know?

regnorVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

This week I was able to attend to a Veeam VMCA training (Veeam Backup & Replication V11: Architecture and Design) held by @poulpreben.VMCA IntroductionSome words on the VMCA: The VMCA is the Veeam Certificied Architect, the second and highest Veeam certification after the VMCE. While the VMCE is more focused on technical topics, the VMCA is all about designing the backup solution and learning the "Veeam Architecture Methodology".We already have great posts about the VMCA, both the course and the exam, here in the community, so I'll won't go too deep and link to the corresponding posts:VMCA2022 anouncment from @MicoolPaul:VMCA2022 review from @Chris.Childerhose:VMCA2022 EXAM review from @Michael Melter : VMCA CourseDirectly from the beginning of the course, we could notice how different this training is going to be compared to others.Preben explained to us, that there's no lab part and that we won't work with a Veeam console. Instead there were team exercises, where we work together

VMCA2022 training review

3 months ago

jorge.delacruzCommunity Manager

Hello Community!For years, I have been Looking for the Perfect Dashboard, using different technologies and approaches, which includes Veeam ONE, Elastic, Splunk, and Grafana. All the mentioned technologies are great for deep visibility, log inspection, capacity planning, etc.But as Veeam has been moving into the right direction of including RESTful API on all products, I finally decided myself to use a combination of Bash Shell Script, InfluxDB, and Grafana.Here it is myself with a Grafana t-shirt I made, on the example monitoring Veeam :) How does all of this looks like?So, if you are wondering how all of this might look, it is indeed quite easy, so on the left we have all sort of Veeam Products, with their RESTful API, in this case:Veeam Enterprise Manager - https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/rest/overview.html?ver=100 Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 - https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbo365/rest/overview.html?ver=40 Veeam Backup for Azure - https://helpcenter.veeam.com/

Enhanced Visibility across Veeam Portfolio using RESTful API and Grafana

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