Blogs and Podcasts

Way back in December (really, it was only 4 weeks ago ?!?), I posted on my personal blog about the Broadcom acquisition of VMware, and how they were ending all of the current perpetual licensing and moving everything to subscription licensing. However, there were many, many questions, and FUD about the changes and what this would mean for licensing VMware products going forward. After many conversations with VMware, reviews of presentations VMware provided to partners and distributors and reading of FAQ's, I finally have an understanding of just what direction exactly VMware is going with their licensing and how it applies to the end user clients. Please note that this is more oriented towards the newly announced vSphere Foundation subscription and it's smaller siblings, vSphere Standard and vSphere Essentials Plus Kit subscriptions which

More and more companies are depending totally of their ICT infrastructure (on-premises, private cloud, hybrid cloud, public cloud) …Ransomware and hackers are more popular than ever…Therefore one of the most important things is that the company has a solid backup strategy, so we can fall back at those in case of disaster or being impacted by ransomware or hackers.You can find very often the 3-2-1 rule. I suggest every customer or company to even go a step further : apply the 3-2-1-1-0 rule !3 : Maintain at least 3 copies of your data By three copies, I mean that in addition to your primary data, you should also have at least two more backups.Why?The chance that something is going wrong with 3 devices at the same time is a lot smaller than with 2 devices, especially when the primary backup is often situated

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. You may encounter the following errors when installing the Veeam backup and replication tool “VEEAM service is unable to start, error 1064: An exception occurred in the service when handling the control request”. Therefore, I will be showing you the steps on how to resolve this issue very quickly. Here is a detailed link to this post.If you are here reading this troubleshooting guide "new Veeam Backup server but then Veeam won’t start", this means you must have recently instal

I’ve seen this multiple times now with VMware. You cancel a task via vCenter or the ESXi UI and it just stays there hanging and nothing further happens. Normally this situation resolves itself after some time, but just last week I had a case where the task never stopped. While the Webclients weren’t really helpful in that case, we were able to cancel this task with the ESXi commandline.Warning: Interupting certain tasks, for example snapshot consolidations or Storage vMotions, can lead to issues or corrupted VMs. So only do this if you don’t have any alternatives and need the task to be canceled. And better have a backup at your hand.SolutionStart the SSH service on the ESXi host where your VM is registered Connect via SSH Query the VM ID: vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms

For some reason and to come to speed with all the Veeam components, I decided to revive my Veeam Lab and during the process, I encountered the following error “Error 1064 - An exception occurred in the service when handling the control request : No connection can be made because the active machine rejected it “. Before I proceed to fix this issue, I would love to discuss the capabilities of Veeam for anyone that may stumble on this article. Veeam Backup & Replication is comprehensive data protection and disaster recovery solution that provides a centralized console for administering backup, restore, replication operations in all supported platforms (virtual, physical, cloud). Regardless of what your needs are ranging from flexible hybrid cloud capabilities from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, or the most robust ransomware protection and recovery options. Veeam brings hardened immutable storage options, dependable cloud-native backup options

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

These days I saw a strange error that makes every backup failed. I thought this would be interesting to share. SituationThere were a few jobs running each day. From a point in time all jobs failed. Error that was shown in console was: [Error Unhandled exception was thrown during licensing process] I checked licensing of course. All hosts were licensed using perpetual licensing. No instances were licensed separately.SolutionIt turned out to be no license problem at all. What happened was, password of the user that was used for connecting to VMware vCenter was changed. After updating the new password in Veeam Manage Credentials too, everything works fine again.

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 fi

Support for Proxmox from Veeam has been one of the top requests in the last months. Therefore the announcement in May to extend the Hypervisor support to Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) has been long awaited! This will be the 7th virtualization platform supported by Veeam, in addition to the 3 cloud hyperscalers and the Veeam agents.The Proxmox integration is currently planned for Q3 of 2024 and v1 will already include some nice features/benefits:flexible storage options immutable backups granular recovery cross-platform recovery (for example Proxmox <> VMware) Veeam ‘standard’ performance with CBT, hot add backup and BitlookerIn part 1 of this blog series I want to give a quick overview of the architecture of Veeam Backup for Proxmox and it’s initial setup. Disclaimer: All information and screenshots in this blog post are based on an e

If the Hyper-V integration services are not installed, you cannot restore any data from Veeam Backup.Please follow the steps to install Hyper-V integration services in the Ubuntu Linux VM of Hyper-V.  1.Login to Hyper-V host.2.Open PowerShell as Administrator.3.Run the command as follows.Get-VMIntegrationService -VMName "ubuntu2310"  4.Open the Hyper-V Manager tool.5.Right-click the VM and select the Settings.  6.Select Integration Services on the Settings of the VM page. 

The special-purpose .local top-level domain (TLD) is not designed for use in the global Domain Name System (DNS). Rather, multicast DNS (mDNS) uses it to resolve hostnames to IP addresses within small networks, eliminating the need for a dedicated DNS server. Specifically, mDNS operates on the local network link and uses the .local TLD for this purpose. When an mDNS client needs to resolve a hostname that ends with .local, it sends queries to the mDNS IPv4 link-local multicast address 224.0.0.251 or its IPv6 equivalent ff02::fb.Top 5 reasons why it is a bad ideaLet’s dive into why using the .local top-level domain (TLD) can lead to a handful of issues.Standards Compliance: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) reserves the .local TLD for mDNS in RFC 6762. If you use it in another context or within a traditional unicast DNS context, you may face non-compliant behavior and conflicts. Compatibility Issu

 It feels like everyone is always trying so hard to be perfect, I’m certainly not! But I’m happy to learn from and share my mistakes. I was messing about recently with Veeam Disaster Recovery Orchestrator and made some changes to my lab, and all was fine when I shut down. A few days later I fired up the lab again, but my Veeam Backup & Replication server wouldn’t start its core “Veeam Backup Service” service. I over-engineered my response expecting it to be something far more complex than it actually was, and here’s my story. Hour 1: The Service Won’t StartI fired up my Veeam Backup & Replication server, ready to write my next blog post, uh-oh, the service won’t start! I jumped into the logs and couldn’t see anything of any note, really!

During troubleshooting a backup environment, it’s common the necessity of test ports responsivity of our backup servers, like Veeam backup server, mount server, proxy or repositories.We normally do that with telnet. However, by default telnet client is not installed during Windows Server and the Veeam Backup Server often is our principal component our backup infrastructure.So, if you want to test some communication port without install telnet client, you can use PowerShell for it.Use the sintax below:Test-NetConnection -ComputerName <IP> -Port <port>Here is an example for the command:An interesting point is that if the communication port is not well succeeded, the utility make an aditional ping test:

So I had a unique support case recently, a customer using Veeam Agent for Linux with mixed success, they had one particular server that worked fine during implementation and then after a week the backups had started to immediately fail. The server was unable to load the veeamsnap module.Veeam themselves have a great article dealing with this in general and it helps resolve the majority of the cases, link here.One point I believe this article doesn’t properly discuss though is why this can happen, especially when it previously worked properly. To understand this we need to know a bit about how Veeam works with its Linux Agent.To fully understand how the Veeam Agent for Linux works, the first question we need to answer is, what is “veeamsnap”? veeamsnap is a Linux kernel module used by Veeam to create volume snapshots. Due to the huge variety of Linux sys

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

With the newest release V12, Veeam Backup & Replication is now capable of implementing immutability with HPE StoreOnce Catalyst stores. HPE calls this ‘Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Controlled Data Immutability (ISV-DI)’. With this post I want to quickly describe the requirements and configuration steps.RequirementsThere are some requirements, that need to be met in order to use immutability with StoreOnce systems.you need to have a Gen4 StoreOnce system with at least firmware 4.3.2 you need to configure Dual Authorization Maximum ISV Controlled Data Retention needs to be set to 365000 in the StoreOnce Catalyst Store you need to use forward incremental backup jobs and/or enable GFS for Backup Copy Jobs → For more information check the

QNAP QuObjects application is free and certificated for objects with immutability, which means you can use it as object storage within Veeam for a backup repository that supports their immutability feature.QNAT QuObjects Requirements: 1.Log on to the NAS as an administrator.2.Select App Center. 3.Click the Search icon on the App Center page. 4.Enter QuObjects and select the QuObjects and click Install.

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” func

I thought I posted the following post already. But it seems I missed to do so. I also saw @PValsecchi posted similar content already But I think I add some other details here, so I hope it is okay to post my stuff too.  What is it aboutOne of the new v12 features will be the possibility to move backups between repositories. It’s not just new that this will be an option in the GUI, also fast cloning information will be moved. This means that synthetic fulls will not need more space on target repository than it uses on source! This feature is very useful when it comes to replacing old repository hardw

If you wish to explore the capabilities of Veeam Backup and Replication v11A, then you probably upgrade to this version. Kindly visit the following URL for more of these capabilities/features.Here is a link to the complete guide highlighting on all the needed steps.You may be notified if there is an update of the Veeam Backup and Replication. Upon clicking on this notification, you will be redirected to the following KB (download) link.

Veeam Backup & Replication utilises a NAS-Based Repository to store backup files, VM copies, and metadata for replicated VMs. File-sharing protocols like SMB or NFS enable users to access files and directories on a computer, server, or virtual machine via the network by configuring a directory as a file share. Any operating system supporting these protocols can host a file share.The DS923+ serves as an ideal solution for storing backups on your Synology system, particularly for organisations utilising third-party backup software like Veeam Backup and Replication. It provides a perfect repository for business/mission-critical data and backups in both company environments and home labs. You may want to learn how to Step-by-step guide on how to set up the Synology DS923+ NAS, and 

IntroductionV12 is launching (register here) on Valentine's day and one of the most anticipated feature is the ability to backup directly to object. As my Valentine's gift to you, I wanted to highlight what's required to get your first V12 backup Direct to AWS S3 going. What do we need?An S3 bucket, an IAM user with the proper policy and a VPC for the helper appliance. A quick note about the V12 direct to object "helper" applianceIn the context of direct backups to AWS S3, the helper Appliance is a temporary EC2 instance that Veeam leverages to perform backup file health-checks.The benefit is to avoid having to "pull-down" any of the backup data on-premises to perform that maintenance operation.

Morning everyone, VMware vSphere 8.0 U2 is now available, with improvements to lifecycle management, AI workloads, and DevOps amongst others!https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2023/09/vsphere-8-update-2-now-available.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vsphere-8-update-2-now-available A quick reminder to all, Veeam Backup & Replication v12 only supports up to vSphere 8.0 U1 currently. Veeam can’t start their validation until the code is available so we’ll now see Veeam begin their testing process. You can check the status of vSphere platform support here: https://www.veeam.com/kb2443