Blogs and Podcasts

WOW, what an honour to Be Elected!What a trip to Lisbon! A week filled with unexpected challenges, fantastic experiences, great people, and some unforgettable memories. ;)Monday morning start at 0400 AM getting to the Airport to discover that my flight was 3 hours delayed, The reason Storm the day before and plane I should take had to return to Oslo because it could not Land i my hometown. But I reached my connection flight in Amsterdam(last passenger onboard).Finally arriving in Lisbon, I discovered that my luggage hadn't made the journey with me. Not exactly the perfect start!I arrived at the hotel around 18:30, checked in, and headed straight to the Welcome Party.And what an experience!You could not stay alone, you just got dragged in and got included right away. My fear of not knowing anyone was nothing to worry about, Legends, Vanguard, Rising Stars and Veeam made everyone feel welcome from the very first moment.After the Party I went to the local shopping mal to get some clothes

Some experiences stay with you long after you return home. That is how I feel about the Veeam 100 Summit 2026 in Lisbon. Last year, Prague was my first international trip and my first time on an airplane. Returning a year later, after my renewal as a Veeam Legend, brought back the same excitementAt Veeam 100 Summit 2026 in Lisbon, wearing my Proativa uniform. From Belo Horizonte to LisbonMy journey started with a direct TAP flight from Belo Horizonte, arriving in Lisbon around 7 AM on Sunday, October 25. I met ​@BethSouza , who had been on the same flight, and we headed to the Sheraton Lisboa Hotel & Spa together. After a shower and a change of clothes, I went out to explore with no fixed route.By the time I checked how far I had gone, I had walked more than 25 kilometers! I had discovered monuments, tried local food, and enjoyed getting to know the city. Considering I had knee surgery last year, my knee was probably ready to hand in its resignation. I was tired, but happy I had ma

Happy Friday, Veeam Community! I am very late with this newsletter and I apologise for that. However, I have a good reason: we have been so busy recently organising our biggest community event of the year, the Veeam100 Summit, that publishing this newsletter had to wait until other things were taken care of. What can you find inside this Newsletter version?This edition is packed with practical tips, technical deep dives, and community insights from across the data protection world. You’ll find articles on backup best practices, disaster recovery, Microsoft 365 protection, and the 3-2-1-1-0 rule, along with plenty of Veeam Data Platform 13.1 content. Veeam Vanguards covered also workload mobility, cloud storage, upgrades, and protecting platforms such as Proxmox, Nutanix, OpenShift, XenServer, and XCP-ng.Plus, there are useful tools, troubleshooting tips, licensing guidance, community projects, certifications, events, and learning resources. Whether you’re just getting started or alread

Part 1 of 6  |  A Veeam Journey Through Technology, History, and Resilience Belém Tower, Lisbon — a reminder that protecting what matters is hardly a new idea.Standing along the Tagus River in Lisbon, it's hard not to appreciate the history surrounding you. One landmark that stood out during my visit for Veeam 100 Summit was Belém Tower. Built in the early 16th century, it helped defend Lisbon's harbor during Portugal's Golden Age of Discovery.More than 500 years later, it's still standing, as testament to resiliency.Seeing it made me think about how much has changed in the way we protect what's important in our IT worlds. The technology may be different, but the underlying idea hasn't changed much.That brings me back to 2013, when I first started working with Veeam Backup & Replication v7 as a lowly IT intern. I had no idea then, how much of my career would involve Veeam, or that thirteen years later it would bring me to Lisbon. 2013: Veeam Backup & Replication v7By 2013, virt

This year I went to the annual v100 Summit for the first time, as a newly named Veeam MVP. Several Vanguards and Legends had told me it was the event of the year. What can I say? They were right. That’s why I’m writing this post: to encourage you to get involved in the Veeam Community. You can write blogs, make videos or shorts, post in the forums, or just give Veeam feedback. Everyone has something to contribute. If you’ve ever wanted to share your passion for backup, the Veeam Community is the place for you. What is the v100 Summit? The v100 Summit is an in-person event organized by Veeam and its community team, including Rick Vanover, Madalina Cristil, Nikola Pejkova, Safiya Mohamed, Karolina Basak (and many more people working behind the scenes). Every year, community members from around the world meet to talk about Veeam’s products: where they are today, where they’re heading and how they could get better. Together with Product Management, Veeam puts a huge effort into giving some

Upgrading Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 - From 8.3.0.2201 Ver  to Ver  8.4.0.1457

I spent quite some time deciding which session of the Veeam 100 summit to tell you about. I could have chosen the Veeam University session, which announced that Veeam University Pro is now free for partners (truly welcome news), or the sessions on the Veeam Software Appliance, or the planned enhancements in the upcoming version 13.2. But in the end, the one that will have the greatest impact on us as resellers of the solution is the one entitled ‘Object First Acquired by Veeam: Deep Dive and Integration Roadmap’. Veeam’s acquisition of Object First, announced in January 2026, was bound to catch my attention: it’s a product we recommend and sell to our customers very regularly.  What the session covered The session looked at how Object First will integrate into the Veeam ecosystem.Veeam and Object First share a common vision: data resilience based on immutable backup storage, that is simple to deploy and secure by design. Discussions centred on the product’s direction, the continuity of

Back in April I rounded out the UK Veeam User Group. After a properly technical session on APIs and dashboards, I went the other way: no product talk, just a bit of thinking differently about the job. Calling it thought leadership would make me sound grander than I am.The question running through the session was whether the decisions we make when we design data protection still make sense when the pressure is on. Let’s go through my points. Start with the translation problemWhen was the last time you had to explain your backup design to a non-technical audience?Most of us could explain exactly how our backups work: proxies, data movers, repositories, immutability, 3-2-1-1-0, RTOs and RPOs. But everything we put in place is there for the business, and the business talks revenue, risk, reputation and regulation. Those vocabularies rarely meet. Tip: If something went wrong tonight, could you explain the impact to your CEO in two minutes, in business terms? Design from outcomes backwardsTh

Part of a weekly series on protecting Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization with Veeam Backup & Replication. 📖 Before you continue: this post follows the previous one in the series, where I explain the architecture and the five components we install here. If you haven't read it yet, start there: Same console, same repositories, same jobs, different hypervisor: Veeam 13.1 meets OpenShift Virtualization This post is about getting the pieces installed. If you're the backup admin, you'll care about the first half (the plug-in on the backup server). If you're the platform engineer, the second half (the proxy inside the cluster) is yours. In practice you'll probably do both on the same call, so I'm keeping them together.The good news: it's two installs and a handful of commands. The less good news: a couple of details in the docs are easy to miss, and I'll point them out as we go.The deployment in one paragraphPer the deployment page, you have two options for the backup server: deploy a new

​A few days ago, I faced a very interesting situation involving VBR, Veeam Agent for IBM AIX, and an IBM FlashSystem storage array.At first, it made absolutely no sense to me.I was investigating some backup-related issues when I noticed several volumes with the VeeamAux prefix on an IBM FlashSystem 7600. After checking more closely, I found over 500 temporary volumes associated with Veeam operations.And the interesting part? Many of these volumes belonged to IBM AIX servers.My first question was simple: why would Veeam Agent for AIX need to create storage snapshots or clones to perform a file-level backup?After spending some time investigating the storage configuration, Veeam logs, and official documentation, I started to understand what was happening.Let me share what I found.Understanding the EnvironmentThis environment uses VBR 12.3.2 and an IBM FlashSystem 7600, with storage integration configured for VMware vSphere.The same storage array also provides volumes to several IBM AIX se

 My First Trip to Europe, New Friendships, and an Unforgettable Community ExperienceAfter more than 25 years in data protection and nine years working with Veeam software, I've had the opportunity to work with some incredible technology, share knowledge, and connect with some amazing people.But attending my very first Veeam100 Forum in Lisbon, Portugal, as a Veeam Rising Star was something truly special.And to make it even better, this was also my first trip to Europe!Exploring Portugal Before the ForumSince I'd never been to Europe, I decided to arrive a few days early and explore Portugal with my girlfriend, Bonnie. And I'm glad we did!Lisbon is an incredible city, full of history, beautiful architecture, and amazing views. One of my favorite experiences was taking a sunset cruise along the Tagus River, watching the sun set over Lisbon.We also explored the famous Pink Street, where I decided to get my first tattoo of the trip!A beautiful memory of PortugalAnother highlight was spendi

In the first part of this series, we explored the hardware and electronics of an IBM LTO-6 tape drive, including its SAS connectivity, cooling system, circuit boards, and internal motor structures.But there is another side of tape technology that I find even more interesting: the mechanical system.Have you ever wondered how an LTO drive manages to pull a magnetic tape out of its cartridge, guide it through the equipment, and position it correctly for reading and writing?From the outside, it seems simple. We insert a cartridge, wait for the drive to load it, and begin our backup or restore operation.Inside the equipment, however, there are several mechanical components that must work together.While examining this defective IBM LTO-6 drive, I took some photographs and videos of the internal mechanisms. I was particularly interested in understanding the purpose of the gears, motors, tape guides, and the small components near the read/write head.I also noticed a possible irregularity in pa

 When we talk about tape backup, we usually focus on storage capacity, transfer speeds, retention policies, media compatibility, and the importance of keeping offline copies of our data.But have you ever wondered what an LTO tape drive actually looks like on the inside?I've worked with tape backup technology for years, dealing with libraries, cartridges, drives, backup jobs, and different types of issues. However, there is one thing that we don't always have the opportunity to explore: the actual hardware responsible for making everything work.Recently, I had the chance to examine an IBM LTO-6 tape drive that was already experiencing mechanical problems during cartridge insertion and loading.Since the equipment was no longer under warranty and was not suitable for production use, I decided to take a closer look at its internal components.What started as curiosity turned into an interesting learning experience, and I thought it would be worth sharing.This is the first article in a three

Veeam publishes open-source Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers for Veeam Intelligence and Veeam Backup & Replication. They’re a great way to let AI tools work with your backup environment. Out of the box, though, they’re built for one person’s desktop AI client.Veeam-MCP-Assistant (VAM) puts them behind a shared web page. Your team signs in from a browser, asks questions in plain English, and runs Veeam Backup & Replication operations. Nothing that changes or deletes anything runs until a second person approves it.Please note: VAM is a community project. It’s not an official or supported Veeam product. It’s provided as-is under the MIT license. Try it in a lab before you point it at a production backup server. The VAM sign-in page Why a Front End?MCP servers offer tools, and an MCP client decides which ones to call. Desktop clients are personal: one user, one set of credentials, and no shared record of what happened.Teams need something different:Shared access without sharing

  Just a Routine Upgrade … ;-)We recently upgraded a customer’s Veeam Software Appliance (VSA) from version 13.0 to 13.1. The upgrade itself went through without a hitch – which is exactly how the VSA is designed to work: the appliance ships its own updates and handles the operating system and Veeam components in one go, without you having to worry about dependencies. But right afterwards, every server based on the Veeam Infrastructure Appliance (VIA) was offline – along with every role running on them, whether repository, proxy or mount server. No need to panic: this is expected behavior – and it affects not only the VSA, but classic VBR servers on Windows just the same. So nobody wastes time troubleshooting during their next upgrade, here’s the explanation and the fix. What exactly happens?After upgrading the backup server to 13.1 – whether VSA or Windows – the VIA servers still on version 13.0 can no longer connect to the backup server. In the console, the VIA servers – and with the

At the AMA session during the recent Veeam 100 Summit in Lisbon, one feature request came up that I've heard many times before: Veeam needs a maintenance mode: Disable everything before an upgrade, and afterwards bring back exactly the state you had before. That includes the jobs that were intentionally disabled.Until this exists in the product, Veeam's own KB2991 describes the manual way: disable all jobs in the console and note which ones were already disabled, so you know which ones not to re-enable later. With five jobs that's fine. With fifty jobs across VM backups, agent policies, backup copies, tape, plugins and CDP, someone always forgets the SureBackup job, or the copy job that was disabled on purpose months ago.So after Lisbon I sat down and designed a PS script for it. 🤗While testing, I noticed I wasn't the first to have this idea. Back in 2023, Martin Weber posted VEEAM Maintenance Mode PowerShell Scripts here on the Community Hub. It uses a similar approach: two scripts t

Or: Why Some Windows Servers Still Can’t Retire in 2026 With Veeam Backup & Replication v13, the classic infrastructure discussion changes for many customers. In the past, the answer to the question “Where do we install Veeam?” was about as complex as the cmdlet ping localhost. For years, the answer was perfectly clear: “Take a Windows Server. Give it CPU, RAM, and please don’t use a C: drive with 20 GB — and if possible, add a separate large log partition.” With v13, however, the world looks a bit different now. Thanks to the Veeam Software Appliance (VSA) and the Veeam Infrastructure Appliance (VIA), central Veeam components can be deployed much more easily and in a more standardized way. With the Veeam Software Appliance, Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager can be operated on two separate, Veeam-provided and hardened Linux-based appliances. The Veeam Infrastructure Appliance, meanwhile, can be used for additional components such as repository, moun

Accessing the Veeam Host Management TUI via SSH on VSA/VIA A few weeks ago I had a Veeam ticket that required exporting a lot of information from the shell of a Veeam Software Appliance (VSA) and entering some long commands.Anyone who has ever had to log in via iLO/iDRAC (on a physical server) or through the console of a VM knows what a struggle that can be: passwords, no copy & paste, poor scaling, … And of course this case was no different.However, support showed me a brilliant way to log in to a Veeam Software / Infrastructure Appliance via SSH and then open the Host Management TUI directly. Once the shell is enabled, you can work in it comfortably, paste commands in and copy exports out. It simply makes the work so much easier, and since I learned this method, I use it very often.Since the rest of the world should benefit too, and nobody should have to get annoyed by trivial things like wrong keyboard layouts in iLO, I’m going to walk through the process here. Host Management C

IntroIn a previous article I wrote about the type of storage a customer can use and write their backup to.Some days ago, a user in the Veeam Community asked why, according to Veeam's calculator, S3 object storage is no longer more efficient in terms of space (with immutability and GFS) than storage using XFS/ReFS technology.After answering, I decided to explore the topic further by putting myself in the shoes of a customer who has to make a choice in terms of the costs associated with the space used. That's why I want to tell you what happened with a customer.When I start a new backup infrastructure project, there always comes a time when I have to decide what type of storage repository to use. When I submit a plan to the customer, I often hear them say: Why should I spend more and use more space than requested?It usually happens when the storage budget is already tight, immutability is mandatory, and you are stuck in the middle between security, costs, and unrealistic expectations.Sit

🤖Disclosure: this post was created in conjunction with GrokBot; everything has been tested and verified.I wanted to find an alternative to StarWind and Quadstore for lab testing of VTL and found Holo VTL (https://github.com/Holo-VTL/Holo), an open-source virtual tape library that runs on a Linux VM.Here's how I got it working with VBR in my lab (note that there are some issues with the current main branch, which I have fixed in a fork and raised an MR on, see below for the fixed fork).What you needA Linux VM running Holo, with a second blank disk for the storage pool. Holo only lists whole disks that have no partitions and no mounted filesystem, so if the pool wizard shows no disks, add a raw disk to the VM and refresh the page (or reboot). VBR v12 or later (the Linux tape server needs it). I used the Veeam Software Appliance. Network access from VBR to the Holo VM on TCP 22, 6162 and 2500-3300Create the storage poolIn the Holo UI, create a pool on the blank disk.Create the virtual li

Hi Community, During the projects I have been working on, or in the VMCA classes I teach, I use drawio.com to make diagrams. It is a simple and free tool to use. However, the Veeam icons are not always up to date on it. So, to improve the quality, quantity and standard of the Veeam icons, I share many other formats with you.So, you can use drawio as a diagram tool and the Veeam icons in SVG format. Once drawio is open, you just need to copy and paste the desired icons into the drawio window.For those who use Visio, I’ll attach the visio stencils as well.  

SAML single sign-on in Veeam Backup & Replication v13 lets your identity provider handle authentication while Veeam keeps control of authorization. Users sign in with their corporate identity, MFA and Conditional Access policies apply upstream, and Veeam stops being one more place that stores passwords.The setup is simple. The part that trips people up is group mapping, and it comes down to which Microsoft Entra ID license you have.The mental modelKeep this sequence in mind for both setup and troubleshooting:Trust. Veeam trusts Entra ID as the identity provider through exchanged SAML metadata and the signing certificate. Assertion. After the user authenticates, Entra ID sends a signed SAML assertion containing claims about that user. Identity mapping. Veeam matches a claim (the user's UPN or a group claim) to a user or group in Users & Roles. Authorization. Veeam applies the role assigned to that user or group.Entra ID proves who the user is. Veeam decides what they can do.Step

During the upgrade of Veeam Backup & Replication to version 13.0.2.29, I encountered the following warning during the Configuration Check phase:Trusted hosts hardeningYour remote host trust option is set to Manual. After the upgrade, open a backup console and make sure all your backup infrastructure servers are trusted. At first glance, this message may seem concerning, but it is important to note that it is not a blocking issue and does not prevent the upgrade from completing successfully.Why Does This Warning Appear?Starting with recent Veeam releases, the platform has introduced additional security controls to strengthen communication between backup infrastructure components.In my environment, the Remote Host Trust policy was configured as Manual. This means that Veeam does not automatically trust remote infrastructure servers such as:Backup Repositories Backup Proxies Mount Servers WAN Accelerators Other managed Linux or Windows hostsBecause the trust relationship must be verif