Topics started by Geoff Burke

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Hi Everyone, There are times that I think that my head has been stuck in the sand when it comes to technology. Maybe I just don’t read enough 😅. While forcing myself to consider black Friday/cyber Monday upgrades for my beleaguered home lab I stumbled upon Proxmox. Debian based KVM level 1 Hypervisor. Since I may go the route of purchasing an old powerful desktop I need something (free) that can help be getting vms’ running. Esx free won’t let me use API’s for Veeam backups anyways and I don’t know of any ways of getting a full working license other than time trial or attempting to become a vexpert (please correct me if I am wrong) I wanted to go with something else. I could just build KVM on top of a linux distribution myself but it would be nice to have something ready to go that has a community forum available.Have any of you used Proxmox? and if so what are your thoughts about it?https://www.proxmox.com/en/cheers

Anybody tried Proxmox?

4 months ago

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Hi Everyone. AWX is a powerful tool to help one wander the wonderful world of ansible. Obviously we are all keen to give the AWX operator a go in Kubernetes. Just like the song New York, New York (if I can make it there I cam make it anywhere) which translates into Kubernetarian + If I can install it on my laptop, I can install it anywhere!! We will attempt to do so on my old “chuck it in the bin already” Window$ laptop 😃 You need to install my true love of late “Rancher Desktop” https://rancherdesktop.io/ Enable kubernetes and for convenience although optional turn on the wsl integration with your wsl distro: I am using kubernetes v1.25.6 and remember in Rancher Desktop lurking under the hood is k3s. Ok so we are ready to rumble!open your Ubuntu terminal window and make sure your single node cluster is smilling:kubectl get nodes The awx-operator has all the instructions and I am basically following them with some tweaks for my local setup.https://github.com/ansible/awx-operator Let

Install AWX on K3S

1 year ago

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Hi Everyone, Has anyone performed a VBR 10 to a VBR 12 upgrade. I am going to search here and the forums for any pleasant surprises that might be waiting but thought I would throw out the hook and bait for some saucy nightmare tale.According to this https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/upgrade_vbr_byb.html?ver=120License ist gut! and it is supported which make feel secure. Obviously, I would want to check the whole GFS situation but I believe none a present. Be Aware So has anybody done this and encountered anything untoward? Thanks

VBR Upgrade 10 to 12

8 months ago

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

asked in Blogs and Podcasts

Anyone moved an M365 Repo from one drive to another on block storage?

Hi folks,My wanderings in the wonderful continue. I need to move an M365 repo from a REFS drive (as far as I know this is not good, NTFS is the best practice) to a new drive. I have read on the forums that the Move-VBOEntityData powershell is NOT the way to go. Instead this is the procedure: 1. Disable all backup jobs related to the repository you want to move.2. Stop all the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 services before moving any data.3. Copy the backup repository data to the backup repository location on the new repository location (using robocopy for example).4. Start the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 services.5. Add the new repository with the moved data.6. Open backup job settings and specify to use the new repository Any comments or advice from folks who have been through this. I would like to avoid any pain since I had a wisdom tooth pulled this week and have enough already :) cheers

8 months ago

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Hi Folks, This popped up on my radar today, a Veeam prometheus exporter written in Python. I am going to give it a try, especially if you are already running prometheus in your production. The repo owner (Pik Jean-Francoispeekjef72) just started this so it will be interesting to see where it goes:https://github.com/peekjef72 https://pypi.org/project/veeam-exporter/#description

Prometheus exporter for Veeam

1 year ago

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Hi Folks,I was wondering if people would be interested in creating a VMCE study group. I will be honest this time around I am a bit terrified of this exam. For one thing the last number of years my study focus has been on something else (I wonder what that is), I am naturally not great at these things just work double in order to try and be included in with the real smart folks 😃, plus the amount of changes in V12 will prevent me from winging it on previously acquired knowledge in older VMCEs and work experience.Obviously this would not be a “dump” zone or “point you to the answer from the test” cheating location, but instead a group creating questions, helping to understand fuzzy issues and most importantly giving support to people like me who have been petrified of exams/tests ever since kindergarten🤣. I led a CKA group study over on Kodekloud for a few Months and it was a lot of fun. We had bi-weekly calls (could have been Monthly to be honest) and some of the study techniques I l

VMCE Study group?

28 days ago

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

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

Kasten on your Minikube

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Sometimes you just want to do a quick test which requires S3.You can in seconds flat setup a Minio instance on your laptop for this purpose.Go to Minio’s download page: Run the Powershell command as shown in the instructions: Minio will be downloaded: The instructions on the Minio page say to set a username and password. I did this below but when I brought up Minio it still had the default password. Create a directory where your test buckets will reside: Now run the server: As you can see the root user was still the default minioadmin and password minioadmin but for testing purposes we can leave that, or you can login and make the change. Go to your browser and type your laptop ip address in the url and port 9000 http://your ip:9000 Login and create a bucket by pressing the circled button in the lower right: Bucket created you are ready to go!! Keep in mind this is an http S3 setup. For testing VBR capacity tier offload you would need to use https or use a registry key in Veeam

Quick Minio Setup on Laptop for Testing Veeam and Kasten S3

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Hi Folks, Someone told me that they tested Rocky Linux versus Ubuntu (most likely 20.04) acting as a Veeam repository and there were significant performance differences between them with Rocky linux seriously outperforming Ubuntu. I don’t have any other details like (test environment, amount of data etc etc) but I personally find this hard to believe but wanted to know what everyone else thought. First off Rocky Linux is a spin off Redhat base distro that was created or gained much more popularity with the demise of Centos. I see Veeam themselves are always using examples with Ubuntu so that must mean something 😃.I am not getting involved in the old Distro wars of years past, i.e. (Debian vs Slackware vs Redhat) etc just want to know people’s genuine thoughts and experience.

Rocky Linux outperforming Ubuntu? Is there any evidence out there about this?

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

I was waiting and waiting for the shoes I won. All it took was for @Kseniya to pickup the phone during the Legends call last week and boom! they are here :) Minus 20 outside with snow, plus lockdown so no strutting in the clubs but at home!!! All I will wear now :) Thanks

SHOES!

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Hi Everyone, For those of you with a Synology lying around the house or data centre you may not know that there is an open source CSI driver for Kubernetes out there. In this post I will create K3S cluster then install the driver. After that we can even test it out!The github page can be found here: https://github.com/SynologyOpenSource/synology-csiI have setup a small Ubuntu virtual machine for the post. First off lets install K3S curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh –K3S Installation When I try to test out kubectl I get an error:Error running KubectlThis is because kubectl can’t access the default kubernetes configuration file as a normal user. There are few fixes for this but the easiest one on our test system is to simply copy the one in our etc folder over to a local .kube folder in our user home folder.mkdir .kubesudo cp /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml ~/.kube/configWe will have to change the owner and permissions on the file so that our normal user account can leverage it:sud

Synology CSI installation

1 year ago

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Hi Folks,I have written up some quick instructions on setting up Minikube a single node Kubernetes cluster on your laptop. If I have missed something or if anything is unclear please reach out to me. The great thing about Kubernetes is that you can take it anywhere. If just want to familiarize yourself with Kubernetes and do some testing, then Minikube is an easy to install nonproduction single node Kubernetes cluster that you can install on your laptop. I am using my windows 10 Lenovo Thinkpad. First, we need to enable the Hyper-V role (or install Oracle VirtualBox if your laptop OS will not run Hyper-V) on your laptop. Mac users can use brew https://gist.github.com/kevin-smets/b91a34cea662d0c523968472a81788f7 To enable the Hyper-V role, follow these instructions:https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/quick-start/enable-hyper-v INSTALL MINIKUBEMinikube is a single node Kubernetes cluster which allows you test Kubernetes.There are two ways to install Minik

Kubernetes on your Laptop

3 years ago

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Hi Everyone,Just an update. The Study group is coming soon! Don’t be tempted to buy any practice exams 😁! Again the study group won’t provide any answers, it will do much better, it will provide the means to get to the answers. Those same means and methods can then be used in real life production situations to solve problems. At the end of the day that is what we all want apart from the shinny certificate!

VMCE VMCA Study Group coming soon at a Veeam Hub near you!

1 month ago

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Hi Everyone,I know everyone loves documentation and documenting things.. right? Well love might be too strong a word but you must admit it is nice to not have to rely on memory to find things. Also if your boss is tired of you and would like to lock you out of the office then if you have great documentation everybody wins! 😀Joking aside I long ago realized that my memory was lacking and so the more I write down the better things go later on.Netbox https://docs.netbox.dev/en/stable/ is a sensational open-source tool that I have used in a number of jobs. There is a great blog post by @mkevenaar on how to run Netbox on Synology here https://kevenaar.name/netbox-how-to-run-it-on-your-synology/But what about Kubernetes? Well the folks over on the GitHub bootc repo https://github.com/bootc/netbox-chart have made it easy for us. Today I am going to leverage their helm chart and deploy this in Rancher Desktop in my WSL2 windows laptop environment. Open up your ubuntu terminal and create a ne

Netbox on your Laptop with Kubernetes!

7 months ago

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Understanding Kubernetes Networking can be a challenge. A couple of years ago I was tasked to setup a distributed Minio instance running in containers for use with a Veeam SOBR S3 compatible capacity tier. At first, I thought about doing it on Kubernetes but very quickly realized that I was in over my head. I had no previous experience with Kubernetes and I could not just “wing it”. Among other things the networking piece I found especially hard to understand.In the end I created a Docker Swarm cluster which had a much easier almost “plug and play” overlay network and while that did the trick, I understood that simplicity also meant rigidity.Kubernetes follows the age old *nix (Unix, Linux BSDs and so on) philosophy of creating small separate entities that when brought together can scale into something very complex. Networking is no exception.While a Kubernetes cluster does come with some default networking called kubenet it is very limited and not meant for production environments fro

A Short and Simple Description of Container Network Interface (CNI) in Kubernetes

3 years ago

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Hi Everyone. I installed TCE yesterday on my Ubuntu laptop and decided to create a quick and dirty post to show the steps. Overall I was pretty impressed with TCE. They seemed to have made things smooth and relatively easy to get started with. This will without a doubt fill a big hole as there really was nowhere to practice Tanzu unlike Openshift with Minishift, Kubeadm with Minikube and Rancher with Rancher Desktop. First we need to download the tarball: https://tanzucommunityedition.io/download/Untar it tar zxvf tce-linux-amd64-v0.9.1 Then CD into the new directory: Once here we need to run the install.sh script: This should run to completion and echo out “Installation Complete” Now we should be able to run the UI tanzu management-cluster create --ui(note: you could just continue running the install from the command line, checkout the documentation: https://tanzucommunityedition.io/docs/latest/ You should now see the following pop up in your browser: As you can see it gives you a

Tanzu Community Edition First Look

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

For demos, test environments and home labs you may not want to be deal with more complicated forms of Authentication or copying and pasting tokens. Basic Authentication is available for Kasten and quite simple to setup. Make sure that you have the htpasswd utility installed in your system. First create your password file:htpasswd -c -B -b htpass.pass geoff Mytoughpassword htpasswd -B -b htpass.pass heather passworddifficultHere I am adding the user geoff with the Mytoughpassword passwrodThe -c only needs to be used once when creating the file. If you use it again it will wipe out your existing users.Next I will use a user called heather with password passworddifficult Next we need to create a secret in the kasten-io namespace in our cluster that Kasten will leverage: kubectl create secret generic -n kasten-io kastenusers --from-file=htpass.pass Now we will install Kasten and point it to the our secret while enabling basic authentication: helm install k10 kasten/k10 --namespace=kasten-

Install K10 with Basic Authentication

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Hi Folks, I found that Rancher have a free certification. Rancher is Kubernetes but not a build it yourself one like Kubeadm. They also created the k3s version of Kuberentes that runs on a lot of appliances. I have gone through the first lessons and they are very straight forward. https://academy.rancher.com/courses/course-v1:RANCHER+K101+2019/about cheers

Free Rancher Certification

asked in Kasten K10 Support

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Longhorn backup with Kasten

Hi Everyone, I wanted to re-visit this. Does Kasten backup Longhorn without any issues now? I tried a while back and Longhorn there were problems even though I thought way back when I had been able to do this. I saw some other folks had issues as well. I am going to try again on the weekend but just wanted to see if any instructions or “solved” cases were out there before I do.Thanks

asked in Blogs and Podcasts

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

O365 Self Service Portal

Hi Folks, I think I remember hearing that Veeam was coming out with their own Self Service Portal for O365. I can’t remember where I heard this (VeeamONUpdate?). Does anyone remember? And would this be based on the previous unofficial Portal that was on the VeeamGitHub site? cheers Geoff

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

MicroK8s is a Kubernetes distribution from Canonical. It runs on Ubuntu and is advertised as a lightweight Kubernetes distribution, offering high availability and automatic updates.Today I going to setup a single node MicroK8s cluster and leverage OpenEBS storage for dynamic allocation.You can choose to install MicroK8S during the OS Ubuntu as one of the extra packages install options or simply run the snap command on an existing system:The command from the cli:sudo snap install microk8s --classicMicroK8S comes with kubectl baked in but by default it is in this form microK8S.kubectl. When I first run it I get some instructions about my permissions:I will run both commands and try againsudo usermod -a -G microk8s $USERsudo chown -f -R $USER ~/.kubeAfter running newgrp microk8s I can see my nodeTyping microk8s.kubectl is going to be a nuisance so I will create and alias in my .bashrc fileThen you can either logout login again or run exec bashNow I should be able to use kubectl:Now that m

MicroK8s and OpenEBS

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

I often get asked about what is the best beginner Kubernetes cluster setup. Often the answer is “it depends” since your setup will very much depend on what you are going to try and achieve but if your goal is to simply get started and have an environment to learn and practice in then Podman Desktop along with Minikube is an excellent choice.By leveraging Podman Desktop you won’t have to create a virtual machine in Windows for Minikube as we have had to do in past posts.Podman Desktop is based on Podman https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/ and is owned by RedHat.You will find on the Podman Desktop website https://podman-desktop.io/ downloads for Windows, MacOS and Linux. One of the great features of Podman Deskop is the extensions for Kubernetes, one of which is for Minikube. These allow you to seamlessly install a cluster with minimal effort. First let we will go to the download page and grab the Windows installer: Download the InstallerAfter running the simple steps of the installer we

Podman Desktop and Minikube a great combination to start your Kubernetes Journey!

3 months ago

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Kubesec is a great tool for risk analysis scanning kubernetes resources and yaml files. There is a plugin that can be leveraged in the cluster but you can also download the command line client and scan the yaml files of your pods, deployments, deamonsets and stateful sets.I am going to use the cli tool to scan a pod yaml that I have on my system and then work hard to make the test fail.Download Kubesec at kubesec.iohttps://kubesec.io/ Untar the file I have here a yaml file for an immutable pod that I was playing around with. Immutable sounds good, I bet this one will pass the test: Kubesec will scan through and generate a report with a score with either a pass or a fail and how many points. This one passed: Now lets make a bad change to the yaml. we will change readOnlyRootFileSytem from false to true Ok, well that pod is no longer immutable that is for sure. Lets see what Kubesec has to say about that: Passed but with a score of 0.Ok what if we allow privilege escalation: Yes

Kubesec for scanning your Yamls

Geoff BurkeVeeam Legend, Veeam Vanguard

Hi Folks, I am making a plan to try and get Veeam CDP introduced. I have used Zerto but have only used Veeam CDP in labs so far. Does anyone here have production experience with both? I am not looking for a “just boost Veeam” answer 😁. I love Veeam but honesty is always best so if there a things that still need working on with Veeam CDP no issues.

Ok need help here. ZERTO VS VEEAM CDP