Category: backup

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VeeamON 2018 – a review

What’s new

Slightly recovering from jetlag, I can now summarize the cornerstones of VeeamON 2018 which took place in Chicago from May 14th until May 16th.

 

I don’t want to go too much into details of new products. In fact there have been only a few announcements.

  • Veeam Backup Version 10 is not yet in sight
  • Version 9.5 U4 will come soon
  • Continuous Data Protection CDP will be delayed
  • Everything is hyper

Instead I’d like to have a look at the conference in general and outline differences to VeeamON 2017. Continue reading “VeeamON 2018 – a review”

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Remove VM objects from Veeam backup-chain

Leverage Powershell to selectively eliminate VMs from backup archives

GDPR / DSGVO casts its shadow onto IT. On Friday 25th of May European privacy regulations will become effective and violations can result in very harmful penalties for enterprises.

In that context an unusual task was addressed to me today by a customer: “Delete all backups of VM KillMe (yes, all)!”

There are several strategies to fulfill the task: Continue reading “Remove VM objects from Veeam backup-chain”

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Backup NFS shares with RSYNC and Veeam

The poor man’s guide to backup old NetApp boxes

Veeam Backup and Replication has a deep integration into NetApp hardware since version 8. Yet there is still no NAS Backup Support for SMB and NFS Shares (v10 Feature or 9.5 Ux). The question arises how to back up NAS data from older NetApp boxes, when the ONTAP version is simply too old for Veeam integration and  you can’t utilize NDMP, NFS or SMB protocol for direct NAS backup?

I will outline a real-life scenario where a customer has an old Netapp (7+ years old) with single controller holding very important data (I will not comment on that). 🙂

How can we integrate these datasets into an existing Veeam infrastructure?

I’ve created a cheap and dirty(?) method how to synchronize the content of that old Netapp box with a Linux VM which can be easily backed up by Veeam. The content of the Netapp NFS share will be replicated into a Linux VM (1st copy), backed up to disk by Veeam (2nd copy) and archived to tape (3rd copy, 2nd media type) which is then kept in a fireproof safe (offsite). It was possible to fulfill the 3-2-1 rule (3 copies, 2 types of media, 1 copy offsite).

pro

  • no extra licenses
  • simple implementation
  • reliable and mature protocol
  • 3-2-1 rule
  • rock-solid

cons

  • needs extra space on VM storage
  • basic knowledge of Linux commands

Continue reading “Backup NFS shares with RSYNC and Veeam”

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Increase efficiency with vRealize Log Insight

Syslog Server – a time saving tool

Today I’m writing about a use case, which is not very popular amongst IT professionals. Troubleshooting by parsing system logs. Sounds attractive as a dental surgery.

Almost any system and any component logs events, warnings and errors into some kind of internal log. Emphasis is on any and internal, because that’s part of the problem. Log information isn’t usually easy accessible. And once you’ve copied all logs to a common location, you need to scroll through it by a text editor. This is cumbersome and tricky. If you – for example – have to align events from a server with events from a switch, you’ll need multiple steps to achieve it. A very time-consuming procedure. If you have bad luck (Murphy says, you will..), one of the components is unavailable, because an error occurred. No log – no analysis. Continue reading “Increase efficiency with vRealize Log Insight”