Veeam has released in December the update 3 of Veeam Backup & Replication which brings the central management of Veeam Agent for Windows / Linux. Thanks to this update you can now manage backup of physical machines or cloud instances from a single pane. In this topic, we’ll see how to manage a physical machine from the console of Veeam Backup & Replication.
Imagine you have a server with data source volumes that are backed up to local (or a share) target backup volumes with Veeam Agent for Windows (VAW). You might or might not backup the OS as well. That server is old, has issues or has crashed beyond repair and needs to be replaced. You don’t really care all that much about the server OS potentially but you do care about your data backup history! You don’t want to lose all those restore points. Basically, we try to answer how do you replace the backup server when it’s a local Veeam Agent for Windows 2.1 deployment.
How do you do this?
This spring, during VeeamON 2017, Veeam Software presented Veeam Powered Network (VeeamPN), their first solution in the field of enterprise networking.
Veeam PN is a simple tool for establishing VPN between all parts of a distributed infrastructure: the headquarters, remote and branch offices, employees working remotely, etc. This solution is based on the OpenVPN technology. It serves as a virtual machine, running in Microsoft Azure (Veeam PN Server) or client’s private cloud, with the components on customer’s sites (Veeam PN Gateway):
Veeam Backup Entreprise Manager is an optional component that enables to consolidate several Veeam Backup & Replication server through a single pane of glass. Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager provides a web-based interface to centrally control and manage all jobs. You can edit job, monitor them and have a consolidated view of the reporting of all Veeam Backup & Replication server. In this topic, we’ll see how to configure Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager.
In the previous topics, we have installed and updated Veeam B&R 9.5. Then we have connected Veeam to vCenter 6.5 to get visibility on VMware VM and backup them. To finish, we have added a backup repository to store backup files. Now we can backup a virtual machine. Once we have some restore points, we can also recover the VM.
In the previous topic, we have seen how to install and update Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5. In this topic, we will prepare the environment. We will connect to vCenter to be able to backup virtual machines and we will add a backup repository.
In my lab environment, I have deployed a vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 (VCSA). The VCSA FQDN is admin.vsphere.lab.
First, you need an administrator user to connect to vCenter from Veeam. From vCenter, add a new user as below. I have called mine Veeam.
Personally I have been very successful at providing good backup designs for Hyper-V in both small to larger environments using budgets that range in between “make due” to “well-funded”. How does one achieve this? Two factors. The first factor is knowing the strengths and limitations of the various Hyper-V versions when you design the backup solution. Bar the ever better scalability, performance and capabilities with each new version of Hyper-V, the improvements in back up from 2012 to 2012 R2 for example were a prime motivator to upgrade. The second factor of success is due to the fact that I demand a mandate and control over the infrastructure stack to do so. In many case you are not that lucky and can’t change much in already existing environments. Sometimes not even in new environments when the gear, solutions have already been chosen, purchased and the design is deployed before you get involved.
After spyware and malware IT administrators do have to face another threat – A Ransomware. You have to pay to recover your data that has been encrypted by malware. Clever move from the Pirate’s perspective. Indeed. Pirates are hoping that they can make some dirty money out of it. And sometimes they’re successful. You might be asking what can you do, as a system administrator, to protect yourself against ransomware?
Hackers will always find a way to your data and Anti-malware solutions will always try a way to block them. But you as an admin, must be prepared for an eventual data loss. Prepared how? We’ll try to find some strategies and tools which might be good to know. The tools that are built-in Windows Server 2016 that will be out later this year. Currently in TP5, but there won’t be any major updates on features further down the development cycle so the RTM of Windows Server 2016 shall have all what you can see in the TP5 which is available for download since about a week. We try to do a recap on which tools can be helpful to fight ransomware today.
