Karl Widmer

Veeam – Probably not well known features: VeeamZIP

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update

This second post will continue with the small series of blog posts. This series will talk about some probably not well know features of Veeam Backup & Replication.

Usually you’ve got your infrastructure set up, your Veeam backup server up and running, and your daily backup and replication jobs are working fine. And then, all of a sudden, the manager arrives at your desk (or calls you by phone, I leave it to your imagination…) and would like you to decommission an old virtual machine. You don’t need this machine anymore. But the management (and probably you too) are not sure, so just kill and delete this VM isn’t an option. I think this is pretty common in various companies. Getting rid of old and already replaced virtual machines frees up costly hardware ressources (CPU, Ram, Disk). One of the most reason to not kill a VM is that people aren’t sure if it’s still in use, if there are still people working with it. Like, for example, and old account program or something the like.

But let’s go back to your infrastructure. You’ve set up a nice running system, which is some terabyte in total size. You can now tell the manager that you have to postpone the decommission of this virtual machine because you have to configure a special backup job.

Or you go the easy way and tell your boss that backup and archival of this particular VM is just a matter of minutes. And afterwards this virtual machine can be retired in dignity.

But why? And how? Let me tell you this with just one word. VeeamZIP.

What is VeeamZIP?

Let’s quote again from the Veeam helpcenter:

You can quickly back up running and powered off VMs with VeeamZIP. Creating a VeeamZIP file can be helpful if you want create an ad-hoc backup for VMs, archive VMs before decommissioning and so on. You can create a VeeamZIP file for one or more VMs.

Another great feature! Just a quick backup of a VM, running or not, for ad-hoc backup or archive purpose in case you want to decommission this VM. Nice!

And this is really easy to be done. Let me show you how you do this. I assume you already opened your Veeam console.

  1. Click on “Virtual Machines” in the menu on the left hand side.
  2. Expand your Infrastructure and look for the VM you wan’t to do a quick backup.
  3. Right-click this VM and choose “VeeamZIP…”

You’re done. That is it.

If you click on “VeeamZIP…” (the second from above) you will be asked were you’d like to save the file. You can save the zip file to a Veeam repository or chose to save it on a local or shared folder.

veeamzip

Hint: If you click the first position “VeeamZIP to C:\Backup” then it’s pretty clear were this zip file will be stored. Make sure that there is enough free space…

If you’d like to encrypt the backup (for whatever reason; just keep the key / password save!) you can do that too. Click on “More >>” and you’ll get some more options to configure:

Now you can easily decommission old and unused VMs without worries, and thus free up costly ressources in your infrastructure.

Read the other post from this series to:

Veeam – Probably not well know features: Quick Backup

Veeam – Probably not well known features: VeeamZIP

Veeam – Probably not well known features: Quick Backup

by
update

With this post i’d like to start with a small series of blog posts. This series will talk about some probably not well know features of Veeam Backup & Replication.

Usually you’ve got your infrastructure set up, your Veeam backup server up and running, and your daily backup and replication jobs are working fine. And then, all of a sudden, the manager arrives at your desk (or calls you by phone, I leave it to your imagination…) and would like you to install a patch from software development. I think this is pretty common in various companies. Installing patches for your software (doesn’t matter if it’s a Microsoft Exchange server or your internal Apache web server with your intranet running on it) is not only necessary to get the latest features and bug fixes, but it’s also a matter of security to get security flaws patched.

But let’s go back to your infrastructure. You’ve set up a nice running system, which is some terabyte in total size. You can now tell the manager that you have to postpone the patch installation because it’s not possible to get a backup in a reasonable time. Even with incremental backup.

Or you go the easy way and tell your boss that backup of this particular VM is just a matter of minutes. And if there goes anything wrong, we won’t lose as much data as possible.

But why? And how? Let me tell you this with just three words. Veeam Quick Backup.

What is Veeam Quick Backup?

Let’s quote from Veeam helpcenter:

Quick backup lets you perform on-demand incremental backup for VMs. You can use quick backup if you want to produce an additional restore point for one or more VMs in a backup job and do not want to configure a new job or modify the existing one.

Isn’t that great? Just have an additional restore point, which means an additional backup state, of your specific VM, and this without to configure an additional backup job. Nice!

And it is really that easy. Let me show you how you do this. I assume you already opened your Veeam console.

  1. Click on “Virtual Machines” in the menu on the left hand side.
  2. Expand your Infrastructure and look for the VM you wan’t to do a quick backup.
  3. Right-click this VM and choose “Quick backup”.

You’re done. That is it.

quick backup

There will be only a small notification that Quick backup started now for this particular VM:

quick backup started

But… Yes there’s a “but”. You can use Quick backup only for a VM, when this VM is already protected by an existing backup job. As mentioned in the helpcenter quote above, for a Quick backup there is no need to create an additional backup job. That’s because Veeam Backup & Replication does a check if the VM is already protected, and then triggers this job, but only to backup the specified VM.

Read the other post from this series to:

Veeam – Probably not well know features: Quick Backup

Veeam – Probably not well known features: VeeamZIP

Veeam – Changes in the update policy (updates now integrated)

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update

When you are an active Veeam forums user then you will probably also receive the weekly mail on Sunday evening from Anton Gostev. The famous “Word from Gostev”. In the most recent mail from Gostev, the one from last Sunday (19th of February 2017) Gostev announced that update 1 for Veeam Backup & Replication now is integrated in the ISO file for download.

Well, that’s great news! Until this date you had to download the ISO file and the update separately, and install both separately too. Now you don’t have to do that anymore. If you’re planning to install a fresh Veeam backup server, or if you just want to update your software library with the latest versions, then you can now grab the updated ISO file which includes update 1.

It’s possible that i only dreamt of it, but i’m pretty sure that i read it somewhere, either in a mail, on the forums or the Veeam website. As far as i’m not wrong, the usual way of releasing a patch was like this:

Stage 1: If you had a technical issue which should be resolved with the patch (so an issue which is on the changelog alter on) then you received the patch in advance from Veeam technical support.

Stage 2: Beta tester. You can download the patch from a non public link and install it in your environment. I think that was also via Support, or probably via forum announcement (don’t blame me for not knowing that, i don’t install betas because i don’t have labs in production…).

Stage 3: Public download. When the patch was announced, then a few days later you could have download the update from the regular update download website.

NEW Stage 4: the updates are now integrated in the latest ISO files for the full product download.

I’m pretty sure that the stages above will still be valid. If there is an issue for which you created a support case with Veeam technical support, and if this issue can be resolved with the latest (pre-release) update, then you will get the patch earlier. And i think also that there will be another announcement for the next update (if there is an update) and

And did i mention that this not only is for Veeam Backup & Replication but also for Veeam Availability Suite? Check the new ISO file here. Update 1 for Veeam ONE is also integrated.

Just a last thing. If you’re not sure which version you’ve installed at the moment, and which version is the latest, check this link to the Veeam forum. The first sticky post is from Gostev with all details about the latest version (including update release history).

CoSchedule – Your #1 Content Marketing Calendar

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CoSchedule

When i recently surfed through the web, gathering information about possibilities and technologies to get at least some automation into my blog, i stumbled across CoSchedule. I’m an IT guy, and i like some things working automated. So why shouldn’t that work on my blog? Is it because i’m lazy or because it’s just hard work sometimes to get all things well organized and orchestrated?

So i took a closer look at CoSchedule. And what i found out really amazed me.

What is CoSchedule?

CoSchedule is your #1 marketing calendar. Your automation buddy on WordPress. Your virtual publisher. Create great content and CoSchedule will do all the publishing on the social media channels you like. You define what and when and CoSchedule does the rest for you. You don’t have to worry about shorten links anymore, or to search for the permalinks to your blog posts for re-publishing them on social media. Does that sound to easy to be true? Read on!

How can it help me?

When you’re a blogger or writer then you probably know that better than anyone else. You were spending hours with researching, testing and writing, and you published a great article at the end. Now you’re planning to publish it on your Twitter, Facebook and Google+ accounts and pages. But you have to do it all manually. Copy the permalink, getting it shortened (on Twitter each letter counts…), add some hashtags and so on. Then you’re problably ready to get this post published on your social media.

And that’s a one timer. Your blog post is now available on the internet and various social media streams. But only once. If you’d like that your content gets more attention you probably should replublish it some days later, and probably also a week or two later. How about keeping your top blog posts a while longer on social media? You go through the whole process from above. Again and again.

CoSchedule can do that for you. In the very same moment before you click on “publish” you can define on which social media channels your post should be published too. You can define how often it gets published there and thus how long it’s active. Stop wasting time jumping from one tool to the next. Do it all on one workflow.

Why should i use it?

I’m an active blogger and i’m writing about different topics in technology. I like when people get knowledge about my posts and writings. And i like it when at least some of my posts will help other people solving their problems. With CoSchedule you’re able to get your posts not only just published on various social networks, but also keep it republished as you defined it.

But not only for single blogger like me CoSchedule is a great help. Imagine you and your team in your company. You’re creating content through workflows, with text, proofreading, imagery and so on. With CoSchedule you can easily collaborate on projects, assign tasks, add comments, and meet your project deadlines. With custom workflows your team stays accountable, and you get the sh*t done!

Overview / Features

CoSchedule as an easy to install plugin for your WordPress instance. Once registered you can start right away.

  • On the “Calendar” view you always see what’s done and what happens the next few days, weeks and months.
  • “My Activity” gets you more insights about your content and your tasks.
  • The “Analytics” pane shows you more details about your top content and the social engagement.
  • Get your team organized with on “My team” view. Invite your writers and authors, assign tasks and start your content with workflows.
  • If you don’t want to be logged in to WordPress the whole time, click on “Open in Web App” (and save this links to your favorites) to access all of the features above through one single web page.

To get a closer look i’ll provide you some more details. Because a picture is worth a thousand words.

CoSchedule is an editorial calendar for your blog and content marketing that keeps you insanely organized while saving you tons of time. To have a overview about all the features have a look at the video.

Ok, you got me! Where can i sign up?

Well, that’s pretty easy. Go to the CoSchedule website and click the “Try it free” button to sign up. You’ve got 14 days of trial where you can test all the features without limitations. Install the plugin on yur WordPress instance and start using CoSchedule directly. Get familiar with the functions and test the publishing features. You’ll love them!

Conclusion

Saving time and getting things organizied. That are the goals of CoSchedule. Build the perfect social schedule (directly in your calendar), keep your social and content in one place. I’m testing CoSchedule only since a few days. But the features keep what they promise. I was used to struggle from one tool to another, shorten links there, having analytics here. With CoSchedule you’ve got that all under one roof.

VMware – Becoming a vExpert for the first time

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Today evening VMware announced the list of new and renewed vExperts on their VMTN Blog. All the fellow virtualization people out there were eager for this specific announcement on this 8th of February 2017. And guess what, my name is also on this list! I can’t believe it! The first time i become a vExpert! I’m close to freaking out! No worries, i calmed down a little. But anyway, awesome!

Honored to become this accreditation the first time! Thank you!

Here is the list:

https://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2017/02/vexpert-2017-award-announcement.html

vExpert

What is the vExpert program?

Let’s have a quote from the vExpert community website. I think that will explain it a little:

The VMware vExpert program is VMware’s global evangelism and advocacy program. The program is designed to put VMware’s marketing resources towards your advocacy efforts. Awards are for individuals, not companies, and last for one year.

Employees of VMware customers or partners can receive this award. Yes, an award. It’s nothing you can learn for and get certified with an exam. A board of specialists will review your application and the reasons you applied for this. It’s your personal effort which will be measured. It’s all about community. If you’re a blogger, active in social media like Twitter and Facebook, posting in VMware communities and helping people with their technical problems, VMUG leader, and so on, then there are chances for you. Spread the word! It’s a “giving back” as its written on the vExpert community website. IT professionals who share their VMware knowledge and contributing it back to the community.

How can i become a vExpert?

Twice per calendar year VMware opens the applications for a 30 day period. After these 30 days the applications are closed and voting mode become active. This takes usually about 45 to 60 days. First half of the applications are opened in November and thus the announcement is in the following February. The second applications opens in June with the announcements in August. Every vExpert, VCDX as well as any new applicants must apply at least once per year.

vExpert benefits

Yes you’re reading correct. It’s a lot of work to become a vExpert. But there is also a thank you after you’re nominated. You’ll get a signed certificate by VMware’s CEO Pat Gelsinger, 365-day eval licenses for most of the VMware products (ideal for us homelabbers), and so many other stuff! I think that’s a huge “thank you” from VMware to you guys!

  • Invite to our private #Slack channel
  • vExpert certificate signed by our CEO Pat Gelsinger.
  • Private forums on communities.vmware.com.
  • Permission to use the vExpert logo on cards, website, etc for one year
  • Access to a private directory for networking, etc.
  • Exclusive gifts from various VMware partners.
  • Private webinars with VMware partners as well as NFR’s.
  • Access to private betas (subject to admission by beta teams).
  • 365-day eval licenses for most products for home lab / cloud providers.
  • Private pre-launch briefings via our blogger briefing pre-VMworld (subject to admission by product teams)
  • Blogger early access program for vSphere and some other products.
  • Opportunity to receive a free blogger pass to VMworld US or VMworld Europe (limited to 50 for US and 35 for EU).
  • Featured in a public vExpert online directory.
  • Access to vetted VMware & Virtualization content for your social channels.
  • Yearly vExpert parties at both VMworld US and VMworld Europe events.
  • Identification as a vExpert at both VMworld US and VMworld EU.

Conclusion

I’m still a little shaky and received already many congratulations, not only from my twitter buddies, but also from my family. My parents are not that “technical”, as probably many parents are not. I explained them a few days ago what i applied for. And they just made big eyes. Today i announced to them that i made it. And they were proud. So i’m proud to.

Again, thank you very much! Enjoy the evening with some celebration!

Update

Now the vExpert profile is finally created 😉

https://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-33986