Karl Widmer – Page 24 – driftar's Blog

VMware VMworld EMEA 2016 – Day 0 – Travel to Spain

16. October 2016 by Karl Widmer

Today i traveled to Barcelona, Spain, to attend one of the biggest IT tech events on the world. I’ll attend VMware VMworld this week, the little sister of VMworld in Las Vegas.

The travel itself was nice and comfortable. Having a nice view out of the train windows and a good coffee at the SWISS Business Lounge before flight was great. It was my first visit in the Business Lounge. I don’t flight often, but when i do, for short trips, i’ll book business class. The tickets aren’t that expensive as you might think. But you’ve got some good benefits, as extra hand luggage, more leg room, the Business Lounge and some other things. Think about it the next time you’ll do a short trip.

I started my travel from Zurich Airport, one of the bigger hops in Europe. I was a little early, as always, and the gate information wasn’t available at this time. So i spent the time waiting for an update here in the nice Business Lounge with a coffee and my blog.

I don’t know what to expect from VMworld. It is my first visit ever of a VMworld. I will meet some people i only know from Twitter but not yet personally. I’ll try to attend some VMware Hands-On Labs (perhaps also some challenging ones). There will be tons of informations to literally soak up. Whats the next trend on cloud computing? What are the features of new vSphere and other VMware software solutions? I will also meet up with some guys of Veeam at their booth, having a good talk.

Sure there are some parties too. And as i heard they are legendary. The first one will start today evening. The famous #vRockstar party at the Hardrock Cafe is one of those. On Tuesday there will be the Veeam party and on Wednesday there is the VMware party directly at the event hall.

Oh, in case you missed it: VMware has now a strong partnership with Amazon Cloud Services, Amazon AWS. You can run your vSphere, VSAN and NSX directly in the Amazon Cloud, using your known management tools.

I hope to see some of you, my dear readers, at VMworld this year! Have a nice week!

Veeam – General helpful things to add to your favorites

10. October 2016 by Karl Widmer

Today there is no special topic dealt with but i’ll provide you some general helpful things. Veeam Backup & Replication is the best availability software i know. In our company we install it at every customer who’s using either VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V. We love it and our customers too, they don’t even know that there was something. We can handle any issues in minutes.

Anyway. Today i’ll provide some general helpful things, like a collection of links, some specific infos about files and many other helpful stuff. I hope that there is something for you, helping you solving problems. In case you miss something, please drop me a comment or a mail so i can add it to this post. Thanks!

Link list

Target	Link
Customer Portal	https://my.veeam.com
Knowledge Base	https://www.driftar.chveeam.com/kb_search_results.html
Technical Documentation	https://www.driftar.chveeam.com/documentation-guides-datasheets.html
User Guide for VMware	https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/vsphere/overview.html
User Guide for Hyper-V	https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/hyperv/overview.html
Veeam Ressource Library	https://www.driftar.chveeam.com/resource-library.html
License Management	https://www.driftar.chveeam.com/manage_licenses.html
Veeam FAQ	https://www.driftar.chveeam.com/faq.html
Recorded Webinars	https://www.driftar.chveeam.com/videos.html
Veeam Forums	https://forums.veeam.com/
ProPartner Portal	http://propartner.veeam.com/
Restore Point Simulator	http://rps.dewin.me/
Veeam Best Practices	https://bp.veeam.expert/

Veeam Best Practices

If you’ve ever asked how to do things as best practice, then this guide is helpful for you for sure. Veeam updated their best practices guide to Backup & Replication v9 with Update 2. The guide covers everything, starting from ressource planning and sizing, deployment, configuration and various other topics.

https://bp.veeam.expert/

Backup Copy Job – more than just a copy

https://www.driftar.chveeam.com/blog/backup-copy-job-it-can-do-more-than-just-a-copy.html

Veeam recently published a blog post about the all known Backup Copy Job. All known yes, but many people did not know that this kind of job can do more than just copy. A very good read for better understanding how backup copy works and how you can make use of it.

How to collect logs for a support case

As mentioned in a previous post i created a small guide which shows you how to collect the logs as part of creating a support case at Veeam support. An english version will follow. At the moment the post is only available in german language.

https://www.driftar.ch/2016/06/10/veeam-support-logfiles-fuer-den-support-sammeln/

Helpful other things (not only but also Veeam related)

The following information are not only related to Veeam but could help you find some answers when you have questions regarding your infrastructure.

Restore point simulator

A cool and helpful online tool is the restore point simulator. With this tool you can calculate how much space is needed in a repository to meet your needs.

http://rps.dewin.me/

Calculate estimated bandwith for a backup copy or replication job

Also a cool online tool is the calculator for the estimated bandwith needed for a backup copy or replication job.

http://rps.dewin.me/bandwidth/

Virtual Architect

Another cool tool to estimate the needed infrastructure ressources is the virtual architect. Give some data and input to the tool and you receive as output the estimated amounts of proxies, repositories, recommendations for data streams etc.

http://rps.dewin.me/VirtualArchitect/

What does RTO and RPO mean

These two words you read often when backup and restore is the topic. Let me explain those two words.

RTO

The recovery time objective (RTO) is the targeted duration of time and a service level within which a business process must be restored after a disaster (or disruption) in order to avoid unacceptable consequences associated with a break in business continuity.^[1]

It can include the time for trying to fix the problem without a recovery, the recovery itself, testing, and the communication to the users. Decision time for users representative is not included.

The business continuity timeline usually runs parallel with an incident management timeline and may start at the same, or different, points.

In accepted business continuity planning methodology, the RTO is established during the Business Impact Analysis (BIA) by the owner of a process (usually in conjunction with the business continuity planner). The RTOs are then presented to senior management for acceptance.

Source: en.wikipedia.org

RPO

A recovery point objective, or “RPO”, is defined by business continuity planning. It is the maximum targeted period in which data might be lost from an IT service due to a major incident.^[1] The RPO gives systems designers a limit to work to. For instance, if the RPO is set to four hours, then in practice, off-site mirrored backups must be continuously maintained – a daily off-site backup on tape will not suffice. Care must be taken to avoid two common mistakes around the use and definition of RPO. Firstly, business continuity staff use business impact analysis to determine RPO for each service – RPO is not determined by the existent backup regime. Secondly, when any level of preparation of off-site data is required, rather than at the time the backups are offsited, the period during which data is lost very often starts near the time of the beginning of the work to prepare backups which are eventually offsited.

Source: en.wikipedia.org

Keep this post on your radar. There are some updates from time to time when there is something good to know.

Cheers!

SHARP printers – Remote administration with VNC viewer

6. September 2016 by Karl Widmer

Today i had a typical customer support. A printer does not print. Well, this is nothing spectacular. But wait for the surprise…

With remotesupport i checked all the drivers and printer settings on the print server and compared them also with same type of printers located in other rooms at this customer. I did some testing on the client and we finally found out that in Microsoft Word you can adjust / change the page setup. There you can set different paper trays for the first page and all other pages. Well, i had that in mind first, but as always there could be other things which could cause the problem. So we changed this page setup and did another test, this time successful.

In the time of troubleshooting i was in contact with manufacturer support. The customer is using different SHARP printers. And the technician on the phone told me some stuff i never heard until today.

You can control a printer with VNC viewer. I was astonished.

This is really easy to setup. It can save you as an admin some time and also prevent to go onsite for just doing one quick setting. Also your customer saves some meters walking between computer and printer.

I tested this with two different SHARP printers, an MX3070N and a MX-C301W. The way is nearly the same on both printer models. To setup the remote control you have to point your internet browser to the IP address of the printer and login over the webgui with administrator account.

In “Settings (administrator)”, select [System Settings] => [Common Settings] => [Operation Settings] => [Condition Settings] => [Remote Operation Settings] => [Remote Software Operation] and select [Allow] for [Operational Authority].

With the two models described above i had to provide the IP address of the computer from where i connect via VNC to the printer (usually the print server). So VNC connections are only allowed from this IP address.

Please refer to the correct manual of your printer:

http://siica.sharpusa.com/product-downloads

You can only setup VNC with printers which have actually a display.

Happy VNC-ing 😉

Microsoft Active Directory – Change UPN for all users

19. August 2016 by Karl Widmer

Today i had to change the UPN (User Principal Name) for a whole company. Well, go through each user account in Active Directory, change the UPN the way it has to be, and you’re done. That would be the way if you want to do it manually. And this is a slow way. For sure, if there are only five users or so you’re good to go. But what when there are dozens of user accounts? Perhaps in different organizational units? At the present time, where everything in IT has to be quick and fast and with the least amount of effort, you can do it more clever.

Well, that was some challange to find it out. But as often, Powershell is your friend. With few lines of code, fully customizable, you can change the UPN for all users within an organizational unit. So you will save time, because you just have to change the OU in the script.

The change UPN script

[code language=”powershell”]
Import-Module ActiveDirectory
Get-ADUser -Filter * -SearchBase "OU=lan.driftar.com Users,OU=LAB-Users,DC=lan,DC=driftar,DC=com" | ForEach {
$UpdatedUPN = $_.GivenName + "." + $_.SurName + "@driftar.com"
Set-ADUser $_.samAccountName -UserPrincipalName $UpdatedUPN
}
[/code]

What does the script?

The script searches within the organizational unit specified for the user accounts, combines givenname and surename with the domain prefix, and changes then the UPN for all the user accounts withing this organizational unit. In this example the new User Principal Name for a user will be “givenname.surename@driftar.com” (for example john.doe@driftar.com).

Conclusion

To be honest it was some time needed to search for the right script parameters and test it out, to make sure everything works. But you don’t do that every time. You can save this script and customize it every time for the customer you work for. It’s a quick way to change the UPN, and it’s an easy way to save time.

Veeam Availability Suite – Quick Setup Guide

15. August 2016 by Karl Widmer

Today i was working in my homelab. I installed an availability solution. It was a quick thing, no complex setup and configuration, but a straightforward installation. Even if its “just” my homelab, i want to know that my VMs are safe and secure and that i can see trends about space utilization and other parameters. How do you achieve that? With installing Veeam Availability Suite v9.

Just to clarify, the time to create the screenshots took longer than the actual setup of this availability solution. The setup assistant will guide and help you through the setup, it’s really easy, and after few minutes you are ready to go and take the next steps.

What is Veeam Availability Suite?

With this software suite you receive to main components. First of all you will get the very well known Veeam Backup & Replication. This is the doing-backups-part of this suite. Furthermore you get the second component which is Veeam ONE. With Veeam ONE you will get the monitoring, reporting and capacity planning part of this software suite.

Why not only creating backups?

There is for sure not just one simple answer, but let my try to explain. With Veeam Availability Suite you will ditch your legacy backup solution and get real availability for your servers, your data and your business. Veeam Backup & Replication is used to setup the backup of your virtual infrastructure. Through Veeam ONE you get the whole monitoring, reporting and capacity planning. In a single pane of glass you get instant reports, you can monitor your infrastructure and get some insights in the capacity. With this you will find out some trends (for example when a specific data store runs out of space), even before it actually happens.

How do i install this software?

As i already mentioned it’s a really easy process. The setup assistant will ask you some things, but more or less it’s next, next, finish. For sure you can specify the setup steps and configure other ports as the recommended ones for example. The setup assistant gives you this ability if you want. If you are fine with the standard settings, you can leave them and go on.

The following guide line will show you how easy the setup process is. I did an easy deployment, all stuff centralized on one server because my lab is not that big (at the moment). I will discover the points mentioned above, for example the extended screens of the setup assistant, to cover all your needs.