Backup & Replication

Veeam – Probably not well known features: Quick Backup

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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).

Veeam – Customize your Backup & Replication Console

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console

Recently i had an “issue” in Veeam Backup & Replication. When i installed the upgrade from Backup & Replication 9.0 to 9.5 it suddenly happened that my console was buggy. The ribbon bar with all all the functions was gone. Well, not really gone, but no more visible. I had to click the menu items to get the ribbon bar back. And after clicking the menu item the ribbon bar disappeared again.

I thought that this has to be an error or bug. So i started with troubleshooting. I reinstalled Veeam Backup & Replication to make sure the installation was good and complete. But that didn’t solve this “issue”. When i was out of ideas i talked to the Twitter community if there is anyone out there which has got an idea on this behaviour, which still seemed to me as a bug or error. But i was wrong. Anton Gostev figured out that there might be the chance that i just accidentally clicked, or in this case misclicked somewhere, so that the ribbon bar will disappear. That brought me to the solution. And to this blog post about customizing your Veeam Backup & Replication console. Thanks Gostev 🙂

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Veeam – Installing Update 1 for Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

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update 1 for veeam backup

First of all: Yes, after installing Update 1 for Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 you can move on and upgrade to the latest vSphere version. Veeam does now support vSphere 6.5. Why does this guy write a blog post about a simple update you may think. Well, because i can and because probably all most Veeam users waited to upgrade to the latest vSphere version until Veeam releases Update 1.

VMware announced vSphere 6.5 last year at VMworld Europe in Barcelona. This new version comes with plenty of new features (like VM encryption, vCenter Server appliance with integrated update manager etc.) Unfortunately there was no support through Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 at this time. So it took a while for the programmers and coders to create an update for Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 and also for testing this new update against the new vSphere version.

Since the 20th of January the new Update 1 for Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 is now available via Veeam Knowledge Base. This post will be updated when it’s available in the regular download section.

You know it from other Veeam updates, it’s easy as pie. Just few clicks and some minutes later the update is installed. Even if the setup assistant does not prompt for a restart, it’s not a bad idea to do so. During the update installation the Veeam services will be stopped and files are being replaced and updated. So a restart is not a bad idea at all.

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Veeam – Configure Azure Direct Restore with Veeam 9.5

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Azure

Since the direct restore to Azure was announced with Veeam version 9.5 i wanted to test that and to get some hands on. But there is always either lacking of time or Murphy, which both are against me. This week I’ve been digging into this topic. I wanted to create a working configuration for a direct restore to Azure. Let me tell you this fairy tale…

I’m not completely new to cloud computing at all. I did some first steps with Amazon AWS and my first website, i tried out Microsoft Azure when it was relatively new, and i had also some tryouts with VMware vCloud Air. But all was just for testing, looking how that stuff works. No big deal at all. Now with Veeam version 9.5 this new feature called “Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure” comes in handy.

Before you try to just configure the direct restore in Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 there are some requirements you have to fulfill, otherwise you will do many of the setup assistants twice or more (like i had to do because i didn’t know what exactly are the requirements).

Requirements

  • Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5
    • Supported in Standard, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus
  • Microsoft Azure Account
    • Pay-as-you-go or any other subscription based account
  • Azure Storage (blob or general storage)
  • Azure Virtual Network

Hint: if you organize all of this stuff above in the same ressource group on Azure you will have a better overview (at least then if you are already a heavy Azure user and if you’ve got lots of things on your Azure dashboard).

With this basics above configured we are ready to set the things up in Veeam Backup & Replication.

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