How to automatically remove VMs from backup

It’s been some time since my last blog post in general, and a lot of time has passed since my last Veeam blog post in particular. I just recently stumbled across something in Veeam Backup & Replication that I wanted to share with you. When you check my latest home lab generation (I did a rebuild and also exchanged some coins for refurbished hardware), you can see that there was something going on.

But why am I talking about Veeam Backup & Replication? Well, because I’m using it in the free “Community Edition” for my homelab. And because I still love Veeam. And when I read social media posts like this one, then I get watery eyes.

What is this Community Edition?

With this free gift from Veeam, you can protect up to 10 workloads. No matter if on VMware or Hyper-V, you can protect Windows and Linux servers, laptops, NAS, and more. You can enjoy (more or less) all the awesome features of the Enterprise edition, like:

  • Effective protection for virtual and physical workloads on-premises
  • Restore VMs quickly and get fast granular file and application-item restores with Veeam Explorers for Microsoft applications
  • Create bootable copies of workloads onsite or in offsite locations for migration and disaster recovery
  • Restore and/or migrate on-premises Windows/Linux VMs, physical servers, and endpoints to AWS, Azure, and Azure Stack
  • Verify that backups are free of malware before restoring them to production
  • Simple and powerful file protection of unstructured data through an easy-to-use wizard-driven approach
  • And many things more!

Sure, some really cool stuff is limited to the Enterprise edition (like various storage integrations, etc.). But still, it’s an awesome piece of software that’s free forever (the Community Edition), and fits perfectly for homelabs.

But enough marketing, you know the good stuff anyway. Let’s get back to the topic.

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Synology now with backup for Office 365

Long time no hear, and I’m really sorry for that. It was a busy time, with a new job, huge project and also military duty in between. But now things are calming down, and so do I. And I’ve got some time for a new blog post.

Recently i stumbled across a newsletter from Synology. They now have a backup tool for Office 365 available which is free of costs for 10 users. Extra license packs can be purchased for adding and renewing additional licenses. That doesn’t sound so bad. But wait. Office 365 is in the cloud, doesn’t Microsoft back it up so that I don’t have to worry about? Well, long story short, NO. There is some retention like deleted items and stuff, and you can modify specific settings. But backing up Office 365 data is all in your own responsibility. There are various backup solutions like Veeam Backup for Office 365 which work absolutely great, and also the recently announced solution from Synology which I’m writing about today. Let’s look at it a little closer.

Unfortunately not every Synolgy NAS system is supported, so please have a look at the list here if your devices is on it or not. Lucky me, i bought a new NAS for my vSphere homelab some months ago which fits perfectly for this test setup.

Supported NAS systems

  • 18 series:FS1018, RS3618xs, RS818RP+, RS818+, RS2818RP+, RS2418RP+, RS2418+, DS3018xs, DS418play, DS918+, DS718+, DS218+, DS1618+
  • 17 series:FS3017, FS2017, RS3617xs, RS3617RPxs, RS4017xs+, RS3617xs+, RS18017xs+, DS3617xs, DS1817+, DS1517+
  • 16 series:RS2416RP+, RS2416+, RS18016xs+, DS416play, DS916+, DS716+II, DS716+, DS216+II, DS216+
  • 15 series:RS815RP+, RS815+, RC18015xs+, DS3615xs, DS415+, DS2415+, DS1815+, DS1515+
  • 14 series:RS3614xs, RS3614RPxs, RS814RP+, RS814+, RS3614xs+, RS2414RP+, RS2414+
  • 13 series:RS3413xs+, RS10613xs+, DS713+, DS2413+, DS1813+, DS1513+
  • 12 series:RS3412xs, RS3412RPxs, RS812RP+, RS812+, RS2212RP+, RS2212+, DS3612xs, DS712+, DS412+, DS1812+, DS1512+
  • 11 series:RS3411xs, RS3411RPxs, RS2211RP+, RS2211+, DS3611xs, DS411+II, DS411+, DS2411+, DS1511+

More information about Active Backup for Office 365

Synology has plenty of information about Active Backup for Office 365 on their website.

Some of the features:

  • Protection of mail, calendar, contacts, OneDrive
  • With Active Backup for Office 365 Portal enabled, both employees and admins can easily locate items for restoration and restore/export them with simple clicks
  • Mail/calendar attachments (if stored in Btrfs volumes) and OneDrive files that contain identical content will only be stored to Synology NAS once, which saves storage space
  • Files stored in Btrfs volumes on Synology NAS can be deduplicated with previous versions, minimizing the storage space required

But now let’s talk tech and let’s dive into the setup and configuration of Active Backup for Office 365.

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Veeam – Prepare yourself and your infrastructure against Ransomware

A little more than a week ago a new ransomware called WannaCry hit various computers and IT systems, private persons and businesses, all around the world. More than 200’000 computers in up to 150 countries, experts say. That’s a lot. It happend fast. And this ransomware created also some serious damage.

ransomware

Yes, the red marked countries are those affected by WannaCry…

(Image by Wikimedia Commons)

Ransomware preparedness and recovery

Not only firewall, even hardware appliances or software firewalls on your computers, should be installed, but also a decent antivirus and anti-malware scanner should be in place. Obviously with daily updates and new signatures at least.

But when desaster strikes, it’s probably to late to update your security systems. The digital pest is on your system, somehow it made it’s way through various security barriers. Probably through security flaws, undetected by any antivirus or firewall, via mail, drive-by downloads or what not. What can you make then? Glad you have a backup of your systems and your data! Oh, did i mention to air-gap your backups? It doesn’t help when you’ve got ransomware-encrypted backup. The air-gap becomes more and more popular, not only for private users but also for big companies.

To have a 1TB external USB drive with your data, which is safely ejected after successful backup (Veeam Agent for Windows FREE does that), is ideal for your home computer, or your laptop. And absolutely recommended to do so. But imagine your 20 or more terabytes in your office? All your virtual (and physical) servers? Mail data? SharePoint and so on?

Veeam recently released some blog posts and white papers about ransomware topics. I’d like to share those valuable bits and bytes and ressources with you.

White paper

Rick Vanouver, Director of Technical Product Marketing at Veeam, created a white paper with the name “Designing Veeam Availability Suite to Protect Against Ransomware Threats”. Get your copy here:

https://www.veeam.com/wp-veeam-availability-suite-protection-against-ransomware-threats.html

…and learn more about:

  • Offline storage, the most effective ransomware resiliency technique
  • Using different credentials for backup repositories
  • The need to have more types of restore points that are more frequent

Blog post

But Rick created not only the white paper but also a comprehensive blog post about “Ransomware resiliency & Availability: The endpoint is a great place to start” which is available here.

This blog posts shows you how you can use both Veeam Agent for Linux and Veeam Agent for Windows in your environment. It doesn’t matter whether it’s installed on a server or a computer, Veeam Agent for Linux and Windows are two pieces of software which are tightly integrated into the Veeam Availability Suite yet, and will be even tighter integrated into the next version 10 of Veeam Availability Suite.

At this point I would also like to refer to the early tipps for some of the early attacks and some practical tipps when using Veeam Backup & Replication.

E-Book

Last but not least, Veeam and Conversational Geek are offering a free e-book about the above topic. This e-book not only gives you an insight into the ransomware threat, but also reviews the fundamentals of top notch ransomware preparedness and recovery, in order to help you protect yourself and your organization.

Download it here:

https://go.veeam.com/ransomware-awareness-education

Learn more about:

  • Ransomware milestones, key capabilities and impact
  • Key layers of ransomware protection and preparedness against attacks
  • Quick and painless recovery from backups
  • And much more!

 

Veeam – FREE Cloud Backup and DR Services

cloud backup

You’ve heard probably about a similar offering from Veeam a few months ago, but limited to the US market. Now Veeam is offering FREE cloud backup services for customers also in the EMEA region! Yes, FREE! Veeam and its Cloud & Service Providers are giving away up to US $ 200’000’000 in Cloud Connect services.

Ensure the 3-2-1 backup role with one copy of your data off-site. Keep your data and your services available! With Veeam Cloud Connect you’ve got a simple and easy to set up cloud backup and DR solution.

More information about the Veeam cloud backup offer

Click the link to access the registration site and get your unique activation code.

https://go.veeam.com/promo-free-cloud-services-emea

LIMITED TIME OFFER – ENDS JUNE 30

You are eligible to receive up to the amount of $1,000 in your local currency.

How to get Cloud Connect services for FREE

Veeam – Customize your Backup & Replication Console

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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