Autore: gabriele pelizzari

Pubblicato il

VBR & Cloud Business Model – Part 3

This article will cover the topic of license in VCSP scenarios.

Please refer to the official documentation to get more details on it.

The easiest way to explain the license model is by thinking of a basket.

a. What is present in the basket?
It is the container of the licenses. The licenses belong to the Service Provider.

b. What the Service Provider can do with licenses?
It can assign them to his customers (you can call them end-users or tenants).

c. Does the services consume different amounts of licenses?
The cost depends on the supplied service.

The example below will clarify the licensing method; the units I will use to explain the model are apples 🙂
(numbers written here are not real, contact the local Veeam sales representative to have a correct quote).

A Service Provider supplies three types of services to his customers;
DraaS, BaaS, RbcS(Remote Backup Copy Service)

Every single month the Service Provider buys 100 “apples” and put them into the basket.

Let’s suppose that:

1) DraaS consumes 10 apples for VM a month (VM/m)
2) BaaS 4 apples  VM/m
3) RbcS 6 apples VM/m
4) Every tenant has 5 VMs
5) Service Provider customers are: Green – White – Red
6) Green bought DraaS
7) White bought BaaS
8) Red bought RbcS

How can I measure the apple-eating?
With an easy math operation 🙂

Green = 5VM*DraaS = 50 apples
White = 5 VM*BaaS = 20 apples
Red=5VM*BbcS=30 apples

Total = 100 Apples

Note 1: If the Service Provider adds new customers or the present tenants more VMs the Service Provider license can be enlarged on-fly easily contacting the Veeam team.

But, if the license count it’s quite simple with few customers it can be more difficult with hundreds of them.

In aid of of the Service Provider Veeam released a  very useful and powerful software named  Veeam Service Provider Console (VSPC)

What are the common VSPC use cases?

1) Remote monitoring and management
2) Licensing engine and usage reporting
3) Billing
4) Integration and automation (RestFul API)
5) Multi-tenant serviceability

(To have more details please click here)

Picture 1 shows which services can be managed via VSPC.

Picture 1

Please remember that cloud connect is mandatory work with VCSP.

The official guide shows the requirements to work with it:

Note 2: The software provided by Veeam enables any partner to create his own cloud services. To example performing a backup service for workstations and laptops  of employees that working from home (a common scenario in these unlucky last months)

Note 3: To create a price list every single Service provider will have to add all costs of Infrastructure, Managing etc

That’s all for Cloud Modelling.

Pubblicato il

Ciao Scruppy – La mia gatta

Purtroppo oggi 19 settembre 2020, la mia gatta, Scruppy ci ha lasciato.

Erano mesi che soffriva di una patologia non curabile.

Accompagnarla dal veterinario per l’ultimo saluto alla vita è stato difficile, un passaggio obbligato per lenire la sua sofferenza ma che ne ha generata tanta nel mio cuore.

Come ogni gatto aveva un carattere schivo e un po’ ribelle che si è addolcito negli anni.

Dava il meglio di se tra gli alberi ed in particolare quando ferma sul ciliegio o sul fico poteva controllare il mondo dall’alto.

Ma il ricordo per me più bello è legato al quotidiano ritorno a casa dal lavoro.

Scendevo dall’auto e sulla finestra della cucina vedevo la mia gatta che mi dava il bentornato facendosi dolcemente accarezzare salutandomi con delle rumorose fusa

Scruppy, grazie di essere stata parte della mia vita.

G.

Pubblicato il

Check Replica Status – Before deleting it – Part 1

Last month, a partner had to face up a strange VBR behavior.

From the VBR console he deleted a VM’s replica (Picture 1), and suddenly the production VM has been also erased (don’t worry, before doing any activity he tested the backups using sure backup technology).

Picture 1

The reason why it happened become clear to me once I read the logs.

To do it shortly, some weeks before someone started a Failover directly from vCENTER console without doing any communication to the internal IT team.

This article wants to explain how to avoid this common mistake.

The first step is understanding some basic concepts:

a) VMware identify any single VM with a number named MorefID and a UUID.

b) Any single operating system has an identifier named Instance UUID (Universal Unique IDentifier); in my lab, I set-up  more than one replica job for a single VM

Table 1. row 2. shows the name of production VM (Ubuntu-02), its morefID  (vm2270), where it is running (Milan), the UUID (…bcc12) and its VM UUID … f58b.

Table 1. row 3-4 shows the name of  VMs replicas,  morefID, instance UUID and its UUID.

All tables shown in these articles have been created using Veeam One

Name PCName morefID DataCenter Instance UUID UUID
Ubuntu-02 ubuntu-02 vm-2270 Milan 502d2405-cc8f-de73-1a19-57e8496bcc12 564d013a-7835-9d1b-841e-32855790f58b
Ubuntu-02_Rep_VC01 ubuntu-02 vm-2694 Milan 502d2d90-d08f-08aa-efcf-d9feaa1d13f8 564d013a-7835-9d1b-841e-32855790f58b
Ubuntu-02_Rep_VCDR ubuntu-02 vm-399 Venice 501d517b-672e-30e0-665a-fd4b4af7dcb6 564d013a-7835-9d1b-841e-32855790f58b

Table-1

Picture 2 shows the VM  source (highlighted in yellow) from vCENTER console.

Picture 2

After checking up that the VM source is switched off, it’s possible to start a Failover (Picture 3).

Picture 3

The next five pictures show the step-by-step wizard to complete the procedure correctly.  As you can see from picture 4 the VM that has been replicated with two different jobs (Picture 5) is always Ubuntu-02.

Picture 4

Picture 5

Pictures 6-8 show the result of the failover.

Picture 6

Picture 7

Picture 8

What happens when you complete the task with the Permanent failover? (Picture 9/10/11)

Picture 9

Picture 10

Picture 11

First of all, comparing picture 3 with 12 it is possible to see that one of the Replica Ready VM, and precisely the VM in permanent failover, has been deleted.

Picture 12

Picture 13 shows that now the replica job contains 0 objects. The right behavior is confirmed by pictures 14,15,16 and 17  where it is shown that the replica is not available anymore.

Picture 13

Picture 14

Picture 15

Picture 16

Picture 17

The cloning job option didn’t change the correct behavior (Pictures 18 and 19)

Picture 18

Picture 19

Let’s sum up. Following the right procedure, the Failover works as aspected

Now …. why the VM has been deleted? The next article will explain it in detail.

Pubblicato il

Check Replica Status – Before deleting it – Part 2

My previous article explained the procedure to perform a failover from VBR console explaining why it is safe (Click here to read it)

In this second article, I’ll show you what can happen if you try a failover in a different way, answering the behavior that a partner had during a cleanup procedure.

In my lab, I created a new Replica Job where the original VM is still Ubuntu-02 (Picture 1) and the replica VM has the suffix _Rep_vc01-1-1 (Picture 2).

Picture 1

Picture 2

After the VM has been created (Picture 3) It is switched it on directly from the vCENTER console (Picture 4). To be sure it works as expected, it is possible to connect remotely.

Picture 3

Picture 4

Picture 5

Going back to VBR console it’s possible to see that nothing has changed (Picture 6) just because the power-on action has been performed directly from the  VMware console,

Picture 6

Attention point: If you try to perform a replica task it fails because the VM is running (picture 7)

Picture 7

Now the main point of the two articles:

It’s a bad choice to delete VMs from VBR “Ready Replica VM”  menu (picture 8/9) without knowing if the VMs have been started from vCENTER console. Why? Because also the production VM gets deleted as shown in picture 10.

Picture 8

Picture 9

Picture 10

Let’s get a little wild with some supposing:

1. If you see the “active” status icon switched on ( from VBR console) it means the failover is started (picture 11)

Picture 11

2. If a permanent failover was performed, the VM disappears from “Replica Ready” menu and replica job results to be empty (Picture 12)

Picture 12

3. If the replica job works fine it means that no permanent failover has been performed

4. If the replica Job works fine but when clicking on the delete button (from “Replica ready menu” of VBR console) (picture 13) the production VM disappears, it means that a new replica job has been re-created after the manual failover has been launched (picture 14).

Picture 13

Picture 14

Knowing that deleting a VM replicated from VBR console needs a little attention, especially if you do not have the continuous and complete control of the VMware architecture, the question is: is it possible to think an easy checking-up before deleting VM?

The answer is Yes and Veeam One can easily help just creating them.

a. From vCENTER: setting up a report that checks if the VM to be deleted is running (power state status) (Table 1)

b. From VBR: if a Replication job is setted-up for that VM (Table 2)

Table 1

Table2

Is there another way to check it up?

Yes. using Powershell scripts.

The example you can find here below is just the first idea that can be polished with a little bit of your effort.

NB1: I’m not a PowerShell expert, I just love writing scripts easy to read by anyone.

NB2: Before trying it please ask your PowerShell expert a consultant!

NB3: It is meant to be launched from VBR.

NB4: If you think that it can be a feature request write to me!

Table 3

That’s all for now guys!

Pubblicato il

BBO – R-ESTATE 2020 – Considerazioni finali

Aggiornamento 3 Settembre:

La squadra Abbronzatissimi vince con pieno merito la finalissima battendo la il team Dossena.

Complimenti a: Annarita Azzimonti, Fabrizio Conti, Beatrice Delle Coste, Massimo Mandelli, Angelica Mariani, Pierfrancesco Parolaro, Claudio Villani, Giancarlo Zucchini.

——–

Dopo 2 mesi e 1056 board giocati, si è concluso l’ultimo torneo Estivo.

Dobbiamo essere tutti soddisfatti di noi stessi, visto che per la prima volta un  torneo on-line è andato via liscio come l’olio.

L’organizzazione ringraziando  nuovamente i partecipanti, vi augura un buon rientro al vostro circolo di appartenenza.

Vi ricordiamo che il circolo di  Monza (Corso Milano 39) ha riaperto i battenti.

In questo momento solo i soci possono frequentare i tornei settimanali.

La buona notizia è che diventare socio è molto vantaggioso !!!

Contattate Raffaella al 338.5323246 per ricevere tutte le informazioni.

Per verificare lo stato della vostra prenotazione per uno specifico torneo, fate riferimento sempre a questo sito, selezionando la voce  Monza Bridge-Eventi (evidenziato in giallo nell’immagine sottostante).

Pubblicato il

BBO – R-ESTATE 2020 – Classifica finale

P PTS TEAM 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
1 168,72 ABBRONZATISSIMI 15,38 11,48 15,92 15,38 20,00 16,52 20,00 18,66 15,38 12,80 7,20
2 155,07 DOSSENA 17,85 12,31 13,04 13,52 18,33 20,00 10,00 10,00 13,75 7,20 19,07
3 139,81 PATTINO BIANCO 4,62 17,17 2,15 17,72 17,31 8,80 10,00 6,72 17,72 19,16 18,44
4 127,16 FUFI 15,92 12,03 3,58 3,74 1,67 19,43 15,92 13,28 11,48 17,31 12,80
5 118,80 TONNO ROSSO 17,45 16,58 16,42 6,48 2,69 3,48 0,84 16,48 16,58 8,52 13,28
6 116,30 SAPORE-DI-MARE 13,28 7,97 18,33 4,62 7,20 8,80 19,16 10,00 2,28 20,00 4,66
7 114,88 BLUE-SEA 2,15 13,75 17,85 16,26 12,80 2,15 8,24 14,60 4,62 15,74 6,72
8 113,46 PACCHERI 20,00 7,69 4,08 17,31 10,31 11,20 11,76 3,52 8,52 0,00 19,07
9 99,30 SEDIA-A-SDRAIO 4,08 8,52 1,67 2,28 9,69 17,85 12,80 15,00 15,00 11,48 0,93
10 60,12 GARDENIA-BLU 2,55 2,83 6,96 13,52 7,45 11,20 4,08 1,34 5,00 4,26 0,93
11 57,53 PAPERINO 0,00 3,42 12,03 6,48 0,00 0,57 7,20 5,40 6,25 0,84 15,34
12 48,85 IRIS 6,72 6,25 7,97 2,69 12,55 0,00 0,00 5,00 3,42 2,69 1,56