Veeam Archivi — Page 4 of 4 — Gabriele Pelizzari

24 September 20208 January 2022

VBR & Cloud Business Model – Part 2

In the previous article, I wrote a small pill about vCloud Director.

Today I’m going to expand the Business model that can be deployed through this great VMware technology.

Picture 1 shows the main components (VBR, Repository, Enterprise Manager and vCloud Director) mandatory to provide services.

As usual please refer to official guides to deploy correctly the Veeam technologies.

Picture 1

On the corners of the above picture, it’s possible to observe two funny images. The scope of those pictures is to show the services that the Serice Provider can sell: Managed, and un-managed.

Let’s start !!!!

a) Managed Service: Backup as a service on vCloud Director

In this scenario, the service provider will install VBR components and it will take care of all the backup and restore activities.

The tenant will open a ticket to Service Provider for asking backup policies changes and for restore tasks.

b) Un-managed Service: Backup as a Service vCloud Director

Tasks and responsibilities:

SP administrator (backup for vDC):

- - - Deploying the backup end architecture (VBR, Repository)
    - Defines templates for Backup jobs of the tenants (by selecting Repository and Quota) (picture 2)
    - If necessary apply schedule restrictions (picture 3)

Tenant Administrator (by Enterprise Manager):
Tenant through his vCD credentials can:

- - Create new backup jobs based on templates
  - Edit / Delete / Enable / Disable Jobs
  - Start, stop, restart jobs
  - View backup statistics
  - Restore VMs and vApps
  - Restore the VM guest files
  - Restore SQL Server and Oracle objects

Picture 2

Picture 3

That’s all for today folks.

The next article will show you all about licensing

28 September 20208 January 2022

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.

26 July 202012 January 2023

Veeam Backup & Replication – Agent Licensing

Today I’m covering how to enable VBR to use VUL licensing to backup Physical Machines (they could be server or workstation both)

If you need more details to understand better the implementation scenarios please refer to the three articles I already wrote

Veeam Agent Part 1 Veeam Agent Part 2 Veeam Agent Part 3

As many of you already know it is possible to work with the free Veeam Agent version and a paid VBR version.

The only thing that this architecture allows is using the VBR repositories as a global backup container.

What customers forget is that you can’t have a mixed infrastructure composed of free and paid agents.

Let’s see an example:

An end-user with already 10 VBR sockets license has a new project to protect 30 workstations and he wants to use Veeam agent Free.

The end-user just has to install and set up on every single workstation the free agent to write backup data to VBR repository.

From VBR version 9.5.u4, Veeam is gifting 1 VUL license for every socket customer bought (up to 6 sockets). In our example it means the end-user can protect up to 6 Physical Server or 18 Workstation (1 Vul x 3 Workstation) for free or a mixed architecture.

What happens if you enable VBR to assign the gifted license from your VBR server?

First thing how to enable it? The next three pictures (Picture 1, 2 and 3) explain how to perform it

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

From now on VBR will use the agent license up to consuming them.

In our example, the end-user will protect 18 Workstations but the last 12 will be out from the backup procedure.

Which is the solution?

Easy one, just Buying a new license pack.

Why you should have to buy new licenses?

There are at least three good reasons:

a) It is possible to manage your workstation architecture directly from VBR console.
b) There are more restore options.
c) Veeam support.

Gems:

1) One of the good news about the licensing of VBR v.10 is that from now on the license bought will be added to the gifted one. It means that you buy just a VUL packet (10 Vul) and have a total of 16 licenses.

2) If you have two license files (the first for VBR, the second for Veeam Agent) you have to merge them in just one license file.

The License rule and the procedure are available reading the following links https://www.veeam.com/kb3085 (rule) https://www.veeam.com/kb3116 (procedure)

3) Is there a turnback procedure?

Yes, please refer to the following KB https://www.veeam.com/kb2235 and contact Veeam’s support.

To Remember:

4) It’s not possible to protect VM with sockets and VUL license. It means that sockets license has the priority to protect VM with respect to VUL.

https://www.veeam.com/it/availability-suite-faq.html

5) Product comparison edition

https://www.veeam.com/it/products-edition-comparison.html

Take care

29 May 20208 January 2022

VEEAM AGENT FOR WINDOWS – REMOTE COPYING DATA – 1

In the last weeks, I’ve been requested to understand how to set up a strategy of remoting Backup Data when the source is a Veeam Agent.

The answer is not just the “Use the backup copy job” option because it can be used in one of three scenarios I’m going to cover in the next three articles.

So, let’s move fast forward

My Lab Environment is composed of VBR + 2 Windows 10 Physical Laptops

I do not cover the first part regarding how to create a protection group. There is more than one online guide that explains how to add a protection group to VBR.

My two suggestions are:

Check if the Firewall ports are correctly open (click here)
Check on Laptop if Admin share (c$) is available.

If the second point failed just follow this simple procedure. Launch a cmd as administrator and write the following command:

REG ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\system /v LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Scenario 1: VBR as central Manager – VAW configurated as Server

Let’s see how to configure a primary VAW backup Job

From the wizard select Windows Computer as shown in picture 1

Picture 1

from the Job Mode Select Server (Picture 2)

Picture 2

Now add the Backup Job name and follow the simple wizard (Pictures 3 to 9)

Picture 3

Picture 4

Picture 5

Picture 6

Picture 7

Picture 8

Picture 9

Now you can check if the backup up has been completed correctly (Picture 10)

Picture 10

Now it’s time to configure a Backup Copy job and run it (Pictures 11 to 16)

Picture 11

Picture 12

Picture 13

Picture 14

Picture 15

Picture 16

Now you can see different restore points on disks (Pictures 17 to 19)

Picture 17

Picture 18

The last step is watching how many licenses have been used

Picture 19

In the next article, we are going to see what will change if we work on the “select mode” option.

30 May 202012 January 2023

VEEAM AGENT FOR WINDOWS – REMOTE COPYING DATA – 2

In this second article, we are going to cover what happens if we set up a VAW backup job working “managed by agent”.

Let’s see the main differences from the wizard (to know all the procedure please refer to the official guide or to my previous article)

Picture 1

Before going on, have a look at the manual to understand what happens in this scenario:

helpcenter.veeam.com (click here)

“Veeam Backup & Replication uses the backup policy as a saved template and applies settings from the backup policy to Veeam Agents that run on computers specified in the backup policy”.

In other words, the policies are pushed to the VAW; So the laptop is able to protect its data even without a VBR start command.

Ok, following the wizard, input a backup name and select the Laptop to protect (Pictures 2 and 3)

Picture 2

Picture 3

After selecting Target and Repository it’s possible to complete the job creation (Pictures 4,5 and 6).

Picture 4

Picture 5

Picture 6

Now check if the backup policies are correctly applied and then launch the backup job (Pictures 7,8,9,10)

Picture 6

Picture 7

Picture 8

Picture 9

Picture 10

Checkpoint:

If you now try to create a backup copy job from the VBR console, you will find a problem because it is not available if you are going to select Periodic Copy (Immediate copy is available from version 11 of VBR)

Why?

Because in this scenario the policy commands the backup process. It’s like saying the Agent is the master of the backup.

How to go over?

Just select Immediate copy or
Add a new backup policy !” (Pictures 11 to 14)

Picture 11

To know: if you use a remote desktop and connect to your saved laptop, you can find the Veeam icons. When you click on them you get the classic interface (as standalone installation)

Picture 12

To Remember: from here you can not add a new job. You always have to set it up from the VBR console:

Picture 13

And the last thing? What about licensing? It consumes a single VUL

Picture 14

Wrap-up:

If you need to have more than a copy, just create a new policy backup. My two cents are:
a) Use a forever forward incremental chain.
b) The repository should have a block cloning technology as ReFS/ XFS.
If you plan to use a Backup copy job you have to configure the Agent as managed by the backup server or on the backup copy job select the immediate copy job.
Licensing does not have any impact, it always uses a VUL license.

The next and last article will cover the workstation backup approach. See you soon

31 May 20208 January 2022

VEEAM AGENT FOR WINDOWS/LINUX – REMOTE COPYING DATA – 3

Today I’m going to cover what’s happening if you set the protection policy up as a workstation.

In this article, I’m covering the Veeam Agent for Linux (VAL) also, to widen the range of my site and answer friends asking me to talk about their workstation based on Ubuntu.

After creating the protection group (please refer to the previous articles), let’s create a new job and set it up as a workstation job (image 1)

Image 1

Now add the laptop (ubuntu2 in my case) and follow the wizard pointing as repository the VBR server (image 2-5).

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Image 5

After completing the task, check that the configuration has been rightly applied to the laptop and then launch the first backup (image 6).

image 6

Now it’s time to connect via SSH to the Linux laptop and lunch the command Veeam as root (image 7)

Image 7

it shows your backup status (image 8)

Image 8

and from here you can lunch the same job another time (image 9)

Image 9

But what happens if you try to add a new backup from this interface? As previously in Windows case, it is not allowed, because it is managed by VBR.

A good step is to check that the license work in workstation-mode (image 10)

Image 10

But if you remember well, my first goal was having a backup outside the primary site.

I already wrote in my last article (VEEAM AGENT FOR WINDOWS/LINUX – REMOTE COPYING DATA – 2 ) how to set up a new backup job from the VBR console (I’m pretty sure you are now ready to do it without any help) (image 11 – 15)

Image 11

Image 12

Image 13

Image 14

After applying the configuration let’s start the Backup job

Image 15

This is what happens, It FAILED !!! (image 16)

Image 16

Why?

The answer is inside the workstation limitation that you can find on the following Veeam web page (Veeam Edition comparison).

It is clearly written that if you use the agent as a workstation, you can perform the second/third backup job just writing backup data to a Cloud repository?

Veeam Agent uses case summary:

Backup Type	Managed by	BCJ	+ Backup Job to + destinations	1+Backup CC	VUL
Server	VBR	Y	Y	Y	1
Server	Agent	N	Y	Y	1
Workstation	Agent	Y (immediate copy)	N	Y	1/3

	1+ Backup	1+Backup CC	VUL
Server	Y	Y	1
Workstation	N	Y	1/3

I hope the article series will help to set up correctly your environment.

Take care