Enterprise Manager – Delegation of Restores

An article devoted to how you can delegate restores with Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR).

The case study is related to the protection of files in shared folders, but can be extended to many of the objects protected with VBR. (see image 7)

  1. Image 1 shows the three shared network folders (SHARE-A, SHARE-B, SHARE-C) that are used as the source of the files to be protected.

share-sourcePicture 1

In the scenario, it is assumed that for each individual shared folder, only a specific user can proceed with the recovery tasks.

  1. Image 2 highlights the creation of three Domain users, ShareA, ShareB, ShareC.

users-ADpicture 2

Files pertaining to a specific shared folder will be restorable by the user with the identical ending letter in the name. For example, files pertaining to SHARE-A will be restorable by the ShareA user.

(
Editor’s note: For simplicity of exposition, the letter X will replace one of the three letters of the alphabet A-B-C)

  1. A Backup job named “BkF-Share-X” was created for each shared folder.

Image 3 shows that the “BKF-Share-A” job (orange arrow) protects the entire SHARE-A (Blue arrow).

Picture 3

  1. Image 4 highlights the “configuration” menu from the Enterprise Manager.

Administration credentials are required at this configuration stage.

Picture 4

  1. From the submenu
    role
    (image 5 – orange arrow) the three previously created users (ShareX) are added (green arrow) and assigned the role of Restore Operator (blue arrow).

rolePicture 5

  1. Image 6 shows the delegation options.

The ShareA user (green arrow) is assigned the ability to restore all VBR-protected objects via the “Choose” button (orange arrow); in the restore options, only in-place restoration can be allowed (blue arrow).

The next images (7-8) show how to make the choice of objects to be displayed during the restoration delegation operations.

role-1Picture 6

scopeimage 7

role-2Image 8

  1. Image 9 illustrates and confirms that when logged in from the Enterprise Manager with ShareX user credentials (Blue arrow), only files in the corresponding shared folder (orange arrow) are visible and restorable.

ProxyImage 9

Final Note:

MySQL Backup & Veeam Backup & Replication Parte 2

In questo secondo articolo è illustrato dove ricercare gli script per realizzare backup consistenti di DataBase MySQL con Veeam Backup & Replication.

Per scoprire perché sia necessario utilizzare script, vi raccomando di leggere il precedente articolo.

Hot Backup Database Online Dump (Linux)

L’opzione prevede di integrare negli script il comando mysqldump.

Due esempi sono consultabili al seguente sito:

HotBackup Database Freeze (Linux)

L’opzione prevede di effettuare a caldo il flush delle tabelle.

Due esempi sono consultabili al seguente sito:

Cold Backup Database Shutdown (Linux)

L’opzione prevede di fermare il servizion MySQL prima di realizzare il backup.

Due esempi sono consultabili al seguente sito:

Hot Backup Database Online Dump (Windows)

Il seguente esempio in poweshell è puramente dimostrativo. Il mio consiglio è quello di chiedere al vostro esperto in powershell di crearne uno che rispetti le politiche aziendali di gestione e sicurezza.

Pre command (avvia lo script mySQLdump.ps1 sul server YOURMYSQLSERVER)

$password = ConvertTo-SecureString “YOURPWD” -AsPlainText -Force

$Cred = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential (“DOMAIN\USER”, $password)

New-PSSession -ComputerName mySQL-WIN -Credential $Cred

#Enter-PSSession -ComputerName YOURMYSQLSERVER

#Invoke-Command -Session 6 -FilePath “C:\Script\script-7.ps1” -ComputerName mySQL-WIN

Invoke-Command -ComputerName mySQL-WIN -Credential $Cred -ScriptBlock { C:\Script\mySQLdump.ps1}

mySQLdump.ps1 (Crea il file .sql che viene memorizzato in una specifica cartella sul server YOURMYSQLSERVER)

# Declare variables

$path = “/backups”                      # path of backup folder

$logFile = “automate-mysqldump.log”     # path of log file

$configFile = “C:\ProgramData\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.6\my.ini”           # path of my.cnf file

# Navigate to the backups folder

Set-Location $path

# get today’s date to name today backup folder

$date = Get-Date -UFormat “%Y-%m-%d”

# Check for log file

# Create if not found

if (-NOT (Test-Path $logFile)) {

    New-Item -Path . -Name $logFile -ItemType “file”

    Add-Content $logFile “Created on: $date`n”

}

# enter directory

# create today’s backup directory if it does not exist

if (-NOT (Test-Path $date)) {

    New-Item -ItemType “directory” $date

    Add-Content $logFile “[$date]: New $date directory is created”

}

# Set-Location $date

Add-Content $logFile “[$date]: Starting mysqldump”

# invoke mysqldump – insert mysqldump statement

mysqldump –defaults-file=$configFile -r $date/database-backup.sql –all-databases

Add-Content $logFile “[$date]: Backup for databases are completed”

Add-Content $logFile “”

# pause

 Post command (chiude la sessione remota)

Remove-PSSession -ComputerName YOURMYSQLSERVER

Nel prossimo articolo sarà illustrato come integrare gli script in Veeam Backup & Replication.

Veeam Backup & Replication: License count

Starting July 1, 2022, the sale of perpetual per-socket licenses of Veeam Backup & Replication ™, Veeam Availability Suite ™, Veeam Backup Essentials ™, and Veeam ONE ™ will cease to both new and existing customers.

The products currently in operation will continue to work but it will not be possible to purchase new Socket licenses to upgrade.

The licenses that can be purchased and available are the Veeam Universal Licenses (VUL) which use the single workload as the unit of measure.

The most important advantages of the VUL model can be summarized in:

  1. Ability to protect any supported workload (such as instances in AWS, Azure, and GCP) and not just VMware and Hyper-V virtual machines.
  2. Freedom to move licenses as needed between all supported workloads.

Note 1 : Each instance can be used to protect 500 GB source data of a NAS

Note 2: Let’s take an example to simplify the count: let’s assume we need to protect an environment made of 50 Hyper-V VMs, 30 instances in Azure (or in Aws or in GCP), 10 physical servers, and 5 TB of data.

The total number of instances is the algebraic sum of:

a. 50 (VM-HV) + 30 (Azure) + 10 (Server) + 10 (NAS) = 100 instances = 10 VUL

If 20 Hyper-V VMs will be migrated to Azure, the count changes to

b. 30 + 50 + 10 + 10 = 100 instances = 10 VUL

As you can see, the total number of instances does not change.

The good news is that Veeam has a plan available to help customers migrate their licenses.

Your Veeam Sales Representative will be able to advise you on the best options available.

Note 3 : In this scenario it is essential to provide the Veeam contact with the log files.

The one that describes the licenses used is called VMC.log

See you soon

VBR – Mac Backup

Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR) version 11 has a new feature and Mac users will fall in love with it.

It is now available for the backup and restores of your MACOS files.

It supports the last Operating Systems starting from High-Sierra (Big Sur 11.X.X / Catalina 10.15.X / Mojave 10.14.X / High Sierra 10.13.6).

Note 1: The Veeam Agent for Mac (VAM) version 1 supports the M1 processor via Rosetta.

Note 2: The VAM supports consistent data backup with snapshots for the APFS file system.

In the other file systems, the backup is created via a snapshot-less approach.

Note 3: At the moment it’s possible to perform the backup of user data (with a custom scope too). The image of the entire machine and a Bare Metal Restore are not available yet.

The configuration steps are quite easy as shown in the official guide:

To recap, the procedure consists of:

  1. From the VBR console create a resource group using a flexible scope
  2. Copy the files generated from VBR to the MAC to protect
  3. Install the package to your machine and import the created configuration. (It allows the communication between VBR and the Mac)
  4. From the VBR console creating the backup policy and apply it

The following video shows how it works in a managed VBR architecture.

Take care and see you soon.

VDrO v.4 – Run a DR plan

This is the last article about how to integrate the Continuous Data Protection (CDP)  technology (available from VBR v.11) and VDrO v.4 (former VAO).

In this part, we are going to see what happens when an orchestration plan is launched.

Yes, I wrote the word “see” because I created a short video showing the tasks that are automatically completed when a Disaster Recovery is occurring.

If you need more details about how to set up the environment, please read the previous articles.

Let me know if videos and youtube platform are a good way to expose technological valuable topics.

Thx for reading and watching and take care

VBR – Proxy linux server UUID

When a Linux VM is added to Veeam console as a Proxy Server,  you can fall out in the error shown in picture 1

Picture 1

The reason for this behavior is that the default VM config does not allow another software to see the UUID of the VM.

What is UUID?

It’s the unique identifier used to uniquely identify partitions in Linux operating systems.

Why is it important to use it?

A backup where the proxy is a Linux VM only works with virtual appliance transport mode. It uses the VMware hot add capability.

Easier: when a job starts, the proxy Linux mounts the disks of the VM that have to be processed and then send a copy of data to the Veeam Repository.

If the backup server knows which are the proxy disks it can process the others easily and without errors.

The result is that it’s mandatory to set it up correctly as shown in the user guide and in Veeam forum

Note 1: the Linux command to show UUID is blkid

To address the issue just switch off the VM and, from vCENTER Console, follow the procedure showed in the next 4 pictures highlighted in yellow.

Picture 2

Picture 3

Picture 4

Picture 5

That’s all folks