Tag Archives: Veeam

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Building a Veeam Lab – a recommended architecture

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This blog posts spawns from an interesting discussion between the Veeam Vanguard members on what components are needed to build an effective lab for testing out most of the Veeam features, especially with v10 around the corner. So, I’ve put together something that should hopefully work for this;

I’m not really going to focus on the platform you’ll be running this on, as you should already have some sort of home lab if you are looking to run a Veeam lab, I’d assume.

  • AD and DNS – I’m just going to presume you have this up and running already.
    • If you are trying to cut down your home lab infrastructure, this blog on running PhotonOS as DNS server and NTP server is helpful
  • vSphere Environment
    • Cluster can be as big as you like or already have as your homelab
    • Standalone host for replica’s, or just target one of your existing hosts directly in the replica configuration
  • Hyper-V standalone host
    • Just for running one or two Virtual machines. But if you are a Hyper-v admin, you probably already have a lab you can use.
  • Backup Repository
    • There a few options you can use, but you need to consider where you store your data, if it is on the vSphere environment itself, you may run out of storage fast. An External NAS would be best.

I have wrote a second blog, which covers the testing scenarios that the below architecture covers.

Veeam Lab Architecture

Veeam Components

Veeam Backup and Replication Server:

This is going to be your main virtual machine, and you can multi-home a few components on here, especially if you are not fussed about the performance.

For the database, you should be OK with the built in SQL Express install.

Sizing minimums:

  • 2 vCPU cores, 8 GB RAM, HDD space 60GB (inclusive of Logs, vPowerNFS, VBR software)
  • Recommendations for sizing;
    1 vCPU core (physical or virtual) and 4 GB RAM per 10 concurrently running jobs.

Continue reading Building a Veeam Lab – a recommended architecture →

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Interview – Ian Sanderson talks community and career growth

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The last interview I wrote up was back in 2017, although I’ve made efforts to kick off a continuation of this series, I stalled. I recently went over some of the past interviews and its amazing how in 18 month or so, people’s careers and focuses have changed, never mind the IT industry.

Ian bookSo kicking off the first interview of 2019, I reached out to my friend Ian Sanderson. Ian has 15 years of IT experience under his belt, taking the usual route into the IT industry, “I cut my teeth in the virtualisation world with Hyper-V in 2008, but my focus has been VMware since 2010”, he tells me as we kick off discussing “Ian in his own words.”

Ian and myself became friends and comrades with similar interests due to our activity in the IT community, interactions on twitter soon turned into bumping into one another at events, and catching up over coffee, and late night drinks at vendor community programs.

I ask Ian to define what the IT community means to him, “Community to me is like having an extended family of people who you can bounce ideas off, or call upon for help with other things” he says, “It is not a one way street though. I try my best to give back to people in any way I can help out. It’s really about comradery & helping each other achieve their end goals.”

“The wealth of collective knowledge in the vCommunity honestly amazes me. There is always someone, somewhere who has the solution to a problem you may have.”

So where did it all start for Ian? “My first real interactions with the community kicked off when I became a Veeam Vanguard in 2016. Prior to that I had the odd interaction on twitter and an outdated blog but nothing really significant. Being virtually air dropped into a group of like-minded people who love Veeam really sparked my passion for getting more involved in community events.”

I’m not shocked to find this answer pretty much echos similar answers to others in the IT community. Small steps into twitter; invites to slack groups; and a sense of needing to give back to the community we have all taken so much from. (We’ve all googled for an answer, and ended up at someones personal blog post, finding they have fixed the same issue).

Career progression

It’s no secret that a lot of ambitious IT folk have gone on to do very well in their perspective areas boosted by their work/activity in the IT community. There’s no secret group or handshakes, just purely hard work, a love of technology, and mostly a friendly atmosphere, as Ian equates earlier “Its really about comradery and helping each other achieve their end goals.” Continue reading Interview – Ian Sanderson talks community and career growth →

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First Look – Leveraging the Nimble Secondary Flash Array with Veeam – Setup guide

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Following on with the setup guide of the Nimble Secondary Flash Array, I am going to go through the deployment options, and the settings needed for implementation with Veeam Backup and Replication.

What will be covered in this blog post?

  • Quick overview of the SFA
  • Deployment Options
    • Utilizing features of Veeam with the SFA
    • Using a backup repository LUN
  • Best practices to use as backup repository
    • Veeam Proxy – Direct SAN Access
    • Creating your LUN on the SFA for use as a backup repository
    • Setting up your backup repository in Veeam
    • vPower NFS Service on the mount server
    • Backup Job settings
    • SureBackup / SureReplica
    • Backup Job – Nimble Storage Primary Snapshot – Configure Secondary destinations for this job
    • Encryption – Don’t do it in Veeam!
  • Viewing data reduction savings on the Nimble Secondary Storage
  • Summary

My test lab looks similar to the below diagram provided by Veeam (Benefits of using Nimble SFA with Veeam).

Nimble Storage Veeam Architecture diagram

Quick overview of the SFA

The SFA is essentially the same as the previous Nimble Storage devices before it, the same hardware and software. But with one key difference, the software has been optimized against data reduction and space-saving efficiencies, rather than for performance. Which means you would purchase the Nimble CS/AF range for production workloads, with high IOP performance and low latency. And the SFA would be used for your DR environment, backup solution, providing the same low latency to allow for high-speed recovery, and long-term archival of data.

Deployment options

With the deployment of an SFA, you are looking at roughly the same deployment options as the CS/AF array for use with Veeam (This blog, Veeam Blog). However with the high dedupe expectancy, you are able to store a hell of a lot more data!

So the options are as follows;

  1. iSCSI or FC LUN to your server as a Veeam Backup Repo.
    • Instant VM Recovery
    • Backup Repository
    • SureBackup / SureReplica
    • Virtual Labs
  2. Replication Target for an existing Nimble.
    • Utilizing Veeam Storage Integration
      • Backup VMs from Secondary Storage Snapshot
      • Control Nimble Storage Snapshot schedules and replication of volumes

If we take option one, we open up a few options directly with Veeam. You can use the high IOPs performance and low latency, for features such as Instant VM recovery, where by the Veeam Backup and Replication server hosts an NFS datastore to your virtual environment and spins up a running copy of your recovered virtual machine quickly with little fuss.

Veeam Instant VM Recovery Continue reading First Look – Leveraging the Nimble Secondary Flash Array with Veeam – Setup guide →

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Video Blogs I appeared on at #VeeamON

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Whilst attending VeeamON conference in New Orleans I had the chance to speak on two different video logs, three recordings.

  • Tim Smith – Tim’s Tech Thoughts
  • Dave Kawula MSDN – Channel9 page

First up Ransomware Talk with fellow Veeam Vanguards – Covering the big topic of the week ransomware, as the title states.

Second the first Channel 9 episode

Episode 64 – Interview with Dean Lewis at VeeamON 2017 – Covering what we are looking forward to at the VeeamON conference, the growth and important of Office365.

And then last, a follow up episode on MSDN Channel 9.

Episode 70 – Interview with Dean Lewis at VeeamON 2017 – another chat around Ransomware, Veeam VAO, the importance of documentation and finally things to think about when testing your DR environment and failover plans.

Regards

Dean


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Interview – Dave Kawula – MVP, Consultant, Author

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2017 is kicking off with my third interview blog post, this time focusing on Dave Kawula, MVP and author focusing on Microsoft Technologies. Let’s kick off straight into the interview itself, Dave likes to type! Longest interview yet, but its a great read.

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(Dave is the one on the left, little known fact, but there is more pictures of Dave and Clint Wyckoff together on twitter than Dave and his wife 🙂 )

The interview is split into three area’s of discussion;

  • Life and Worklife
  • Thoughts on the industry
  • Thoughts for those working in IT, and those wanting to work in IT
Lets kick off with a brief introduction of yourself

I’m a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) with over 20 years of experience in the IT industry. My background includes data communications networks within multi-server environments, led architecture teams for virtualization, System Center, Exchange, Active Directory, and Internet gateways. Very active within the Microsoft technical and consulting teams, providing deep-dive technical knowledge and subject matter expertise on various System Center and operating system topics. Continue reading Interview – Dave Kawula – MVP, Consultant, Author →