Tag Archives: Veeam

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First look at Veeam 9.5 & Nimble Storage Integration – Part 2

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This is a continuation piece regarding the integration of Nimble Storage to the Veeam Backup & Replication software in the upcoming release 9.5.

Part 1

  • So what does the integration give us?
  • The test environment
  • Adding the Nimble Storage Array into Veeam
    • Configuration
    • Nimble Audit Logs

Part 2

  • Now we’ve added the Nimble Storage Array
  • What can we do with Snapshots?
    • Controlling Nimble Storage  snapshots and restoring files from the Veeam console
    • Backing up a Virtual Machine from a Nimble Snapshot
    • Backing up a Virtual machine to a Nimble Snapshot (Snapshot-only Job)
    • Replicating a Virtual Machine from a Nimble Snapshot
  • SureBackup from Nimble Snapshots

Following on from part one of this first look two part blog series, where we added the Nimble Storage Arrays into the Veeam software, we continue to see how this integration piece works.

Now we have added the Nimble Storage Array

So before we get started, we can now see the datastores of the Nimble Storage Array, and the snapshots of each datastore. In the second screenshot, we can see the enumeration of VMware virtual machines and which host they are were attached to.

Adding Nimble Storage to Veeam - Storage Infrastructure - Nimble Array and SnapshotsAdding Nimble Storage to Veeam - Storage Infrastructure - Nimble Array and Snapshots 02

Controlling Nimble Storage  snapshots

Continue reading First look at Veeam 9.5 & Nimble Storage Integration – Part 2 →

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First look at Veeam 9.5 & Nimble Storage Integration – Part 1

Storage, Veeam, , , ,

As a part of the Veeam Vanguard program, I have been given access to the beta version of Veeam 9.5. And in this blog post I will cover some of the integration components between Nimble Storage and Veeam, announced by Veeam back in April. If you have been following the Veeam forums, then you’ll know that there is a very active post where the forum users are all pitching in which storage vendor they think should be next to get integration.

Note: This blog post content is created from a beta version of Veeam 9.5, any features, dialog boxes, names and such are subject to change before the final public release.

What I’ll be covering in these series of blog posts;

Part 1

  • So what does the integration give us?
  • The test environment
  • Adding the Nimble Storage Array into Veeam
    • Configuration
    • Nimble Audit Logs

Part 2

  • Now we’ve added the Nimble Storage array
  • What can we do with Snapshots?
    • Controlling Nimble Storage  snapshots and restoring files from the Veeam console
    • Backing up a Virtual Machine from a Nimble Snapshot
    • Backing up a Virtual machine to a Nimble Snapshot
    • Replicating a Virtual Machine from a Nimble Snapshot
  • SureBackup from Nimble Snapshots
So what does the integration give us?

I think the below extract from this article by Clint Wyckoff sums it up best.

Veeam's advanced integration with Nimble Storage provides additional protection and recovery options that are not available without direct integration and joint development efforts that provide the ability to:

    - Schedule the creation of Nimble storage snapshots containing application-consistent VM images, and storage snapshot replication orchestration.

    - Restore from Nimble storage snapshots or their Replicated Copies (entire VM, guest files and application items)

    - Backup from Nimble storage snapshots or their Replicated Copies.

The only other company to have this kind of integration is NetApp, showing this high regards Nimble Storage are held in from Veeam. But also showing that Nimble Storage has been a dedicated partner working with Veeam over the past few years, and its paying off with this integration offering.

Veeam and Nimble Storage Integration - Feature comparison table

The test environment

Luckily for me, Veeam have produced a reference architecture diagram which pretty much describes the test environment used in this preview blog post. In this environment there will be no Tape nor cloud connect components.

Veeam-Nimble-Storage-Integration-Topology

Adding the Nimble Storage Array into Veeam 9.5

Continue reading First look at Veeam 9.5 & Nimble Storage Integration – Part 1 →

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How to produce good documentation – Part 5 – Diagraming your (Veeam) Backups

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So it’s just been a little over a year since Part 4 of my how to document series was posted. I hoped to keep adding to the series, but at the same time, only do it when I felt I had relevant content to share. So this post is to show how I have documented some recent backup configurations. Note: I mainly work with Veeam, but hopefully this will give you idea’s of how to present the setup of your other backup software

Below are the previous posts;

The challenge

Note: The Visio file for these examples can be found at the end of the blog post.

Your backups evolve over time, as does your environment. Your backup schedules become more complex, and its hard to remember, what does what.

As past of my job, I setup backup solutions for customers, and then have the task of documenting how they are setup. I used to do this in a table format. It was quite simple

  • Backup/replication job name
    • Services backed up
    • Job settings
      • Storage/environment used

When you have a number of backup jobs, you have a lot of jobs and information to dig through. Its not user friendly.

Veeam backup job settings table 1 Veeam backup job settings table 2

So I re-visualised the way to present the data, I still have the detailed tables, however I also have three Visio diagrams

  • Backup Architecture setup
  • Backup and Replication jobs – Servers/services included
  • Backup and Replication job settings – high level

Continue reading How to produce good documentation – Part 5 – Diagraming your (Veeam) Backups →

Veeam Availability Suite v9

Veeam v9 Backup and replication / ONE upgrade from v8

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This is just a quick post showing the upgrade process of

  • Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager
  • Veeam Backup and Replication
  • Veeam ONE

I didn’t hit any issues with the upgrades.

  • It’s always a good idea to reboot your servers before any update

And plan for further updates once the Veeam upgrades have completed as well.

Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager

  • I had to install .Net Framework 4.5.2 to continue the upgrade, which required a reboot
  • I upgraded from v8.0.0.817 (so not the latest patch)
  • I was asked to confirm the SQL Database upgrade
  • The server needed rebooting at the end of the upgrade

1 - Veeam Backup and Replication Installer Spash2 - Veeam install pre-req Continue reading Veeam v9 Backup and replication / ONE upgrade from v8 →

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Further ESXi 6.0 CBT bug info – Reset your CBT!!!

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Following on from the recent (November 2015) ESXi 6.0 CBT bug, which has now been fixed in the latest released patch ESXi600-201511401-BG, some further information has come to light, provided by Anton Gostev, of Veeam.

You can read the snippet of important information from the Veeam forum post following the issue (Official Veeam KB2075);

All, we have completed the first day of testing in the same exact lab and using the same heavy write I/O test that made the original issue easily reproducible. After a few TB of increments, the above-mention patch appears to fully resolve the original issue when installed on ESX 6.0 Update 1a build 3073146.

However, we found that simply installing the patch is not sufficient, and CBT reset is required for all of your VMs. This is because existing CBT map files may contain issues created earlier due to the original bug, which may result in inconsistent full backups in future. Having CBT reset will also force the following job run use "full scan" incremental pass, thus fixing any existing inconsistencies in backups and replicas, as discussed earlier in this topic.

Provided CBT reset has been performed, Active Full backups is not required.

Performing Active Full backups by itself cannot be considered as a substitute to CBT reset with this particular CBT issue.

Thanks!

You can either follow the CBT Reset instructions from Veeam or look over to Chris Wahl’s latest blog post “Resetting VMware’s Changed Block Tracking (CBT) File with PowerCLI”.

Regards

Dean