Veeam User Groups Canada (VUG)

by Rick ByrneOctober 21, 2021Leave a comment

Let’s start with a little conversation I have from time to time.

Me: Ok, I’m sure you know that Veeam host User Groups year round?

You: “Looking at me like I’m crazy”

Me: What, wait, you didn’t know!

You: Wait.. I do know, but I forgot, didn’t know where to look, seen an email but then it got lost in the other 500 emails I got that day!

Me: Makes sense, well let me help you out and let you know where to get all the goods, all the time!

Really, that is a conversation I have with myself… So I’m going to write down notes to keep myself in check, and if you want you can copy them. I won’t tell anyone, I promise 😉

The first way you typically find out about a VUG is from your friendly Veeam employees via email, or social media like Twitter, or LinkedIn. Let’s just say you remember seeing it, but can’t locate it. You want to head over to this location that is built for the Veeam Community. There is a wealth of details over here (Distraction alert: A blog by Chris McDonald that will give you lots of resources to use), but if you are looking for Canadian based VUGs you want to head directly over to the location strictly created for Veeam Canada User Groups.

Once you get over to the VUG Canada Group – You want to Join!

Once you click “Join Group” you are now a member. You will get alerts, and also be able to join in on conversations with the Community members.

We do two different types of VUGs in Canada

Canada Wide
Region Based

The Canada VUGs are lead by Chris Childerhose, The region based are typically ran by Veeam Systems Engineers. You could get a mix of your favorite Veeam Systems Engineers.

If you happen to read this blog, and you want to find other User Groups that are outside of Canada, take a look at our Event Calendar.

Please do remember the VUG is not only about the in-person and Virtual meetings. Please do have a read of what else is offered.

I could not leave without noting what is coming up.

Nov 3, from 12-1PM MT – Western Canada

Join Craig and Jeremy at the West Canada Veeam User Group (VUG) meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 3 from 12-1pm MST. They will give you a lot of great technical information to help you improve your Veeam knowledge, learn about the new v11a, see a live demo and get your questions answered.
Register Today

Nov 10, from 12-1PM ET – Central, and Eastern Canada

Join Chris McDonald and Alex Crandall for the Central and East Canada Veeam User Group (VUG) meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 10 from 12-1pm EST. They will give you a lot of great technical information to help you improve your Veeam knowledge, learn about the new v11a, see a live demo and get your questions answered.
Register Today

17 nov. 12h00-13h00 ET – Québec

Assistez à la réunion VUG le 17 novembre à 12h00. Sylvain et Florent vous donneront beaucoup d’informations techniques intéressantes emballées en une heure. Pendant ce temps, vous améliorerez vos connaissances sur Veeam, découvrirez des fonctionnalités intéressantes, assisterez à une démonstration en direct et obtiendrez des réponses à vos questions.
Inscrivez-vous dès aujourd’hui

I do hope to see you there!

FREE LAB Gear! Time to Donate to an Amazing Cause (ALS)

by Rick ByrneFebruary 10, 2021February 10, 20211 Comment

The majority of IT folks have some sort of lab. It comes a time when a downsize or upgrade occurs.

You know what that means there is some decent lab gear up for grabs. Now… Some of us with extra equipment laying around could go ahead and sell it and that’s good too. But a great man Josh Wagman came up with an idea to give it away! WHAT! Free stuff!

Sort of… There’s a catch. O we knew it Rick! But trust me it’s for a great cause. We want you to donate to ALS So ciety of Canad a in honour of Michael White. Then if you want a piece of equipment and you live in the city of the person with the equipment it is yours! That said, a donation would be welcomed either way.

Anyone who knows Michael knows he would do the same thing for anyone of us. He has been a pillar in the world of VMware as long as I can remember with his Notes from MWhite! We in the community want to try and repay all the effort he has put in for us over the years. Help us! Help Michael! The IT Community is strong let’s show it!

If you would like to learn more about Michael, he has been very open with his living with ALS.

We will update this table as items are added, and claimed. For Edmonton I will be adding some equipment over the weekend. Also feel free to join in and add your items to the comment section.

**Local Pickup Only no shipping **To be clear this is all used Lab equipmenT AS-IS Warranty**

Hardware	Details	City	Name	Available
Intel Tower Server	2 x E5-2407 CPUs + 56GB RAM	Calgary	Josh Wagman	Yes
Intel Tower Server	2 x E5-2407 CPUs + 56GB RAM	Calgary	Josh Wagman	Yes
IBM x3550 M4	1 x CPU + 96GB RAM (I think CPU is E5-2609)	Calgary	Josh Wagman	Yes
IBM x3550 M4	1 x CPU + 96GB RAM (I think CPU is E5-2609)	Calgary	Josh Wagman	Yes
Lenovo RD440 M4	2 x E5-2407 CPUs + 48GB RAM, 8 drive trays & screws	Calgary	Josh Wagman	Yes
Dell R410	2 x E5630 CPUs + 16GB RAM, 4 drive trays & screws	Calgary	Josh Wagman	Yes
Dell R410	2 x E5630 CPUs + 16GB RAM, parts only	Calgary	Josh Wagman	Yes
Cisco ASA 5520		Calgary	Josh Wagman	Yes
Cisco NEXUS 5510	20-port SFP+ 10GbE switch	Calgary	Josh Wagman	Yes

My Work from Home Story

by Rick ByrneMarch 27, 2020Leave a comment

I have been working from home for the last eight years. I have gained some valuable lessons during that time, one item stood out, and that was the habits I created while working in an office.

It’s natural to create habits; we all do it, without knowing. Over time, these cycles become second nature, and that is because we created practices over days, months or even years. I am going to assume here, you have patterns that you use day after day for your job!

How is this helpful? Because you can morph the habits that you had for the office into your new surroundings, your home!

The first step is hammering down the habits you have today, for your office life.

What do you do when commuting to the office? Who do you talk to when you get to the office? Break time, what do you do? When you finish up for the day, what are your closing tasks?

In principle, it sounds straightforward, and it is if you stick to the habits you already have created. If you have a team meeting every morning, you still can. If you talked with a co-worker at the water cooler every morning, call them up on your break. You shared lunch banter with someone every day, still do. Overall, you don’t have to change your habits, and you will just do them differently. It takes time and discipline to keep to your old habits, but you will.

Trying to stick to your patterns are key, and will make working from home, a hotel, or at the office the same experience.

If you are having trouble sticking to your old habits, you can create new ones, a book I read a few years ago helped me. It is logical, and makes 100% sense. The book author S.J. Scott delivers his methods in a easy to consume format, with specifics examples on how to “Habit Stack”. Check it out on Amazon

While working from home, you may not have the same data protection that an office environment provided. Rick Vanover has you covered over at the Veeam blog, have a read.

The majority of my acquaintances are in IT and have amazing home-labs. Who knows they might be willing to share their labs with you? Or you might want to share your resources? This must be done securely, have a look at the following blog on how to Install, Configure, and share securely with VeeamPN.

Veeam Backup for Nutanix AHV

by Rick ByrneMarch 26, 2020Leave a comment

March 24th 2020 Veeam released the second version of its protection platform for Nutanix AHV.

v2 has deep integration into Veeam Backup & Replication v10. This is done by installing the Nutanix AHV Plug-in on your Veeam backup server. Once you have the plug-in installed, you can add a Nutanix AHV cluster, and deploy the AHV backup proxy via the Veeam Backup & Replication backup console. Review the video below for more on the steps for installation, configuration, and for some restore options.

What’s new?

Below is a list of the new features. For more details review the release notes, and the what’s new document.

Centralized management
- Central deploy & upgrade proxies
- Job management allowing you to view, start/stop, disable jobs, and launch the the proxy web UI directly from Veeam Backup & Replication.
- License management
- VeeamZip support
Restore improvements
- AHV file level recovery appliance
- Entire VM restore, allowing you to restore any workload to AHV including physical, virtual, and cloud servers.
- AHV native snapshots restores
- Instant VM recovery directly to VMware vSphere.
AHV Backup Proxy enhancements
- Job options that allow you to create backup and snapshot only jobs on protection domains, with the added ability to take a scheduled active full.
- Backup job targets which now include deduplication appliances, and repositories backed with file systems that support block cloning,
- Global email notifications
Enterprise Manager integration for file level recovery
Veeam ONE support for backup reports with your AHV workloads.

Installation, Configuration, and Restores with Veeam Backup for Nutanix AHV

Veeam Backup & Replication v10

by Rick ByrneFebruary 18, 20201 Comment

Today marks the general availability of Veeam Backup & Replication v10!

This release has over 150+ enhancements, and the “What’s New” document is 16 pages long!

Here is the list of the new major features.

NAS backup
- Provides the ability to protect NAS workloads running on SMB (1,2,3) NFS (3, and 4.1), and files sitting on Microsoft Windows, and Linux Servers.
- This has all been built with scale in mind, and not just for processing initial full backups, but with a incremental forever approach with storage-agnostic changed file tracking.
Ransomware protection, and simplified data management
- Immutable backups using S3 object locking.
- Added a Copy Policy to Capacity Tier which will provide redundancy and off-site backups with ease.
Instant VM recovery
- 10 years ago, Veeam invented and pioneered Instant VM Recovery, with v10 it brings it to a new level.
  - Instant restore any backup to VMware.
  - Next-generation instant recovery engine, that has seen 3X improvement on boot times.
  - Ability to perform multi-VM instant recovery for VMware.
  - VM disk come to the mix, not only can you instantly restore a VM, you can now instantly restore a disk.
Veeam data integration API
- Veeam has always been putting your backup data to work, with the likes of DataLabs. As of v10 you now have an API to interact with any Veeam backup.
  - Provide instance access to third-party products.
  - Perform data mining
  - Automate on-going security analysis
Linux Ecosystem Integration
- XFS Integration
  - You can leverage fast clone technology which will provide much faster synthetic full backup operations, and also use space-less full backup technology reducing the amount of disk consumption required.
- NFS backup repository
  - That’s right, you no longer need a Linux server to host your NFS shares, and it can be accessed native within Veeam for use as a repository.
- Linux backup proxy
  - Setup Linux systems as hot-add proxies! You are not locked to an appliance and can use your preferred Linux distribution.
- Network-less guest processing
  - This is for Linux VMs that Veeam cannot access the OS via the network. Using the vSphere guest interaction API, Veeam can access the guest OS via the ESXi host.

For more details head over and have a read of the “What’s New” and “Release Notes” documents.

GA version: 10.0.0.4461

Veeam – Exporting a Backup

by Rick ByrneDecember 2, 2019December 2, 2019Leave a comment

I’m sure there has been a time when you are required to export a workload for a specific point in time from backups you already have. It could be for litigation reasons, an upgrade of an application, and many other countless use cases.

Did you know you can do that with your Veeam backups? Well… You can!

An export can be done from a full, incremental or reverse-incremental restore points, that are located in simple, scale-out, object storage, or cloud repositories.

For more details browse this Veeam Help Center Section

IMPORTANT: If you are going to do this today, keep this in mind, and make sure to apply the private hot-fix if you are impacted. This hot-fix is only needed for environments where a Scale-Out Backup repository contains Linux-based or ExaGrid-based extents.

Let’s have a look.

**First head over to your “Backups” and select “Disk”**

**Once you locate the backup you want to export, expand the backup, and right-click the system name. You will then select “Export backup”**

**Select the backup you want to export.**

**Once you have your restore point selected, choose when you want this exported copy to be deleted.**

**In the next section you can provide a reason for the export task.**

**review your summary, if you are pleased, click finish.**

**The restore session will show the details of the job, and progress.**

**Once the task is completed you can access your exported point in time under “Backups” and “Disk (Imported)”**

Here you can see the one restore point, **the creation time, and date/time for the restore point.**

**The exported backup is located within the same repository where the source backup files were located. In this case FNReFS.**

**You will note that the source repository matches for the original backup.**

if you explore the backup job location you will see a folder called “Oracle_Linux” that is the location the exported backup was created from. You will also notice a folder with the name “Oracle-Linux77_2019….” this is the exported copy, and you can see the name reflects the creation time, and the deletion time associated with these files.

**You can see the file is exported as a VBK, you can copy or move it to another location if needed.**

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v4 – Upgrade and New Features

by Rick ByrneNovember 26, 20193 Comments

Today Veeam launched the new version of Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v4.

This version offers the following new features.

Leverage object storage to store your Office 365 data, including AWS S3, Azure Blob, IBM Cloud and S3-compatible providers.
- Reduce costs with object storage and only pay for what you consume
- Leverage unlimited scalability with unlimited storage capacity
- Simplify deployment in the public cloud with no complex planning
Version 4 also includes added security with at-rest encryption for data in object storage and faster backup performance for SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business.

To find out more details head over to the following locations.

Below is a short video outlining the upgrade procedure, and configuration of the new features.

veeam-backup-for-office-365-v4

Support Our Journey – Mother’s Day Walk 2019

by Rick ByrneApril 12, 2019April 12, 2019Leave a comment

In 2017 our family got news we had never wanted to hear.

Stephanie my wife, my life, and the Mother of our two beautiful children, was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. She is and always will be our Rock! Nothing kept her down during the countless doctor appointments, surgery’s, treatments, the stress that comes with this disease, and life.

Even before she was done her own treatments she wanted to find ways to help other people. She put together her own team for Mother’s Day walk 2018, and completed the walk herself after finishing her radiation treatments 1 month before (REALLY)! Words cannot explain how proud I am of this extraordinary person.

She didn’t just put together a team for the walk, she went as far to help the organizers volunteering her time to organize the event. Prime example of what we see from her everyday in our family, putting everybody else first.

She is doing the same thing for 2019, and she needs your help with supporting the Breast Cancer Society work towards a cure, on her upcoming walk! As of two day’s ago is her one year anniversary of her treatments be completed.

The Byrne Family thanks you for anything you can give. It can be via volunteer services, donations, or even join our team and walk with us! Let’s get her past her record of last year which was just over $10,000.00.

- Donate to my Personal Page
- Head over the Stephanie Strong Team Page
- Edmonton Event Page

Event Details:

Edmonton
May 5, 2019

Registration
sign-in 930 am.
Walk start
11 am and ends 2 pm.
Location: Emily Murphy Park

11904 Emily Murphy Park Road NW.
Edmonton, Alberta,
T6G 1E7

Veeam User Groups (Western Canada)

by Rick ByrneApril 5, 2019Leave a comment

Two VUGs are coming to Western Canada this month.

You can expect to see more locations in the following months. Follow the Veeam User Group and Veeam Canada on Twitter for updates.

Here are the two locations.

Calgary
- Wednesday, April 24th from 11 a.m. – 3 p.m
- Location: Ruth’s Chris Steak House
  294, 115-9th Avenue SE, 2nd Floor of Calgary Tower, Calgary, AB T2G OP5
- Register
Vancouver
- Friday, April 26th from 11:30 a.m. – 4 p.m.
- Location: Steamworks Brew Pub
  375 Water Street Vancouver, BC V6B 5C6
- Sponsored by ExaGrid
- Register

What can you expect?

The Veeam User Groups are a technical gathering for people in the Veeam user community. This will provide you the opportunity to network with your peers, and your local Veeam resources. At the same time enjoy a great meal, and educational content.

This is the planned agenda

The latest Veeam news and product updates
Veeam Availability Suite tips and tricks
Veeam ONE
Useful technical resources
And more!

However, normally any User Group I have attended turns into much more, with open dialog, discussions, and conversations about anything the community wants to talk about.

Let’s not forget free stuff.

Every community member who joins the event will be entered for the following.

All attendees will also be entered in a raffle to win a complimentary hotel stay at the Fountainebleau (value at $1,800) and one free pass to attend VeeamON (value at $900) in Miami, Florida (flight not included)! the drawing will be on April 30. Learn more about VeeamOn

Veeam Community Editions

by Rick ByrneMarch 27, 20191 Comment

Veeam has always offered free software to the IT community. The switch to community edition is not just a name change, but offers much more! These editions can be used in your home lab, your production environment, or for any situation where you see fit.

Let’s get our free on!

Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition

It now comes with all the features of Standard Edition with the ability to consume up to 10 standard Instances, and leverage VeeamZIP in an unlimited fashion.

What do you get?

Backup a VM, cloud instances, physical servers or workstations.
VM replication
Forever incremental backups
backup scheduling
Secure restore
Ability to restore directly to AWS, Microsoft Azure, Azure Stack
Tape support
It’s FREE forever

Get Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition

Veeam ONE Community Edition

Monitor up to 10 instances of your VMware vSphere, or Microsoft Hyper-V infrastructure, and one Veeam Backup & Replication server at no cost.

What do you get?

24×7 real-time monitoring
Easy documentation and management reporting
Resource optimization
Backup infrastructure auditing
Heatmaps, agent monitoring and reporting
Backup compliance reporting
more….

Get Veeam ONE Community Edition

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Community Edition

Veeam’s protection of O365 is where the community edition’s started. You can protection up to 10 users at no cost.

What you get?

Securely protect your O365 data
- Exchange Online (10 users)
- SharePoint Online (1TB of data)
- OneDrive for Business (10 users)
How is a User defined?

Get Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Community Edition

Edition Comparison: Details on what you get in Community Edition’s

Instance Licensing: Find out what you can do with 10 Instances.