Category Archives: Data Protection

VeeeamOn 2023 – The Community Event for Data Recovery Experts

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Why attend VeeamOn?

VeeeamOn 2023 – The Community Event for Data Recovery Experts is in less than 50 days. During May 22nd -25th 2023, Veeam is organizing a hybrid event in Miami, Florida, USA. You can attend in person or online. This is “The Community Event for Data Recovery Experts” so if you fall into that target group, try to be there!

The high-level agenda is already available as well as the speakers list. A detailed agenda and schedule will be available any moment now. As you can see the content is real world actionable content. You will learn concepts, get tips, gain a deeper understanding of the challenges you face. Next to that you will learn how to address those challenges from industry experts and fellow professionals. Yes, it is not just vendor driven. The event speakers include partners, fellow IT professionals at customers sharing their knowledge and expertise with you!

This is truly a community event, and it will help you expand your on-prem, hybrid, cloud and security skills when it comes to data recovery. You will learn to build better solutions while growing your professional network in the global community.

VeeamOn is really special!

What sets Veeam apart is how accessible their top talent and leadership is. I have experienced it firsthand. That’s why I have found memories of the times I attend VeeamOn or other Veeam events. Parts of that is the conversations I had with Anton Gostev, Danny Allen, Rick Vanover and their team members. All solid technologists with a no nonsense, straight talk attitude when it comes to our business and technical challenges. This is pretty unique and shows how much they are involved in guiding Veeam on the best possible course to serve their customers as well as possible! I would say it is a privilege, but to Veeam each of their customers truly matters. How do I know? I am one and Veeam is a beacon of light and hope for other vendors to follow.

Call to action

Register now for VeeeamOn 2023 – The Community Event for Data Recovery Experts and do not miss out! Because I am a Veeam Vanguard and as gift to my readers and followers Veeam provided me with this discount code VOMIAMI1002. Using it will give you a 100$ discount when registering. I really hope you can make it, if not in person, then at least online. The good news is that Veeam got pretty good at organizing online events and makes those interactive as well. I wish you a great conference!

Attending VeeamON 2022

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I am attending VeeamON 2022

Yes, I am attending VeeamON 2022. So should you! I mean it. Data protection is becoming ever more diverse. That means you need to keep up and invest in yourself. That is what I do, nearly every day. I want to, I need to and I like to do so.

Attending VeeamON 2022
https://www.veeam.com/veeamon

The landscape has fragmented due to locations such as on-prem, hybrid, cloud, service models like IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and technologies such as virtual machines and containers. And that is only scratching the surface of the challenges we face while protecting our data. We often have a wide mix of the above and technology trends evolve fast.

Keep learning

The key is to keep learning. That takes a never-ending commitment and effort. We learn in many different ways and VeeamON caters to all of them. Theory, practical guidance, hands-on labs, exams, interaction with peers and industry experts. You name it, VeeamON has it!

Education

Education leads towards a better understanding so you can analyze challenges, design solutions, see relations, and understand dependencies. It is acquiring knowledge that is used to become better at your job by using the technologies optionally in the ecosystem where they need to deliver their value.

Training

Training is getting ready to deploy and operate solutions. It is very focused on specific jobs at hand. That doesn’t necessarily make it easy. On the contrary, it can be difficult but well-trained people can make the hard look easy and look smart because the knowledge and skill have been drilled into them. It is that simple, but again, that doesn’t make it easy.

Networking

Exchanging ideas, experiences, solutions, techniques with others helps us all learn and grow. It builds professional relations that source the common brain of the community so everyone gains. It helps your clients, your employers, your colleagues, and yourself grow and learn. That is good for your job, your career, or your business, whichever it happens to be in your case.

Join me in attending VeeamOn 2022

Join me and the excellent crew Veeam is bringing to bear at VeeamON 2022. You can join online or in-person in Las Vegas. Register here! Online is free, bar the investment of your time. But trust me, you are not a second-class citizen, it is a real and valuable conference. If you are attending in person, be ready for an immersive experience!

Las Vegas – oh my, I want to attend VeeamON 2022 and go on a long road trip after.

I would love to go in person and enjoy the immersion in a world of expertise and learning at the conference, but alas, it will not be this year. If you can attend, do whatever it takes to convince your boss or yourself, it is a rich and rewarding experience, that pays itself back in no time. If you can’t make it, don’t despair, join online like I will. Know that there will be other chances to attend and if the boss is the biggest issue, there are better bosses out there ;-).

I am a Veeam Vanguard 2021

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I am a Veeam Vanguard 2021

This afternoon I received an email notifying me that my 2021 Veeam Vanguard Renewal Nomination has been approved! That means I am a Veeam Vanguard 2021!

I am a Veeam Vanguard 2021
Honored and proud to be a Veeam Vanguard again in 2021!

The Veeam Vanguard Program

You can read all about the Veeam Vanguard Program here. It is Veaam’s top-level influencer community. We share our insights, provide feedback, and help each other, as well as Veeam, succeed. The Veeam Vanguards are a varied group of people and combine a wide range of expertise in different verticals and in different disciplines. We all contribute to the community at large in different ways. What unites us is that we all share a passion for our industry and show technical thought leadership for the different technical communities in which Veeam exists.

Now I would not call myself a technical thought leader but I do know that via this program I get to stand on the shoulders of giants. Doing so gives me a majestic view over this industry segment, a view I would not have without it.

Thank you!

This is a very nice way to head into the weekend. I am both honored and proud to be a Veeam Vanguard. Veeam as a company has won my respect many years ago and it has only grown. They focus on customer value, deliver an excellent high-quality product, offer top-notch support, and finally offer great tools to the community. I can honestly say that I enjoy working with their products as well as the company and the individuals I know at Veeam.

I am looking forward to another year in this program and the opportunities this brings to us all for sharing, learning, and growing.

Thank you, we’ll make 2021 a good community year!

Change the service account on a Veeam hardened repository

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Introduction

In Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR) v11 we have the new hardened repository host. I Have also shared some other findings in previous blogs. You add this to the Veeam managed servers via single-use credentials. These are not stored on the VBR server. That account only needs permission on the repository volumes after adding the repository server to the VBR managed servers. Let’s investigate how to change the service account on a Veeam hardened repository in case we ever need to. Warning, this early info and not official guidance.

Where is that account configured for use with Veeam?

Naturally, we created the account for adding the hardened repository to the Veeam managed servers. We also set the correct permission on the backup repository volumes. After adding the repository host to Veeam managed servers, with the single-use credential method, we removed this account from the sudo group and that’s it.

The VBR server itself does not hold the credentials. The credentials only live on the repository host. But where is that configured? Well under Under /opt/veeam/transport you will find a config file VeeamTransportConfig.

Change the service account on a Veeam hardened repository
Under /opt/veeam/transport you find a config file VeeamTransportConfig

Open it up in your favorite editor and take a look.

Change the service account on a Veeam hardened repository
ServiceUser is where the user account is configured

Change the service account on a Veeam hardened repository

From my testing, you can simply change the user account in the VeeamTransportConfig file if you ever need to. When you do, save the file and restart the veeamtransport service so it takes effect.

sudo service veeamtransport restart

When you change this service user you must also take care of the permissions on the repository folder(s).

We change the ownership recursively for the drive mount to that user.

sudo chown -R newveeamrepouser: newveeamrepouser /mnt/veeamxfsrepo01-02

The permissions for the user should still be what it needs to be (chmod 700)

Now, due to the immutability of the backup files changing the owner will fail on those files but that is OK.

Change the service account on a Veeam hardened repository
Don’t panic, you’ll be fine. Backups & restores will work.

For reading and restoring then tests show that this still works. Backup wise this will run just fine. It is all pretty transparent from the Veeam Backup & Replication side of things. I used to think I would need to run a full backup afterward but Veeam seems to handle this like a champ and I do not have to take care of that it ssems. We’ll try to figure out more when V11 is generally available.

Now, you still might want to give Veeam support a call when you want or need to do this. Remember, this is just informational and sharing what I learn in the lab.

Conclusion

Normally you will not need to change this service account. But it might happen, either because of a policy that mandates this, etc. That is the reason I wanted to find out how to do this and if you can do this without breaking the backup cycles. I also think this is why you can convert an existing Linux repository to a hardened one.