Using VEEAM FastSCP for Microsoft Azure to help protect my blog

Posted on July 3, 2015 by workinghardinit

My buddies in IT know about some of my mantras. The fact that I like “* in depth”. Backup in depth for example. Which is just my variant on the 3-2-1 rule in backups. Things go wrong and relying on one way to recover is risky. “One is none, two is one” is just one of the mantras I live by in IT. Or at least try to, I’m not perfect.

So besides backups in Azure I also copy the backup files I make for my blog outside of the VM, out of Azure. That means the BackWPup files and the MySQL dumps I create regularly via a scheduled job.

That copy is not made manually but is automated with VEEAM FastSCP for Microsoft Azure. It’s easy, free and it works. I’ve blogged about it before but that blog might have been lost in the huge onslaught of Microsoft Ignite 2015 announcements.

It’s all quite simple. First of all you need to create a data dump location for the backups we do on our blog server. That’s copied out by but VEEAM FastSCP for Microsoft Azure ensures I have an extra copy do those which doesn’t rely on Azure

Add your VM in Azure to VEEAM FastSCP for Microsoft Azure

It’s easy, specify the information you can find about your VM on the Azure management portal. Optionally you can skip the SSL requirement and certificate verifications. Do note you need to use the correct PowerShell port (end point) for that particular VM in your Azure subscription.

When successful you can browse the file system of your Azure VM.

Create one or more jobs (depending on what & how you’re organizing your backups)

Give the job a descriptive name

Select what folders on the Azure VM you want to backup by simply browsing to it.

Select the target folder on the system where VEEAM FastSCP for Microsoft Azure is running by, again, simply browsing to it.

Set a schedule according to your needs

If you need to run some PowerShell before or after a download here’s the place to do so.

Click finish and hit Start Job to lick it of and test it. Here’s the WordPress Blog backup download job running.

By using VEEAM FastSCP for You can download folders and files to your system at home, to a virtual machine, whether this is on premise or also in the cloud. Perhaps even in AWS (IAAS) if you’re really paranoid. By doing a simple restore of your blog and changing your DNS entry you can even get it up and running if Azure would ever be the target of a major outage causing attack. You could even keep blogging about it Smile .

So do yourself a favor. Check it out!

Veeam FastSCP for Microsoft Azure IAAS went in to Beta

Posted on May 5, 2015 by workinghardinit

VEEAM is also keeping us on our toes here at Ignite in Chicago. They just publicly announced the beta of a new free tool that looks extremely handy, VEEAM FastSCP. It’s a tool that enables you to copy files in and out of Azure virtual machines without the need for a VPN. People who have been working with IAAS in Azure for labs or production known that sometimes even benign tasks on premises can be a bit convoluted in the cloud without a VPN or Express Route to Azure.

Until today our options without a VPN (to leverage file shares / SMB) are to use either RDP which gives us 2 options:

Direct copy/paste (limited to 2GB)
Mapped local drives in your VM

or leverage the portability of a VHD.

So why is VEEAM FastSCP a big deal? Well the virtual hard disk method is painstakingly tedious. Putting data into a VHD and moving that around to get data in and out of a virtual machine is a nice workaround but hardly a great solution. It works and can be automated with PowerShell but you only do it because you have no other choice.

The first RDP method (copy/paste) is fast and easy but it lacks ease of automation and it’s a bit silly to launch an RDP session to copy files. It also has a file size limit of 2GB. Anything bigger will just throw you an error.

Another option is to leverage your mapped local disks in the VM but that’s not a great option for automation either.

Sure you could start running FTPS or SFTP servers in all your VMs but that’s borderline silly as well.

VEEAM FastSCP for Microsoft Azure

VEEAM is offering this tools as a quick, secure and easy tool to copy files in and out of Azure virtual machines without the need for a VPN or turning your virtual machine into a free target to bad people in the world. Do note this is not meant for blob storage or anything else but an Azure virtual machine. Plenty of tools to go around for blob storage already.

The tool connects to the PowerShell endpoint port of your public IP address. No VPN, 3rd party tool or encryption required, it’s all self-contained. Inside the VM it’s based on winrm.

This will not interfere with your normal RDP or PowerShell sessions at all, so no worries there. When using this tool there is also no file size limit to worry about like with copy/paste over RDP.

Via the GUI you connect to the Virtual Machine with your credentials. After that you can browse the file system of that VM and copy data in and out. All of this is secured over SSL.

A nice thing is that you don’t need to keep the GUI open after you’ve started the copy just close it and things will get done. No babysitting required.

It’s all wizard driven so it’s very easy and to top it all off you can schedule jobs making it a perfect little automation tool bypassing the limitations we’re facing right now.

Some use cases

Any one who has an IAAS lab in Azure will appreciate this tool I think. It’s quick and easy to get files in and out of your VMs and you can schedule this.

Backups. I create a backup of my WordPress blog and the MySQL database regularly to file. While these are protected in the cloud themselves I love backup in depth and have extra option incase plan A fails. Using the build in scheduler I can now easily download a copy of those files just in case Azure goes south longer than I care to suffer. Having an off-cloud copy is just another option to have when Murphy comes knocking.

This is another valuable tool in my toolkit courtesy of VEEAM and all I can say is: thank you! To get it you can register here and download the Beta bits.

Free VEEAM Endpoint Backup Goes RTM – First Upgrade Experiences!

Posted on April 14, 2015 by workinghardinit

VEEAM Endpoint backup has gone RTM and that’s great news. I’ve been using it since the beta version with great results. I moved to the release candidate when that became available and now I’m running RTM. The version number of the RTM bits is 1.0.0.1954.

You can download it here and put it into action straight away!

Quick Tips & Findings

There is no supported upgrade path form the beta release. As a matter of fact the RTM version cannot read the backup files. When trying to upgrade from beta to RTM you’ll be greeted with this message:

Now that’s OK. You should have been on the RC already and there things are better Smile . Mind you, there’s no way to do an in place upgrade either but it can read the backups made by the RC version!

With a clean install (green field or after uninstalling the beta or RC version) the installation will kick off.

Now in the case of or RC backups we tested 2 things:

Can we restore the existing backups? Yes we can!

How are the backs made by the RTM version handled in regards to the already present ones. We just reconfigured the backups to the same repository and kicked of a backup. A new backup job folder was created and the backup was made there. So our DBA’s great self service SQL Server backup offloading repository made with the RC candidate is still available for restores while RTM backups to it’s own new folder.

Well there you go, VEEAM Endpoint Backup just got launched in production. We still have to wait for the production ready update for integration with VEEAM Backup & Replication v8 but that will arrive soon enough. The future looks bright.

FREE WHITE PAPER: Configuring a VEEAM Off Host Backup Proxy Server for backing up a Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V cluster with a DELL Compellent SAN (Fiber Channel)

Posted on May 4, 2014 by workinghardinit

Whilst I’m attending TechEd North America 2014, being able to learn and network again with the community at large I think this is a good moment to share. So here’s a little contribution to that community: it’s a white paper on How to configure a VEEAM Off Host Backup Proxy server for backing up a Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V cluster with a DELL Compellent SAN (Fiber Channel).

VEEAM Back & Replication is currently under and extensive test before we make the decision. So far it is going (very) well. And no, VEEAM or DELL did not sponsor this. It’s sharing with the community. A prosperous, successful community makes my professional live better to!

I have to applaud VEEAM for allowing such easy access to their software for trials, to their engineers for assistance and to their support forum and resources even without yet being a paying customer. This is how it should be: vendors having faith in their products both in quality and ease of use. It’s a refreshing experience as some vendors don’t want you to get your hands on new versions of their products even as a existing paying customer “because due to its complexity we might get the wrong impression”. It’s even near impossible with some to get a test license for the lab of the version you currently use with some of them. Not so with VEEAM and that’s great.

I hope you enjoy it. As you might realize I don’t have this kind of infrastructure in my home lab so some of the screenshots have been edited / blurred. I’m sure you can live with that. Otherwise feel free to provide me with the gear in a paid for data center.

Working Hard In IT

My view on IT from the trenches

Category Archives: VEEAM