Category Archives: VEEAM

Veeam Vanguard Renewals and Nominations 2020

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Introduction

Are you are working with Veeam software solutions? Are you passionate about sharing your experiences, knowledge, and insights? If so, you might want to consider a nomination for the Veeam Vanguard program. If you are already a Veeam Vanguard I’m pretty sure you already know submissions for Veeam Vanguard Renewals and Nominations 2020 are open.

Veeam Vanguard Renewals and Nominations

As we are nearing the end of 2019 Veeeam has opened the Veeam Vanguard Renewals and Nominations for 2020.

Describing the Veeam Vanguard program is not easily done. But Nikola Pejková has done a great job to do exactly that in Join the Veeam Vanguard 2020 class! She also explains how to nominate someone or yourself. Read the blog post and find out if this is something for you. I enjoy being a part of it because I get to learn with and from some of the best minds in the industry. This allows me to help others better while also keeping up with the changing IT landscape whilst helping others.

Veeam Vanguard Renewals and Nominations 2020
My fellow Veeam Vanguard and me in a Q&A session with the Veeam R&D and PM teams at the Veeam Vanguard Summit.

I would like to emphasize that the diversity of the Veeam Vanguard is paramount to me. It works because we have people in there form around the globe, from all kinds of backgrounds and job roles. This helps open up discussions with different points of view and experiences. Customers, consultants, and partners look at needs and solutions from their perspectives. Having us together in the Vanguard benefits us all and prevents tunnel vision.

Nominate someone, yourself or be nominated

Nikola explains how to do this in her blog so read Join the Veeam Vanguard 2020 class! and apply to become Vanguard! It is quite an experience. Quality people who are active in the commumnity and help by sharing their knowledge are welcomed and appreciated. Maybe you’ll find yourself to be a Veeam Vanguard in 2020!

Optimize the Veeam preferred networks backup initialization speed

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When Veeam preferred networks cause slow backup initialization speeds

When using preferred networks in Veeam you choose to use another than the default host network for backups and restores. In this post, we’ll discuss how to optimize the Veeam preferred networks backup initialization speed because we aim for optimal performance. TL-DR: You need to provide connectivity to the preferred networks for the Veeam Backup & Replication server. It seems a common mistake I run into every now and then. Ultimately it makes people think Veeam is slow. No, it is just a configuration mistake.

Why use a preferred network?

Backups can fill up a 1Gbps pipe very fast. Many people still use 1Gbps networking as default connectivity to the hosts. Even when they leverage 10Gbps or better it is often in a converged network setup. This means that only part of the bandwidth goes to host connectivity. Few have 10Gbps for “just” host connectivity. This means it makes sense to select a different higher bandwidth network for backup and restore traffic.

Hence for high volume, high-performance backup and restores it is smart to look for a bigger pipe to leverage. Some environments have dedicated backup networks at 10Gbps or better. But we find way more high bandwidth networks for other purposes. In Hyper-V environments, you’ll have those for SMB networking like CSV, Live Migration variants and storage replication. Hyper-Converged Infrastructure deployments use these networks for storage as well. With S2D you’ll find more and more 25/50/100Gbps. All these can be leveraged as a preferred backup network in Veeam

Setting up a preferred network

Setting up a preferred network is easy. First of all, you figure out which network to use. You then add those to the preferred networks as follows:

In file menu select “Network Traffic Rules”

Optimize the Veeam preferred network backup initialization speed

Click “Add” and specify the source IP as well as the target IP range. You can op to encrypt the traffic and /or set a bandwidth limit.

We have two SMB storage networks available, we enter both.

There is no need to have the preferred network registered in DNS. It will work fine without.

I hope it is clear that the source (Hyper-V Hosts), the target (backup repository or the extends in a Scale-Out Backup Repository) and any Off Host Proxies need connectivity to the preferred network(s). If you leverage WAN accelerators, Gateways Servers, log shipping servers than these also need access. Last but not least you should also make sure that the Veeam Backup Server (VBR) has access to the preferred networks. This is one that a lot of people seem to forget. May because it is most often a VM if it is not a shared role on the repository server or such and things do work without it.

When the VBR server has no access to the preferred networks things still work but initialization of the backup and restore jobs is a lot slower. Let’s test this.

Slow Initialization of backup and restore jobs

As a result of using preferred networks you might probably notice the following:

  • First of all, we notice a slow down in the overall initialization of the backup and restore job.
  • This manifests itself in a slow start of the actual VM backup/restore and reducing the number of simultaneous backups/restores of VMs within a job.

Without the VBR server having connectivity to the preferred networks

23:54 to complete the backup job (no connectivity to the preferred network)

Optimize the Veeam preferred networks backup initialization speed

With the VBR server having connectivity to the preferred networks. Notice how smooth and continuous the throughput is.

07:55 to complete the backup job (with connectivity to the preferred network) => 3 times as fast.

When you look into the Veeam backup logs for this job you will find at various stages attempts by the VBR server to connect to the preferred networks. If it can’t it has to wait until it times out. You see entries like:

A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond 10.10.110.2:2509 (System.Net.Sockets.SocketException)

Optimize the Veeam preferred network backup initialization speed
Just a small part of all the NetSocket time out you will find for every single VM in the job. Here VBR is trying to connect to one of the extends in the SOBR.

This happens for every file in the backups (config files and disks) for every extend in the Scale-Out Backup Repository (per VM backup chain). This slows down the entire backup job tremendously.

Conclusion

I always make sure that the VBR servers in my environments have preferred network connectivity. Consequently, initialization is faster for both backups and restores. Test it out for yourself! It is the first thing I check when people complain of really slow backup. Do they have preferred networks set up? Check if the VBR server has connectivity to them!

CBT DRIVER WITH Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 2.1

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Change Block Tracking comes to physical & IAAS Veeam Backups

With the big improvements and new capabilities delivered in Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 Update 3 there are some interesting capabilities and features related specifically to the Veeam Agent for Windows 2.1 Server Edition. We now get the ability to manage the Veeam Agent centrally from within VBR 9.5 UP3 console or PowerShell. This includes deploying the new Change Block Tracking (CBT) driver for Windows Server (not Linux).

This CBT driver is optional and works like you have come to expect from Veeam VBR when backing up Hyper-V virtual machines pre-Windows Server 2016. Windows Server 2016 now has its own CBT capabilities that Veeam VBR 9.5 leveraged. The big thing here is that you now get CBT capabilities for physical or virtual in guest workloads (that includes IAAS people!) with Veeam Agent for Windows 2.1 Server Edition.

Deploying the Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 2.1 CBT Driver

The Veeam Agent for Windows 2.1 ships with an optional, signed change block tracking filter driver for Windows servers. That agent is included in your VBR 9.5 Update 3 download or you can choose to download an update that does not have the CBT driver included. That’s up to you. I just upgraded my lab and production environment with the agent included as I might have a use for them. If not now, then later and at least my environment is ready for that.

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When you have installed VAW 2.1 you can navigate to C:\Program Files\Veeam\Endpoint Backup\CBTDriver and find the driver files there for the supported Windows Server OS versions under their respective folders.

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As you can see in the screenshot above we have CBT drivers for any version of Windows Server back to Windows Server 2008 R2. If you are running anything older we really need to talk about your environment in 2018. I mean it.

Note that right clicking the .inf file for your version of Windows Server and selecting Install is the most manual way of installing the CBT driver. You’ll need to reboot the host.

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Normally you’ll either integrate the deployment and updating of the CBT driver into the VBR 9.5 Update 3 console or you’ll deploy and update the CBT driver manually.

Install / uninstall the CBT driver via Veeam Backup & Replication Console

You can add servers individually or as part of a protection group (Active Directory based). Whatever option you chose you’ll have the option of managing them via the agent manually or via VBR server. Once you have done that you can deploy and update the optional CBT driver for supported Windows Server versions via the individual servers or the protection groups.

Individual Server

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Once the agent is installed you’ll can optionally install the CBT driver. When that’s you can also uninstall the CBIT driver and the agent form the VBR Console.

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Protection Group

You can add servers to protect via VAW 2.1 individually, via active directory (domain, organizational unit, container, computer, cluster or a group) or a CSV file with server names /IP-addresses. That’s another subject actually but you get the gist of what a protection group is.

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Checking the CBT driver version

You can always check the CBT driver version via the details of a server added to the physical or cloud infrastructure.

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Install / uninstall the CBT driver via the standalone Veeam Agent for Windows

My workstation at home isn’t managed by a Veeam Backup & Replication v9.5 Update 3 server. It’s a standalone system. But it does run Windows Server 2016. Now, even while such a standalone system can send its backups to Veeam Repository, I don’t do that at home. The target is a local disk in disk bay that I can easily swap out every week. I just rotate through a couple of recuperated larger HDDs for this purpose and this also allows me to take a backup copy off site. The Veeam Agent for Windows configuration for my home office workstation is done locally, including the installation of the CBT driver. Doing so is easy. Under settings in the we now have a 3rd entry VAW 2.1 that’s there to install the CBT driver if we want to.

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When you click install it will be done before you can even blink. It will prompt you the restart the computer to finish installing the driver. Do so. If not, the next backup will complain about failing over to MFT analysis based incremental backups as you can’t use the installed CBT driver yet.

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When using the new VAW 2.1 CBT drivers for windows changes get tracked a VCT file. These can be seen under C:\ProgramData\Veeam\EndpointData\CtStore\VctStore.

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Ready to Go

I’ll compare the results of backing up my main workhorse with and without the CBT driver installed. Veeam indicates the use case is for servers with a lot of data churn and that’s where you should use them. The idea is that you don’t need to deal with updating the drivers when the benefits are not there. That’s fair enough I’d say but I’m going to experiment a little with them anyway to see what difference I can notice without resorting to a microscope.

If we conclude that having the CBT driver installed is not worth while for our workstation we can easily uninstall it again via the control panel, under settings, where we now see the option to uninstall it. Easy enough.

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However, as it can track changes in NTFS as well as ReFS and FAT partitions it might be wise to use it for those servers that have one or more of such volumes, even when for NFTS volumes the speed difference isn’t that significant. Normally the bigger the data churn delta the bigger the benefits of the CBT driver will be.

Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 Update 3 Released

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Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 Update 3 was released just in time to put under the X-Mas tree of you IT staff. It’s a major release and they’ve gone above and beyond what’’ you’d expect from an update. Also read this post to see all the goodness it offers. It’s clear Veeam has the intent to become the backup provider for even more environments whether these are physical, virtual or containers and whether these are on-premises or in private, hybrid or public clouds. Read up on some details in this blog post by Rick Vanover on the Veeam web site.

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As a Veeam Vanguard I did not waste time and downloaded the updates to test the deployment in the lab and that went fine. From there it went to the proving grounds (real life hardware & labs) before deploying it in production. All of these deployments went super smooth.

I’m happy to report Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 and Veeam One 9.5 Update 3 is running very well in production and I have not seen any issues yet. In case you’re wondering or nervous about it the SAN deployments with Off Host Proxies didn’t miss a beat. That’s the quality and smooth experience of Veeam that we have come to rely on. I’m still impressed, even after many updates, with how smooth it goes and how streamlined the update process is.

Two more things. You only have a few days left to enter for a chance to win a fully paid trip to a VeeamON 2018 Event in your region. So act now if you’d like to attend for free. You have 2 days left!

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It’s also still possible to nominate your self or some one else for the Veeam Vanguard program. Don’t delay! You have until December 29th!

Veeam Vanguard Program

 

That’s it. Time for some down time for the end of year & new year festivities.