I made Veeam Vanguard 2022!

This morning I got an e-mail informing me that my 2022 Veeam Vanguard Renewal Nomination has been approved. Yes, I made Veeam Vanguard 2022! That’s is awesome news. While for the past two years, with Corona and Covid-19, community life has been different, it has most certainly not withered away. Quite the contrary, and the Veeam Vangaurd program has not been different. First, Veeam has made a great effort to support the community through all this. Secondly, the one in-person/hybrid event that was possible during all this (the Veeam Vanguard Summit 2021 in Prague) their care for us and our health was exemplary.

But that is not what being a Veeam Vanguard is all about, it does show that the community works to bring people together. Working, learing, sharing together builds community. And with the pandemic hopefully subsiding we will not have missed a single beat.

I am a Veeam Vanguard 2021
I am a Veeam Vanguard once more in 2022!

The Veeam Vanguard Program

I invite you to read all about the Veeam Vanguard Program here. If you are working with Veeam solution in any way, shape or form and like to share your knowledge it might be something for you! Veeam Vanguards come from all walks of life and backgrounds. What unites them in this community is their expertise in different verticals and in different disciplines. They all contribute to the community at large in different ways.

Honored, happy and humbled

As is often the case with awards and recognition it makes honored to be recognized, proud while also feeling humble. You must realize we all stand on the shoulders of giants. In the process of becoming an expert there is always the realization of how much we don’t know. Add in some “imposter syndrome” and there is no room for hubris. There is however joy of being part of the Veeam Vanguard programs. It means having the opportunity to spend my time learning along people that are the best in the business. Thank you Veeam and a big shout out the Rick, Nikola, Kseniya and the entire Product Strategy Team at Veeam for making this possible.

I am a Veeam Vanguard 2021

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

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.

I am a Veeam Vanguard 2020

I am a Veeam Vanguard 2020

In these somewhat disconcerting times (Corona & Covid-19, for those reading this 2010 years time) good news still happens. Early this evening I got an e-mail from Nikola Pejková. It stated that my nomination for Veeam Vanguard 2020 was approved.

The Veeam Vanguard logo and program

This, my dear readers, puts a smile on my face and makes me happy. It is a great program to be in. We share experiences, knowledge and learn with and from each other. This translates into better insights, designs, and implementations of Veeam solutions. Not only for ourselves, but also for our employers, customers and the community at large. With them, we share all this knowledge. This happens via blogging, user groups, speaking at conferences, webinars, webcasts, showcasts, podcasts, etc.

What does this mean?

We get access to key Veeam personnel who share their extensive insights with us. Their names read like a list of the top 25 people in the backup world today. Danny Allan, CTO and SVP at Veeam (Executive sponsor of the Vanguard program) is one of them. Then we have Anthony Spiteri, Michael Cade, David Hill, Karinne Bessette, Melissa Palmer, Rick Vanover, Technologist staff at Veeam. They, together with Kirsten Stoner, Dmitry Kniazev, Andrew Zhelezko, Nikola Pejková, Technical Analyst staff at Veeam get the honor of herding us cats. Last but not least at all are Anton Gostev, Senior Vice President, Product Management and Mike Resseler, Director, Product Management.

Anton Gostev sharing his insights with us at the Veeam Vanguard Summit 2019

On top of that, we are invited to Join the Veeam Vanguard Summit where we spent some intensive days in briefings and discussions with that team. It is quite an experience to be there. First and foremost, I am both humbled and proud to get this opportunity again this year. The chance to be part of all that comes with the fact that I am a Veeam Vanguard 2020. Second, I get the opportunity once more to pick the brains of the best and provide feedback on how we see, experience and use Veeam solutions is priceless.

Finally, thank you for the opportunity, thanks for the trust and I am looking forward to working with Veeam and my fellow Vanguards for another year. I hope to see you all in good health this year!