Category Archives: VBR – To Know

Tips using VBR

VBR – Proxy linux server UUID

14 Ottobre 2020

When a Linux VM is added to Veeam console as a Proxy Server, you can fall out in the error shown in picture 1

Picture 1

The reason for this behavior is that the default VM config does not allow another software to see the UUID of the VM.

What is UUID?

It’s the unique identifier used to uniquely identify partitions in Linux operating systems.

Why is it important to use it?

A backup where the proxy is a Linux VM only works with virtual appliance transport mode. It uses the VMware hot add capability.

Easier: when a job starts, the proxy Linux mounts the disks of the VM that have to be processed and then send a copy of data to the Veeam Repository.

If the backup server knows which are the proxy disks it can process the others easily and without errors.

The result is that it’s mandatory to set it up correctly as shown in the user guide and in Veeam forum

Note 1: the Linux command to show UUID is blkid

To address the issue just switch off the VM and, from vCENTER Console, follow the procedure showed in the next 4 pictures highlighted in yellow.

Picture 2

Picture 3

Picture 4

Picture 5

That’s all folks

Veeam NAS Backup – Scripts for Demo live

1 Ottobre 2020

BR v.10 introduced a great new feature.

NAS Backup allows managing the protection of the environment where files and folders are a focus point for a company.

This article does not cover how a Nas Backup job works or how to set it up. Please refer to the official documentation to have all details.

What is the scope of the next lines?

It will show how easy it is to realize a script to create dummy files
before launching an incremental backup.
Why? Because the scope of this article is showing how fast a backup job can be.

1. The script is composed of four parts (in every box line 1 describes the actions that will be performed after).

#working path
$mypath=”C:\Users\VBR\Documents\NAS-Folder”
Set-Location -Path $mypath

#creating folder to copy to share
$folders_new = New-Item “$((get-date).toString(‘yyyyMMddhhmmss’))” -ItemType directory
Set-Location -Path $folders_new

# Creating 100 files
$baseFile = $rootDir + “base.txt”
$desiredFileSize = 2*10KB
$fileCount = 100
“start” | Out-File -Filepath $baseFile
While ($(Get-ChildItem -path $baseFile).Length -lt $desiredFileSize)
{
$(Get-ChildItem -path $baseFile).Length | Out-File $baseFile -APPEND
}
for($i=1;$i -lt $fileCount;$i++)
{
Copy-Item $baseFile “File-NAS$i.txt”
}

#copy to network share
Set-Location -Path $mypath
$pathtocopy= $folders_new.Name
copy-item -path $pathtocopy -Destination \\ip-address\cifs-destination -Recurse

2. Let’s see how to integrate the script in VBR.

The next pictures will show the Nas Backup job wizard pointing out the main point (picture 3, 4 and 5)

Pictures 1 and 2 show one of my favorite advance options: the possibility to select the file topology to save. For example, protecting the pdf files only. It supports wild-cat character so it’s very flexible and useful.

Picture 1

Picture 2

From picture 3 to 5, highlighted in yellow the step to set-up the script:

Picture 3

Picture 4

Picture 5

Pictures 6 and 7 show the result of the job modified in this way.
Please put your attention to the last yellow line where 195 MB of the source data is processed in 20 seconds. (In my small lab it’s a great result !!!)

Picture 6

Picture 7

Note: If you need to change the script time execution from default 15 mins (900 secs), just add a REG-DWORD named “PreJobScriptTimeoutSec”(Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication). The amount has to be in seconds (Picture 8)

Picture 8

That’s all folks

Check Replica Status – Before deleting it – Part 1

3 Settembre 2020

Last month, a partner had to face-up a strange VBR behavior.

From VBR console he deleted a VM’s replica (Picture 1), and suddenly the production VM has been also erased (don’t worry, before doing any activity he tested the backups using sure backup technology).

Picture 1

The reason why it happened become clear to me once I read the logs.

To do it shortly, some weeks before someone started a Failover directly from vCENTER console without doing any communication to the internal IT team.

This article wants to explain how to avoid this common mistake.

The first step is understanding some basic concepts:

a) VMware identify any single VM with a number named MorefID and a UUID.

b) Any single operating system has an identifier named Instance UUID (Universal Unique IDentifier); in my lab, I set-up more than one replica job for a single VM

Table 1. row 2. shows the name of production VM (Ubuntu-02), its morefID (vm2270), where it is running (Milan), the UUID (…bcc12) and its VM UUID … f58b.

Table 1. row 3-4 shows the name of VMs replicas, morefID, instance UUID and its UUID.

All tables shown in these articles have been created using Veeam One

Name	PCName	morefID	DataCenter	Instance UUID	UUID
Ubuntu-02	ubuntu-02	vm-2270	Milan	502d2405-cc8f-de73-1a19-57e8496bcc12	564d013a-7835-9d1b-841e-32855790f58b
Ubuntu-02_Rep_VC01	ubuntu-02	vm-2694	Milan	502d2d90-d08f-08aa-efcf-d9feaa1d13f8	564d013a-7835-9d1b-841e-32855790f58b
Ubuntu-02_Rep_VCDR	ubuntu-02	vm-399	Venice	501d517b-672e-30e0-665a-fd4b4af7dcb6	564d013a-7835-9d1b-841e-32855790f58b

Table-1

Picture 2 shows the VM source (highlighted in yellow) from vCENTER console.

Picture 2

After checking-up that VM source is switched off, it’s possible to start a Failover (Picture 3).

Picture 3

The next five pictures show the step-by-step wizard to complete the procedure correctly. As you can see from picture 4 the VM that has been replicated with two different jobs (Picture 5) is always Ubuntu-02.

Picture 4

Picture 5

Pictures 6-8 show the result of the failover.

Picture 6

Picture 7

Picture 8

What happens when you complete the task with the Permanent failover? (Picture 9/10/11)

Picture 9

Picture 10

Picture 11

First of all, comparing picture 3 with 12 it is possible to see that one of the Replica Ready VM, and precisely the VM in permanent failover, has been deleted.

Picture 12

Picture 13 shows that now the replica job contains 0 objects. The right behavior is confirmed by pictures 14,15,16 and 17 where it is shown that the replica is not available anymore.

Picture 13