Migrating Data to Cloud Using Veeam

In this blog, we are going to talk on different option to move backup data to offsite (cloud).

The objective is keep data away from on-premise to meet 3-2-1 rule so we able to recover data when disaster happen. 3-2-1 rule refer to

• Keep three (3) copies of your data on two (2) separate media (disk/tape) and one copy of data should be off-site.

Here is some scenario to move backup data to cloud using Veeam:

a. Use Microsoft Storsimple Appliance as backup target. Data will store in storsimple appliance, then slowly cold data will tiered to Azure Storage. Refer to this post - Configure Storsimple with Veeam

b. Use NetApp Altavault Appliance as backup target. Work similar like Storsimple appliance. Refer to this post - How to Configure NetApp Altavault with Veeam. Data also will store in Azure Storage/ AWS S3.

c. Use Azure Files. This option is available if no blocking from your current ISP on TCP 445. Refer to this post - Use Azure Files as Backup Repository on on-premise. It is available when customer prefer to use Microsoft Azure. Each file share is limited to 5TB.

d. Use AWS Storage Gateway. For Southeast Asia (Singapore), you can configure to use as File Gateway or Volume Gateway. Tape Gateway option is not available when select Asia Pacific (Singapore) datacenter. Refer to article about AWS Storage Gateway. This option available when customer prefer to use Amazon Web Services.

e. Use Veeam Cloud Connect. Customer can securely transfer backup data to Microsoft Azure or Service Provider.Customers can instantly provision cloud backup repositories and automatically move on premises backup archives to Azure. Get Virtual appliance (VCC for Enterprise) from Azure MarketPlace. Refer to here.

Designed specifically for large Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) customers or VMware Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) customer – Veeam Cloud Connect for the Enterprise, provides enterprise cloud backup and replication services to internal customers, while enabling them to maintain complete control and visibility over their data.

No Site to site vpn is require for option (a), (b), (c), (d) and (e)

Next options is (f)

• Setup Site to Site VPN to Microsoft Azure/Amazon Web Services
• Create Cloud VM. Configure as Veeam Repository. Each disk presented to VM is limited to 1TB. User can combine multiple virtual disk, configure as pool using Storage Spaces (for larger pool). or
• Use Azure Files as backup target. Limited to 5TB per share. With site to site vpn in-place, you can easily add it as backup target. Refer to post here.
• Configure Backup Copy Job to move veeam backup data to Cloud Repository.
• You can configure Scale Out Backup Repository as well to group multiple repository as one entity.

For option (a) - (f), you use Cloud for long term archival. To provision a Windows virtual machine on Microsoft Azure, you can deploy Direct Restore Appliance from Azure MarketPlace. Refer to here.

Note:- Veeam Virtual Appliance on Azure Marketplace is FREE. You need to pay for compute after provisioning and power on.

Lastly, with Veeam Backup and Replication v9.5, you can use Direct Restore. Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure enables admins to restore or migrate physical (P2V) or virtual (V2V) workloads to Azure without complex configurations or additional hardware investments, minimizing operational costs. Azure can serve as an additional DR option that can run and scale when you need this the most.
Refer to post here.

No Site to site vpn is require when use Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure.

Hope this list able to assist for those who are looking into migrating data to cloud using Veeam.

Contest :- Asia Veeam Technical Whiteboard

Hello ,

Today’s rapid pace of technological innovation is forcing digital and physical worlds to collide – and it’s transforming the way organizations operate in every industry. This digital transformation can either make or break your business because in the digital world, customers expect 24.7.365 Availability.

Now is the time to present your knowledge on positioning Veeam^® Availability solutions to your customers! Five finalists will receive a free trip to compete at the Veeam Partner Summit 2017 Cambodia, for the title of Veeam Whiteboard Champion. The winner will get a full pass to VeeamON, paid stay in a deluxe hotel room and round‑trip tickets to New Orleans for the period of the conference!

REGISTER NOW

Target audience: Partners Technical folks

Program Overview:

The First round: Quiz submission
Submit an online quiz for assessment of your Veeam knowledge. You will need to outline one potential Veeam customer scenario for the whiteboard presentation in the next round. Note that the quiz will take about one hour to complete.

The Semi-final: Whiteboard
Shortlisted participants will each have a 15 minute face-to-face whiteboard session where they will present to a Veeam representative on how to sell Veeam solutions to a VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V customer.

The Final: Presentation
Up to five finalists will be competing at the Veeam Partner Summit 2017 Cambodia. Finalists will each have 30 minutes to present Veeam solutions, referencing to a potential Veeam customer.

Deadline:- Jan 31,2017

Install Veeam Agent for Linux (GA)

It has GA! for Veeam Agent for Linux.

You can use Veeam Agent for Linux to protect physical server, workstation and Cloud Virtual Machine running Linux distribution:-

• Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later is required.
• Both 64-bit and 32-bit versions of the following distributions are supported:

 Debian 6 – 8
 Ubuntu 10.04 – 16.10
 CentOS / Oracle Linux* / RHEL 6 – 7
 Fedora 23 – 25
 openSUSE 11.3 – 13.2
 openSUSE Leap 42
 SLES 11 SP1 – 12 SP2

Our use case on Hybrid Cloud, refer to here.

Veeam Agent for Linux supports data backup and restore for the following file systems*:
 Ext 2/3/4
 F2FS
 FAT16
 FAT32
 HFS
 HFS+
 HFSP
 JFS
 LVM2
 NILFS2
 NTFS
 ReiserFS
 XFS

The following file systems are not supported:
 BTRFS
 exFAT
 Reiser4
 UFS
 ZFS
 NSS
* Backup of machines used as cluster nodes is not supported.

Protected computer must have the following components installed:
 dkms*
 gcc
 make
 perl
 kernel-headers*
 kernel-devel*
 libudev
 libacl
 libattr
 lvm2
 libfuse

Backup Target

Backup can be performed to the following disk-based storage:
 Local (internal) storage of the protected computer (not recommended).
 Direct attached storage (DAS), such as USB, eSATA or Firewire external drives.
 Network Attached Storage (NAS) able to represent itself as SMB (CIFS) or NFS share.
 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 Update 1 or later backup repository (except DataDomain DDboost, HPE StoreOnce, Exagrid, cloud and scale-out backup repositories).

[Configuration]

Download veeam software repository installation package (veeam-release) from Veeam website. You need to select the correct distro. Our lab is using Centos 7- 64 Bit.
rpm -ivh veeam-release-el7-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm 

Note:- With Internet access.
yum update *
yum -y install epel-release && yum repolist
yum install dkms
yum install lvm2

Note:- Install Veeam Agent for Linux packages from the Veeam software repository.
yum install veeam

Some new screenshot:-
Open Veeam Program, execute command "veeam".
Browse Veeam Agent for Linux license file and select "Server Edition"

Note:- Integration with Veeam Repository, VBR must be 9.5 with Update 1 or later.

 Able to insert pre-job, post-job, pre-freeze and post-thaw script.

Misc options to insert Veeam License and Export Log for Support

More related post:-

• Backup Using Veeam Agent for Linux - http://www.ms4u.info/2016/06/backup-linux-workload-using-veeam-agent.html
• Recover Using Veeam Agent for Linux -http://www.ms4u.info/2016/06/recover-linux-workload-using-veeam.html
• Integrate Veeam Agent for Linux With -http://www.ms4u.info/2016/09/veeam-agent-for-linux-integrate-with.html

Convert Files Into ISO Format

Here is a great tool that may suitable for your need. We have files or folder and do not want to copy via network connection to virtual machine. So best option is convert to iso format.

Based on google search, most converter is limited with trial version or limited size that you can convert. 

We come across a tool which is able to do the job for FREE. It's called :"WinCDEmu"

After install it, you just select a folder, right click and select "Build an ISO image"

Enter an iso name

 Voila!. Job done...an iso has created.

Give it a try!

To know more, click here

To download, click here

Use Azure Files as Veeam Backup Repository on Microsoft Azure VM

In this post, we continue our test on using Azure Files to use as Veeam Backup Repository. Veeam repository is a storage location used by Veeam Backup & Replication job to store backup files, copies of VMs and metadata for replicated VMs.

Do check out, our previous post

• How to Create Azure Files?
• Use Azure Files as Veeam Backup Repository on Microsoft Azure

Next step, is use Azure Files as Veeam Backup Repository on Microsoft Azure VM.

Using Veeam Console, add New Backup Repository and select Shared Folder.

Here is command if you plan to use mount shared folder. We are going to take some value for our next step.

Specify

• Shared folder - smb path

Credential

• Username - use storage account
• Password - use Access Key

 We added three (3) Azure File. Each will have 5TB size.

 To extend the storage, we use Scale Out Backup Repository on Veeam to combine the storage into 15 TB. Here is the final result:-

How to Create Azure Files ?

Opps..we forget a guide on how to create Azure Files when perform testing to use as Veeam Repository.

Here is how you should do to create Azure Files.

1. Use Azure Portal, navigate to your existing Azure Storage. Click on Files

2. Click + File Share

3. Enter file share name and quota. Maximum allowed is 5TB per share.

4. We created 3 shares. Total of 15TB.

5. Click on Connect to view the command on how to mount a file share.

 6. You can get access key from Azure Storage.

7. Use command prompt to mount it.

 End result, able to view file share from Windows Explorer.

Now if you interested on use case on where to use Azure Files, please refer to http://www.ms4u.info/2016/12/use-azure-files-as-veeam-backup.html

Enjoy!

Use Azure Files as Veeam Backup Repository on On-Premise

There are several way for you to move backup data to cloud such as Microsoft Azure.

Most of times, we recommend to use

a) Microsoft Storsimple- refer to our previous blog - http://www.ms4u.info/2016/01/using-storsimple-virtual-array-as-veeam.html
b) Netapp Altavault - refer to our previous blog:- http://www.ms4u.info/2016/07/integrate-netapp-altavault-with-veeam.html

Item (a) and (b) will act as gateway to tier data to Azure Storage.

Another option is setup Veeam repository on Azure. Veeam repository is a storage location used by Veeam Backup & Replication job to store backup files, copies of VMs and metadata for replicated VMs.

The way to do it is

c) build site to site VPN to Microsoft Azure. Then provision a virtual machine and configure as Veeam repository. This is a workable solution but most people don't like it as it consume
-> Azure Compute
-> Azure Network for Site to Site VPN.
-> Azure Storage

However, some people prefer to use Azure Storage only. Question is "Can we use Azure Files? "

According to Azure Files blog (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/storage-dotnet-how-to-use-files), we can mount the file share from an on-premise client running Windows.

Quote taken from above link:-

"Mount the file share from an on-premises client running Windows

To mount the file share from an on-premises client, you must first take these steps:
Install a version of Windows which supports SMB 3.0. Windows will leverage SMB 3.0 encryption to securely transfer data between your on-premises client and the Azure file share in the cloud.

Open Internet access for port 445 (TCP Outbound) in your local network, as is required by the SMB protocol."

To learn on how to create Azure Files, please refer to http://www.ms4u.info/2016/12/how-to-create-azure-files.html

Here is our test result:-

[On-premise Windows]

Encountered an error message "path was not found"

On Veeam console, we tried to add as CIFS shared as backup repository. Also encountered an error message.

[Azure VM - same region as Azure Storage]

Able to map file share without any issue

We dig deeper by running portquery.

Portquery result for on-premise showed "FILTERED"

Portquery result for Azure VM showed "LISTENING"

Conclusion, our test ISP service provider (Malaysia) are

• Telekom (Unifi)
• YES 

has blocked port 445.

Meanwhile, another ISP "Innet Solutions Sdn Bhd" has port 445 open and mount file share on on-premise work fine.

Therefore, we don't advise to use Azure Files as veeam backup repository on on-premise unless you have test it on your environment. 

Note:- Make sure your ISP allow port 445 (Outbound) if you insist to use Azure Files on on-premise. :)

How to Setup ISCSI Server Using Windows Server 2016?

In this post, we are going to setup ISCSI Server by using Windows Server 2016 and use for Vmware datastore.

Enabling iSCSI Target Server to provide block storage leverages your existing Ethernet network.

[On Windows Server 2016]
Add Roles & Features by using Server Manager snap-in.

Under File & Storage Services, tick "ISCSI Target Server"

After install ISCSI Target roles, you can start to add iSCSI Virtual Disk

Server Manager -> File & Storage Services -> iSCSI -> New iSCSI Virtual Disk

Select Disk Volume

 Enter iSCSI Virtual Disk Name

Enter iSCSI Virtual Disk Size. We select dynamic expanding disk type since we use for lab environment.
Create a virtual disk size 50GB

Next, enter iSCSI Client that going to connect to iSCSI Target.
We use IP Address for Host 1 & Host 2

Click Finish to complete the configuration. You have create iSCSI Virtual Disk and allow ESX Host 1 and Host 2 to use virtual disk. Next let move on to ESX host so we can start to use as datastore.

[ESX Host]
 After added iSCSI Software Adapter, you can edit the Properties and ENTER iSCSI Target information on

• Static Discovery or
• Dynamic Discovery

Note:- Key in iSCSI Target IP Address

Once down, click "Rescan All" to rediscover.

 Click Add Storage | Select Disk/LUN

 If ESX Host can establish connection to iSCSI Server, you able to view 50GB virtual disk and select it.

 Enter new datastore name to represent as "iSCSI Datastore"

 Click Finish to add as new datastore
[Result]

On Datastore, you just added iSCSI Virtual Disk that you have created from Windows Server 2016.

If you're interested on use NFS as datastore, feel free to check out:

• How to setup NFS Server Using Windows Server 2016 ?