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Veeam Vanguard 2024!

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This will be my fourth! year as a Vanguard and I was extremely happy when I received the email last week. Special thanks to Rick Vanover, Nikola Pejková, Madalina Cristil, Safiya Mohamed who are working very hard on the Vanguard and the entire Veeam 100 program.

Some of the highlights:

  • Access to test/beta version of software to run in the home-lab. I get to play with features that are yet to be released to the public, like version 12.1 before it came out.
  • NFR licenses for all Veeam products, like Veeam B&R, VeeamONE.
  • Friday Vanguard calls, where a bunch of us join a meeting and talk about whatever comes to mind. Might be work, current news, weather, Internet in West Virginia, or family.
  • Veeam Summit; I was able to attend two summits in Prague and it was one of the best experiences! There is a good combination of top notch sessions and fun activities as well. Go Karts anyone?
  • I was also able to attend VeeamON in Miami in 2023 and did some Tech Talks there. Again, very good session, with lots of input from people who are actually running Veeam in their environments and are able to give first hand experiences. 
  • Not gonna’ lie, the swag is top notch!
  • Slack channel for Vanguards, which is a great resource for laughter and to tip into the “Hive Mind”

If you are curious about the current list of Vanguards, it can be found here.

If you are interested in Veeam Legends Program, which is part of the Veeam 100, please check it out here.

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Immutable Snapshots not being created by scheduler on Synology

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This is a quick follow up post on my previous post about Synolgoy LUN Snapshots and immutability which can be found here.

After having it run for a while, I noticed the snapshots created on a schedule didn’t have the immutable flag set, despite it being configured under settings.

I couldn’t figure out why it was not working, so I opened a case with Synology. Support got back to me very quickly and I set up a remote session.

As it turns out, I’m hitting a known issue with DSM. The solution is simple; install snapshot replication services (you don’t need to configure it) and go back into settings for your schedule and uncheck, save, recheck immutable snapshots. Last step is important.

After this, all my scheduled snapshots had the immutability flag set. Quick fix, Synology is working on correcting it in a future release. I ran into this issue on DSM 7.2.1-69057 Update 3 as of 12-18-2023. Shout out again to Synology support for the quick turn around!

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Veeam 12.1 is out…Let’s upgrade B&R + Veeam ONE!

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Veeam released an early Christmas present yesterday (12/5), the very much anticipated version 12.1!

12.1 was much talked about during the most excellent Veeam 100 summit in Prague a little while ago. It is a non-breaking release, packed with enhancements and features. I’m quite surprised this is only a X.1 release, it would easily qualify for a major release.

Here are “some” of the features in 12.1:

I’m particular existed about Yara rules and improvements to SureBackup. SureBackup can now randomly test VMs, which is great for auditing purposed to document that your backups are working. In addition, SureBackup does not depend on a virtual lab anymore, which should make initial setup a lot easier.

Continue reading “Veeam 12.1 is out…Let’s upgrade B&R + Veeam ONE!”
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Synology DS923+ NAS Review, Part II – LUNs and Snapshots

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Earlier this year Synology sent me a DS923+ to review and test. Thanks again to Synology for making this possible, it is much appreciated. In part one of this series, I did the initially unpacking, set up, and getting the NAS ready. You can read part one here.

In this post I will focus on setting up LUNs, connecting it to my existing VMware Hosts and testing the snapshot function of the LUNs. Let’s get started…

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VeeamON 2023 in Miami – Recap

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Oh boy was it hot in Florida…but what a great conference it was. After being back for a few weeks I decided to write down my impressions about VeeamOn

This was my second VeeamOn to attend. I’m forever grateful being a Veeam Vanguard member and being invite by Veeam to attend. What a great opportunity! If you are curious about Veeam Vanguard and the Veeam 100 program, please follow this link to learn more.

This year’s VeeamOn took place at the beautifully Fontainebleau hotel in Miami from May 22nd to May 25th. I hadn’t been in Miami for more than 20 years, and I had never stayed at such a hotel. A fun fact about this hotel, many popular movies took place there, like Goldfinger, Scarface, or War Dogs. The even have a special website where all the movies are listed.

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Synology DS923+ NAS Review, Part I

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I’ve been working with a Synology DS1621+ for a some time now (Thanks to Synology for providing it), and had a great experience with it. At this point it is running an integral part of my Homelab as well as servicing all the different devices floating around at home. After a recent conversation with Nick Kozup from Synology, a different model was sent to me for reviewing.

Continue reading “Synology DS923+ NAS Review, Part I”
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Men&Mice DDI, the “friendly” Manager

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I was part of TechField Day 27 in not-so-sunny San Jose, CA, in March (3/8-3/10). There was a great focus on emerging technologies, in particular CXL. You can read about CXL here.

One of the companies presenting was Men&Mice and their DDI solution. Men&Mice is a smaller company based out of Reykjavik. I was particularly interested in their solution; while I don’t use an Excel sheet for IP management, I’m always interested in a better way to manage DNS, DHCP, and IPAM.

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Bare Metal as-a-Service is Packing up the On-Premises Datacenter with Pure Storage

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I wrote a Tech Note Article on Bare Metal as-a-Service is Packing up the On-Premises Datacenter powered by Pure Storage and its relevance in the financial industry. I was published at GestaltIT. You can check it out here.

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Veeam Agent Recovery Media Boot Integration

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During the last Veeam Vanguard/Veeam 100 summit in Prague, Czech Republic part of the summit was “Fun field facts” where attendees presented various topics they found useful for sharing. I presented on how to integrate Veeam Agent into Windows. This will be a short follow-up post on how to incorporate the Veeam Agent Recovery Media into Windows Boot Manager.

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Veeam 100 Summit in Prague

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As part of the Veeam Vanguard program I was invited to participate in the community event in Prague, Czech Republic. This was the first time for me, and I’m forever grateful to be part of this group. This was also the first time of a combined event between Veeam MVPs, Veeam Legends and Veeam Vanguards.

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