Make your life easier – KeeAgent for KeePass

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Using a password safe, or password management system, is not a best practice – it’s a common practice. I’m using KeePass for years, because it’s available for different platforms, it can be used offline, it is Open Source, and it is not bound to any cloud services. Keepass allows me securely store usernames, passwords, recovery codes etc. for different services and websites, and together with features like autotype, Keepass offers a plus security and convenience.

I use 2FA or MFA wherever I can. That’s the reason why I’m a big fan of SSH public key authentication. But SSH key handling is sometimes inconvenient.… Read more

Vembu CloudDR – Disaster Recovery as a Cloud Service

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When it comes to disaster recovery (DR), dedicated offsite infrastructure is a must. If you follow the 3-2-1 backup rule, then you should have at least three copies of your data, on two different media, and one copy should be offsite.

But an offsite copy of your data can be expensive… You have to setup storage and networking in a suitable colocation. And even if you have an offsite copy of your data, you must be able to recover the data. This could be fun in case of terabytes of data and an offsite copy on tape.

A offsite copy in a cloud is much more interesting. No need to provide hardware, software, licenses.… Read more

Vembu BDR Essentials – Now up to 10 CPU Sockets

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It is pretty common that vendors offer their products in special editions for SMB customers. VMware offers VMware vSphere Essentials and Essentials Plus, Veeam offers Veeam Backup Essentials, and Vembu has Vembu BDR Essentials.

Now Vembu has extended their Vembu BDR Essentials package significantly to address the needs of mid-sized businesses.

Vembu Technologies/ Vembu BDR Essentials/ Copyright by Vembu Technologies

Affordable backup for SMB customers

Most SMB virtualization deployments consists of two or three hosts, which makes 4 or 6 used CPU sockets. Because of this, Vembu BDR Essentials supportes up to 6 sockets or 50 VMs.… Read more

Securing VMs – vTPM, VBS, KMS and why you should not simply add a vTPM

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Yesterday, I got one of these mails from a customer that make you think “Ehm, no”.

Can you please enable the TPM on all VMs.

The customer

The short answer is “Ehm, no!”. But I’m a kind guy, so I added some explanation to my answer.

Let’s add some context around this topic. The Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is a cryptoprocessor that offers various functions. For example, BitLocker uses the TPM to protect encryption keys. But there are another pretty interesting Windows features that require a TPM: “Virtualization-based Security“, or VBS. In contrast to BitLocker, VBS might be a feature that you want to use inside a VM.… Read more

Notes for a 2-Tier Microsoft Windows PKI

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Implementing a public key infrastructure (PKI) is a recurring task for me. More and more customers tend to implement a PKI in their environment. Mostly not to increase security, rather then to get rid of browser warnings because of self-signed certificates, to secure intra-org email communication with S/MIME, or to sign Microsoft Office macros.

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What is a 2-tier PKI?

Why is a multi-tier PKI hierarchy a good idea? Such a hierarchy typically consits of a root Certificate Authority (CA), and an issuing CA. Sometimes you see a 3-tier hierarchy, in which a root CA, a sub CA and an issuing CA are tied together in a chain of trust.… Read more

Veeam B&R: “Rescan of Manually Added” failed

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I got this error in a new deployment of Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 Update 4. The error occured every day at 9 pm.

The solution to this issue is pretty simple.… Read more

Windows NPS – Authentication failed with error code 16

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Today, a customer called me and reported, on the first sight, a pretty weired error: Only Windows clients were unable to login into a WPA2-Enterprise wireless network. The setup itself was pretty simple: Cisco Meraki WiFi access points, a Windows Network Protection Server (NPS) on a Windows Server 2016 Domain Controller, and a Sophos SG 125 was acting as DHCP for different WiFi networks.

Windows clients failed to authenticate, but Apple iOS, Android, and even Windows 10 Tablets had no problem.

The following error was logged into the Windows Security event log.

Help Vembu and win a gift card!

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Vembu Technologies was founded in 2002, and with 60.000 customers and more than 4000 partners, Vembu is a leading provider with a comprehensive portfolio of software products and cloud services to small and medium businesses.

Backup is important. There is no reason to have no backup. According to an infographic published by Clutch Research at the World Backup Day 2017, 60% of all SMBs that lost all their data will shutdown within 6 months after the data loss. Pretty bad, isn’t it?

When I talk to SMB customers, most of them complain about the costs of backups. You need software, you need the hardware, and depending on the type of used hardware, you need media.… Read more

Client-specific message size limits – or the reason why iOS won’t sent emails

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Last week, a customer complained that he could not send emails with pictures with the native iOS email app. He attached three, four or five pictures to an emails, pushed the send button and instantly an error was displayed.

We checked the different connectors as well as the organizational limit for messages. The test mails were between 10 to 20 MB, and the message size limit was much higher.

The cross-check with Outlook Web Access indicated, that the issue was not a configured limit on one of the Exchange connectors. Instead, a quick search directed us towards the client-specific message size limits.… Read more

Veeam Backup & Replication: Backup of Microsoft Active Directory Domain Controller VMs

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To backup a virtual machine, Veeam Backup & Replication needs two permissions:

  • permission to access and backup the VM, as well as the
  • permission to do specific tasks inside the VM

to guarantee a consistent backup. The former persmission is granted by the user account that is used to access the VMware vCenter server (sorry for the VMW focust at this point). Usually, this account has the Administrator role granted at the vCenter Server level. The latter permission is granted by a user account that has permissions inside the guest operating system.

Something I often see in customer environments is the usage of the Domain Administrator account.… Read more