Tag Archives: backup

Veeam B&R backup failes with “No scale-out repository extents are available”

This posting is ~2 years years old. You should keep this in mind. IT is a short living business. This information might be outdated.

One of my customers replaced the old Veeam environment with new gear. The HW was pretty simple designed:

  • two HPE ProLiant
  • per server two HPE D3610 enclosures with 6 TB disks
  • ~ 5km between backup server and backup copy destination

One server was designed to act as the Veeam backup server and repository, and the second server was designed to act as the backup copy destination. Both servers were running Windows Server 2019 Standard. We planned to use Windows Deduplication and ReFS, but it turned out that we have to adjust the filesystem size to get Windows Dedup working. Windows Dedup supports filesystems up to 64 TB. Due to the 24x 6 TB disks, we had to create to logical volumes to stay under 64 TB usable capacity.

I created one Scale-Out Backup Repository per server and configured my backup jobs. At this point things got worse…

The backup ran fine, but as soon as the copy kicked in, the copy job failed. Error “No scale-out repository extents are available”.

Huh? Everything was fine. If no backup were running, the copy ran fine. Setting limits (throughput or concurrent tasks) doesn’t fixed it. So I opened a case at Veeam.

We had to take debug logs to come to a solution.

Solution

The support advised us to set a registry key:

Key: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication\
Value Name: SobrForceExtentSpaceUpdate
Value Type: DWORD
Value Data: 1

After a restart of the Veeam services, the backup and copy job ran fine. No further issues.

This key is described in Veeam KB2282. The option was introduced with Backup & Replication 9.5 U2. The customer is running the v10.0.1.4854. The key forces Veeam to update free space information with the real values, and it subtracts the estimated sizes of all the tasks currently going to the selected extent.

What’s new in Vembu BDR Suite v4.0.1

This posting is ~4 years years old. You should keep this in mind. IT is a short living business. This information might be outdated.

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.

In December 2018, Vembu announced the fourth major release of their BDR Suite. Vembu BDR Suite 4.0.1 is now out for production setups with enhanced performance and bug fixes. Vembu BDR Suite v4.0.1 is an intermediate patch update that addresses the customers reported issues and other support issues on the previous build of v4.0. Vembu BDR Suite v4.0.1 also features a large number of enhancements and significant of those are listed below.

Vembu Technologies/ Vembu BDR Essentials/ Copyright by Vembu Technologies

What’s new?

Beside of bug fixes, BDR Suite v4.0.1 also includes some new enhancements. In my opinion, the most significant enhancements are:

  • Significant performance improvement in Quick VM Recovery on VMware environments
  • Rescan option is introduced in Hyper-V Manager Servers page, which allows you to install Vembu Integration Service on the newly added node of the Hyper-V cluster (or if it’s not available on the existing node)
  • Backups configured through BDR Server console will run in parallel (Default parallel backup count is set to 5 and it is configurable)
  • Ability to add new Hyper-V hosts or choose existing hosts while performing Live Recovery to Hyper-V host

Interested in trying Vembu BDR suite? Try the 30-day free trial now! For any questions, simply send an e-mail to vembu-support@vembu.com or follow them on Twitter.

If you are a small or mid-sized businesses, check out the Vembu BDR Essentials package!

Vembu CloudDR – Disaster Recovery as a Cloud Service

This posting is ~4 years years old. You should keep this in mind. IT is a short living business. This information might be outdated.

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. Just provide internet-connectivity, book a suitable plan, and you are ready to go.

Replication to Cloud using Vembu CloudDR

Vembu offers a cloud-based disaster recovery plan through its own cloud services, which is hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS). This product is designed for businesses, who can’t afford, or who are not willing, to setup a dedicated offsite infrastructure for disaster recovery.

The data, which is backuped by the Vembu BDR server, is replicated to the Vembu Cloud. In case of any disaster, the backup data can be directly restored from the cloud at anytime and anywhere. The replication is managed and monitored using the CloudDR portal.

Before you can enable the offsite replication, you have to register your Vembu BDR server with your Vembu Portal account. You can either go to onlinebackup.vembu.com, or you can go to portal.vembu.com and sign up.

Vembu Technologies/ Vembu CloudDR/ Copyright by Vembu Technologies

After configuring schedule, retention and bandwidth usage, Vembu CloudDR is ready to go.

The end is near – time for recovery

CloudDR offers two types of recovery:

  • Image Based Recovery
  • Application Based Recovery

In case of an image based recovery, you can either download a VMDK or VHD(X) image, or you can do a file level recovery. In this case you can restore single files from inside of a chosen image.

You can even download a VHD(X) image of a VMware backup, which allows you some kind of V2V or P2V restores.

In case of a application based recovery, you can recover single application items from

  • Microsoft Exchange
  • Microsoft SharePoint
  • Microsoft SQL Server, or
  • MySQL

Depending on the type of restore, you will get an encrypted and password protected ZIP file with documents, or even MDF/ LDF files. These files can than be used to restore the lost data.

Summary

Vembu CloudDR is a pretty interesting add-on for Vembu customers. It’s easy to setup, has an attractive price tag and therefore consequently addresses the SMB customers.

Feel free to request a demo or try Vembu CloudDR.

Vembu BDR Essentials – Now up to 10 CPU Sockets

This posting is ~4 years years old. You should keep this in mind. IT is a short living business. This information might be outdated.

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. Yes, 6 sockets OR 50 VMs. Vembu has no rised this limit to 10 Sockets OR 100 VMs! This allows customers to use up to five 2-socket hosts or 100 VMs with less than 10 sockets.

Feature Highlights

Vembu BDR Essentials support all important features:

  • Agentless VMBackup to backup VMs
  • Continuous Data Protection with support for RPOs of less than 15 minutes
  • Quick VM Recovery to get failed VMs up and running in minutes
  • Vembu Universal Explorer to restore individual items from Microsoft applications like Exchange, SharePoint, SQL and Active Directory
  • Replication of VMs Vembu OffsiteDR and Vembu CloudDR

Needless to say that Vembu BDR Essentials support VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. If necessary, customer can upgrade to the Standard or Enterprise edition.

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

This posting is ~4 years years old. You should keep this in mind. IT is a short living business. This information might be outdated.

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

24.02.2019 21:00:11 :: Error: Remote deployment and management is available for licensed agents only. Please change your backup server settings to allow managed agents to consume the license, then perform a protection group rescan.

The solution to this issue is pretty simple. Make sure that you allow the consumption of licenses for free agents. You will find this option under General > License.

Another workaround is to disable the protection group. Right click “Manually Added” under “Physical & Cloud Infrastructure” and click “Disable”.

Let me know if one of these workarounds worked for you. :)

Help Vembu and win a gift card!

This posting is ~4 years years old. You should keep this in mind. IT is a short living business. This information might be outdated.

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. And you should have a second copy of your data. In my opinion, tape is dead for SMB customers. HPE for example, offers pretty smart disk-based backup solutions, like the HPE StoreOnce.

Vembu is giving away an Amazon gift cards through a lucky draw for those readers, that take part of a short Survey

Vembu Technologies/ Vembu BDR/ Copyright by Vembu Technologies

Vembu BDR Suite provides a 30-day free trial with no restriction. This gives you the chance to intensively test Vembu BDR Suite prior purchase.

The free edition let you choose between unlimited VMs, that are covered with limited functionality, or unlimited functionality for up to 3 VMs. Check out this comparison of free, standard and enterprise edition. Check out this comparison of free, standard and enterprise edition.

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

This posting is ~4 years years old. You should keep this in mind. IT is a short living business. This information might be outdated.

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.

geralt / pixabay.com/ Creative Commons CC0

Something I often see in customer environments is the usage of the Domain Administrator account. But why? Because everything works when this account is used!

There are two reasons for this:

  • This account is part of the local Administrator group on every server and client
  • customers tend to grant the Administrator role to the Domain Admins group on vCenter Server level

In simple words: Many customers use the same account to connect to the vCenter, and for the application-aware processing of Veeam Backup & Replication. At least for Windows servers backups.

Houston, we have a problem!

Everything is fine until customers have to secure their environments. One of the very first things customers do, is to protect the Administrator account. And at this point, things might go wrong.

Using a service account to connect to the vCenter server is easy. This can be any account from the Active Directory, or from the embedded VMware SSO domain. I tend to create a dedicated AD-based service account. For the necessary permissions in the vCenter, you can grant this account Administrator permissions, or you can create a new user role in the vCenter. Veeam offers a PDF document which documents the necessary permissions for the different Veeam tasks.

The next challenge is the application-aware processing. For Microsoft SQL Server, the user account must have the sysadmin privileges on the Microsoft SQL Server. For Microsoft Exchange, the user must be member of the local Administrator group. But in case of a Active Directory Domain Contoller things get complicated.

A Domain Controller does not have a local user database (SAM). So what user account or group membership is needed to backup a domain controller using application-aware processing?

This statement is from a great Veeam blog post:

Permissions: Administrative rights for target Active Directory. Account of an enterprise administrator or domain administrator.

So the service account used to backup a domain controller is one of the most powerful accounts in the active directory.

There is no other way. You need a Domain or Enterprise Administrator account. I tend to create a dedicated account for this task.

I recommend to create a service account to connect the vCenter, and which is added to the local Administrator group on the servers to backup, and I create a dedicated Domain/ Enterprise Administrator account to backup the virtual Domain Controllers.

The advantage is that I can change apply different fine-grained password policies to this accounts. Sure, you can add more security by creating more accounts for different servers, and applications, add a dedicated role to the vCenter for Veeam etc. But this apporach is easy enough to implement, and adds a significant amount of user account security to every environment that is still using DOMAIN\Administrator to backup their VMs.

Veeam and StoreOnce: Wrong FC-HBA driver/ firmware causes Windows BSoD

This posting is ~4 years years old. You should keep this in mind. IT is a short living business. This information might be outdated.

One of my customers bought a very nice new backup solution, which consists of a

  • HPE StoreOnce 5100 with ~ 144 TB usable capacity,
  • and a new HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 with Windows Server 2016

as new backup server. StoreOnce and backup server will be connected with 8 Gb Fibre-Channel and 10 GbE to the existing network and SAN. Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 U3a is already in use, as well as VMware vSphere 6.5 Enterprise Plus. The backend storage is a HPE 3PAR 8200.

This setup allows the usage of Catalyst over Fibre-Channel together with Veeam Storage Snapshots, and this was intended to use.

I wrote about a similar setup some month ago: Backup from a secondary HPE 3PAR StoreServ array with Veeam Backup & Replication.

The OS on the StoreOnce was up-to-date (3.16.7), Windows Server 2016 was installed using HPE Intelligent Provisioning. Afterwards, a drivers and firmware were updated using the latest SPP 2018.11 was installed. So all drivers and firmware were also up-to-date.

After doing zoning and some other configuration tasks, I installed Veeam Backup and Replication 9.5 U3, configured my Catalyst over Fibre-Channel repository. I configured a test backup… and the server failed with a Blue Screen of Death… which is pretty rare since Server 2008 R2.

geralt / pixabay.com/ Creative Commons CC0

I did some tests:

  • backup from 3PAR Storage Snapshots to Catalyst over FC repository – BSoD
  • backup without 3PAR Storage Snapshots to Catalyst over FC repository – BSoD
  • backup from 3PAR Storage Snapshots to Catalyst over LAN repository – works fine
  • backup without 3PAR Storage Snapshots to Catalyst over LAN repository – works fine
  • backup from 3PAR Storage Snapshots to default repository – works fine
  • backup without 3PAR Storage Snapshots to default repository – works fine

So the error must be caused by the usage of Catalyst over Fibre-Channel. I filed a case at HPE, uploaded gigabytes of memory dumps and heard pretty less during the next week.

HPE StoreOnce Support Matrix FTW!

After a week, I got an email from the HPE support with a question about the installed HBA driver and firmware. I told them the version number and a day later I was requested to downgrade (!) drivers and firmware.

The customer has got a SN1100Q (P9D93A & P9D94A) HBA in his backup server, and I was requested to downgrade the firmware to version 8.05.61, as well as the driver to 9.2.5.20. And with this firmware and driver version, the backup was running fine (~ 750 MB/s hroughput).

I found the HPE StoreOnce Support Matrix on the SPOCK website from HPE. The matrix confirmed the firmware and driver version requirement (click to enlarge).

Fun fact: None of the listed HBAs (except the Synergy HBAs) is supported with the latest StoreOnce G2 products.

Lessons learned

You should take a look at those support matrices – always! HPE confirmed that the first level recommendation “Have you trieed to update to the latest firmware” can cause similar problems. The fact, that the factory ships the server with the latest firmware does not make this easier.

Vembu BDR Suite v4.0 is now generally available

This posting is ~4 years years old. You should keep this in mind. IT is a short living business. This information might be outdated.

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.

Last week, Vembu has announced the availability of Vembu BDR Suite v4.0! Vembu’s new release is all about maintaining business continuity and ensuring high availability. Apart from new features, this release features significant enhancements and bug fixes that are geared towards performance improvement.

Vembu Technologies/ Vembu BDR Essentials/ Copyright by Vembu Technologies

The Vembu BDR Suite

The Vembu BDR Suite is an one stop solution to all your backup and disaster recovery needs. That is what Vembu says about their own product. The BDR Suite covers

  • Backup and replication of VMs running on VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V
  • Backup and bare-metal recovery for physical servers and workstations (Windows Server and Desktop)
  • File and application backups of Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft Outlook, and MySQL
  • Creating of backup copies and transfer of them to a DR site

More blog posts about Vembu:

Vembu BDR Essentials – affordable backup for SMB customers
The one stop solution for backup and DR: Vembu BDR Suite

What’s new in 4.0?

Vembu BDR Suite v4.0 has got some pretty nice new features. IMHO, there are four highlights:

  • Hyper-V Failover Cluster Support for Backup & Recovery
  • Shared VHDX Backup
  • Hyper-V Checksum Based Incremental, and the
  • Credential Manager

There is a significat chance that you use a Hyper-V Failover Cluster if you have more than one Hyper-V host. With v4.0 Vembu added support for backup and recovery for the VMs residing in a Hyper-V Failover Cluster. Even if the VMs running on Hyper-V cluster move from one host to another, the backups will continue to run without any interruption.

A feature, that I’m really missing in VMware and Veeam, is the support for the backup shared VHDX files. v4.0 added support for this.

Vembu BDR Suite v4.0 also added support bot performing incremental backups with Hyper-V. They call it Checksum based incremental method, but it is in fact Change Block Tracking. An important feature for Hyper-V customers!

The Vembu Credential Manager allows you to store the necessary credentials at one place, use it everywhere inside the Vembu BDR Suite v4.0.

But there are also other, very nice enhancements.

  • Handling new disk addition for VMware ESXi and Hyper-V, which allows the backup of newly added disks at the next backup. In prioir releases, newly added disks were only backuped during the next full backup.
  • Reconnection for VMware ESXi and Hyper-V jobs in case of a dropped network connection
  • Application-wware processing for Hyper-V VMs can now enabled on a per-VM basis
  • API for VM list with Storage utilization report which allows you to generate detailed reports whenever you need one

Interested in trying Vembu BDR suite?, Try a 30-day free trial now! For any questions, simply send an e-mail to vembu-support@vembu.com or follow them on Twitter.

Vembu VMBackup Deployment Scenarios

This posting is ~5 years years old. You should keep this in mind. IT is a short living business. This information might be outdated.

Vembu was founded in 2002 and has over 60,000 customers worldwide. One of their core products is the Vembu BDR Suite, which is an one stop solution to all your Backup and DR needs. I wrote a longer blog post about the Vembu BDR Suite.

One part of this suite is Vembu VMBackup, which is a data protection solution that is designed to backup VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines secure and simple way. The offered features are compareable to Veeam Backup & Replication.

The core component of Vembu VMBackup is the Vembu BDR Backup server, which can be deployed in two ways:

  • On-premises Deployment
  • Hybrid Deployment

virnuls/ pixabay.com/ Creative Commons CC0

On-premises Deployment

In this deployment setup, customers deploy the product in their local environment. I think this is the most typical deployment type, where you install VMBackup on a physical server, in a VM or deployed as virtual appliance. Backup data is transferred  over LAN or SAN, and is written to the storage repositories. The Vembu BDR server acts as a centralized management point, where user can configure and manage backup and replication jobs.

In a simple deployment, the Vembu BDR Backup Server will act as backup proxy and management server instance. It is perfect for a small number of VMs with less simultaneous backup traffic and for VMBackup evaluation. The typical SMB environment.

If you seperate the management server from the backup proxy, the deployment changes to a distributed deployment. If necessary, multiple backup proxies can be deployed on physical hosts or in virtual machines. Customers can also deploy multiple BDR backups servers, which allows load balancing across a cluster of BDR backup servers. Pretty cool for bigger and/ or distributed environments. It allows customers to scale their backup solution over time.

On-Premises Deployment/ Vembu Technologies/ Copyright by Vembu Technologies

Hybrid Deployment

Backup is good, but having a backup copy offsite is better. Vembu OffsiteDR allows customers to create a copy of their backup data and transfer it to a DR location over LAN/ WAN. OffsiteDR instantly transfers backup data from a BDR Backup Server to an OffsiteDR server. Customers can restore failed VMs or missing files and application data in their DR site, or they can rebuild a failed BDR Backup Server from an OffsiteDR server.

Vembu Technologies/ OffsiteDR/ Copyright by Vembu Technologies

If customers don’t have a DR site, they can use Vembu CloudDR push a backup copy to the Vembu cloud. The data stored in the Vembu Cloud can easily be restored at anytime and to any location. Vembu uses AWS across all continents to asure the availability of their cloud services.

Vembu Technologies/ CloudDR/ Copyright by Vembu Technologies

Customers have the choice

It is obvious that customers have the freedom of choice how they deploy Vembu VMBackup.I like the virtual appliance approach, which eliminates the need for additional Windows Server licenses. More and more vendors tend to offer appliances for their products, just think about VMware vCenter Server Appliance, vRealize Orchestrator etc. So why not offer a backup server appliance? I wish other vendors would adopt this…

Another nice feature is the scale-out capability of Vembu. Start small and grow over time. Perfect for SMBs that want to start small and grow over time.