VM /ETC

Archive for the ‘veeam’ Category

Veeam products can be installed on the same virtual machine allowing administrators to easily create a cost effective and valuable solution for documenting, managing, and maintaining ESX datacenters. With the recent announcement of free Veeam NFRs for VCPs, VCDXs, vExperts, and VCIs, many will be looking to build VMs to explore Veeam products. This post serves as a high level guide for combining the free versions of Veeam Reporter, Veeam Monitor, and Veeam Business View to create a single “Veeam ONE” Monitor Plus VM.

BTW, you might have missed that Veeam’s products were voted the top 3 free tools for vSphere by the virtualization community?! Check out vmwarevideos.com and vChat – Episode 11 – Results of the Best Free vSphere Tools Survey & Answering Viewer Questions.

Although I am using the free versions in this post, the process is the same for the licensed versions as well. See a comparison of free versus licensed features here for Reporter and here for Monitor.

FYI, all Veeam products can be downloaded in a fully functioning 30 day trial mode.  I highly recommend admins utilize them for a test drive this way, and when the trial expires the products will default to the free versions.

For larger environments, installing Monitor and Reporter in their own separate VMs may result in better performance. All products can share the same remote SQL or SQLExpress instance for their databases, however. Refer to each product’s current Release Notes and User Guide for planning, installation, and configuration information.

Disclaimer: I am a Senior Systems Engineer for Veeam Software.

Recommended Veeam ONE server requirements (for Proof of Concepts, SMBs, and some MID size datacenters)

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Veeam has a history of offering free products as a Christmas gift to the virtualization community, and 2010 is no exception. In fact, this year’s present is probably the biggest one yet. From the official press release:

NEW VEEAM BACKUP & REPLICATION V5 IS FREE TO VMWARE VEXPERTS, VMWARE CERTIFIED PROFESSIONALS AND VMWARE CERTIFIED INSTRUCTORS

Veeam offers free license keys for non-production use as holiday gift

Columbus, Ohio, December 10, 2010 – Veeam Software, innovative provider of VMware data protection, disaster recovery and VMware management solutions for virtual datacenter environments, today announced a holiday gift for VMware vExperts, VMware Certified Professionals, and VMware Certified Instructors. These individuals can receive Veeam Backup & Replication™ v5 with vPower™ for non-production use in their home labs. Any vExpert, VCP or VCI can receive a free two-CPU socket software license for evaluation, demonstration and training purposes. The offer also includes the Veeam ONE™ Solution for VMware management with Veeam Monitor™, Veeam Reporter™ and Veeam Business View™.

That’s right. A free NFR for all Veeam products listed above! Go get your free Veeam NFRs at http://www.veeam.com/go/free-nfr-license.

They don’t script Christmas Stories any better than this

The idea for this year’s gift actually came from a wish in the form of a tweet.

Check out the official Veeam Blog post for more about Veeam being Santa in a green and white suit.

TIPs FROM A VEEAM ELF

The NFRs are great, but all Veeam products are available as fully functioning 30 day downloads for up to 16 sockets. So,

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A common request since I started at Veeam Software has been for the ability to plug in Veeam’s products to vCenter and/or the vSphere Client. After all, VMware admins are used to the idea that they can go to the same interface to accomplish almost everything. VMware’s strategy to make their client expandable via a plugin architecture is brilliant, and many Technology Partners have introduced vCenter and vSphere Client plugins for their products as a result.  Veeam, for whatever reasons (maybe because the developers have been focused on new game changing features!), has not created plugins to date. However, since most of the Veeam Software suite has web pages for management interfaces already, it is very simple to create plugins yourself!

This post  provides unofficial, unsupported template files and a basic “how to” instructions for using vSphere Client plugins for the following Veeam web management interfaces:

• Veeam Backup and Replication Enterprise Management Console
• Veeam Reporter Dashboard
• Veeam Business View Dashboard

These plugins should work whether you are using any Veeam product versions or whether you have the paid or free versions of Monitor and Reporter. Bottom line: If you can make the Veeam web pages work correctly in a standard web browser on the system where you have the vSphere Client installed, then the plugins should work too.

You may have noticed that Veeam Monitor has been left out of the plugin list. That is because Monitor does not have a web interface. However, be sure to read the end of this post to see how you can use the vSphere Client from within Veeam Monitor. It’s “the photo negative” of what VMware admins are used to, but it accomplishes the same benefits.

Also understand, you can use the templates as a base for whatever web interface you want to pull into the vSphere Client.  This is not just applicable to Veeam products.

I want to credit Carter Shanklin, Eric Sloof, and Ricky El-Qasem for originally providing information about how to create web based plugins several years ago. El-Qasem even released a handy .NET tool for auto creating and registering plugins with vCenter which involved making the resulting .xml files centrally available via Tomcat from the vCenter Server. I followed the trail of crumbs from these guys.

Download the Veeam vSphere Plugin templates

Veeam vSphere Plugin Templates (651)

The rest of this post contains basic instructions, some screen shots, and a tip for making Reporter work correctly in the vSphere Client. Finally, integrating Veeam Monitor and the vSphere Client is covered briefly.

How To Modify the Templates and Instructions for Using the Plugins

The following is the contents of the README file included in the .zip

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Figuring out whether you can replicate your VMs across your WAN to a DR site is never easy. There are many factors to consider, but luckily, one of my Veeam peers and a fellow VMware vExpert, Ricky El -Qasem has created a Replication Calculator to help figure it out.

From the post on the Virtualize Planet Blog: Replication Bandwidth Calculator | Virtualize Planet

ReplicaCalc

How many times do you get asked “how do I work out if VM Replication will work with my internet link” Well I wanted to demonstrate some way of providing a calculator without working it out in my head every time. So I made a Replication Calculation tool.  It is assumed that you provide it with 3 values:

1. Average Rate of Change.
2. The Link speed – this value should reflect the upload speed at the source site or the download speed at the target if this is less. So for example if the upload at the source is 6Mbs and 10Mbs download at the target then go for 6Mbs
3. Bandwidth % – which is the amount of bandwidth as % which achievable from the link speed specified.

Download and install ReplicaCalc from here > ReplicaCalc

Ricky describes the needed values in more detail in his post so be sure to read it all there. He also demonstrates how to use Veeam Backup and Replication to get the VM dynamic rate of change. The tool is useful whether using Veeam to replicate your VMs or not, however.

Thanks Ricky!

For more on this topic, I’ve blogged about using a bandwidth calculator to figure out whether your current WAN link is adequate or not for your replication jobs before.

VMWorld 2010 has come and gone. I’m definitely still recovering and trying to catch up on a lot of stuff I missed while working the Veeam booth. One of the first things I wanted to see that I heard so much about was the “vSpecialist Delight” video. This is definitely an awesome production from the team at EMC. Check it out, but please keep reading for the Veeam vPower video afterwards …

Mad props guys! BUT, I have a few observations I want to point out.

From what I can tell, although Fred and Nick wrote the lyrics, it appears that the vSpecialists are lip syncing to still yet to be signed Blaze1 actually rapping (Updated 9/5/10) Blaze1, a relative of the studio owner in Atlanta where the song was recorded, is the rapper in the song.

Here’s a screen shot from the credits at the end of the video.

Am I jealous? Sure. However, what really inspired me to write this post was when I read the lyrics available from Nick’s blog post. This rhyme especially got my attention:

Now I ain’t trying to start a backup race
Data Domain and Avamar will win that race

Fred, Thanks for the ride from the SFO airport, but “Holy 2Pac and Biggie Batman!”

That brings me to the “I Got vPower” song and video the Veeam Teeam made for VMWorld 2010. Like the guys in the bowling shirts

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I am in Seattle, WA for the third GestaltIT Tech Field Day (TFD). This time I am part of the presenting team for Veeam Software, and we are first up on the agenda. As with other recent events, I am using Cover It Live (CiL) to provide real time coverage and of our presentation and the reaction of the delegates (bloggers) attending. The best part about using Cover It Live is the event can be played back in the future, so check it out even if you missed it live.

I’m automatically pulling in the tweets of all involved, so I should have a good stream of both bloggers and sponsors represented here.

I’m using the following twitter lists:

• @TechFieldDay/tfd3-sponsors
• @TechFieldDay/tfd3-delegates

Look for my occasional commentary as well, but I’m not sure how much time I’ll actually have to participate. I’ll end the coverage when our time is up, which should be roughly 3 to 4 hours.

Click through the page break for the CiL widget and tune into the fun!

By the way, we are providing the first ever public demo of Veeam Backup and Replication 5.0 SureBackup!

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On Wednesday I’ll be "passing the (virtual) dutchie from coast to coast" as I fly from Georgia to Washington. Veeam will be presenting to the TFD Delegates first thing Thursday morning. During our presentation look for Veeam to be be "pulling out jives and jamboree handouts." I’ll tweet and blog what I can, but I’m sure the Delegates will provide their own "jig-saw jazz and the get-fresh flow."

As with TFD events in the past, Weds through Friday Twitter will rattle like "bottles and cans (so I advise you get ready)  and just clap your hands and just clap your hands."

Listen / watch the embedded YouTube video in order for this post to make a little more sense!

Here’s the list of all star attendees and sponsors as provided by GestaltIT.com:

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