Last week, Veeam released the new Veeam Service Provider Console v4, the latest version of what was previously called Veeam Availability Console. I run my own VAC (now VSPC) environment, so I decided to take the opportunity to upgrade my lab to the latest version to learn the upgrade process.
For a new chapter of my book on Veeam Availability Console, I created a second virtual datacenter and I needed to connect the two of them together with a vpn. I have many options, like using the embedded ipsec capabilities of the NSX Edge i have at both sites, as they both run vCloud Director, but I decided to use Veeam Powered Network, in order to use this opportunity to learn more about it. And the first thing I’ve learned was how to configure the appliance with a static IP address.
Lately I was updating a couple of my scripts, and when I re-used my script that automatically updates AWS records for Let's Encrypt DNS challenges, I realised that I never stored my AWS credentials anywhere, but I was just using those cached into my powershell environment. Time to have some proper credential management.
The beginning of each year, lately seems to be the time when I have to update my scripts that control the automatic management of SSL certificates. I started three years ago by learning first about Let's Encrypt certificates, and how they could have solved my needs for automatically renew (for free!) my SSL certificates. At the time I started to use ACMESharp: it seemed to be a great fit as it worked in powershell and had all the features I needed; but lately, it has lagged behind, and the move the ACME v2 was the final nail in its coffin.
For my tests, I use a couple of vCloud Director services thanks to some really generous service providers which are also Veeam customers. From time to time, I see they upgrade their installations but as an end user is not always straight-forward to find out which version of vCloud Director is in use. But there’s a way to find out even for end users.
Last week, I explained how to manually connect standalone computers to Veeam Availability Console. This time we will try to automate this process as much as possible.
Veeam Availability Console has been designed for multiple use cases, and one of them is to manage large fleets of computers. But what about those standalone machines we have lying around? It could be the last physical server we have in the datacenter, or a laptop of a consultant that is always travelling around. How can we deal with those? I involved my family’s computers to find out.
If you are subscribed to this blog via RSS, you may have noticed that May and June have been two empty months in terms of writing, and tobe honest the entire 2019 has not been so prolific as usual. This is because I worked, and I’m still working, on some large projects that took a big chunk of my time. I’m still writing these days, but the outcome is coming out in big pieces instead of weekly posts. The first one is this, about Veeam Availability Console.