In the previous post of this series, we installed and started the configuration of Veeam Availability Console. In this second part, we are going to look at the rest of the initial configuration, and plan for the first customer onboarding.
Veeam Availability Console series #1: Installation and initial configuration
As Veeam is soon to release the final version of a new solution, called Veeam Availability Console, I started to study this software, since it’s a key component of Veeam strategy for Service Providers, which is my main focus as a Veeam employee. In this series of posts, I will explore the software, its architecture, how it works, and what can be done with it. In this first post, we’ll start with a bit of theory, and we’ll see how to install and configure it.
Disable Items Restore options in Veeam Self-Service Backup Portal
Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 has introduced a complete set of self-service capabilities for VMware vCloud Director users. Service providers can offer these features to their users, and users can perform backups and restores in a complete self-service way.
However, because of network restrictions that are often in place in vCloud Director environments, some features like Item restores are not possible. So, some service providers asked me if it was possible to remove the ITEMS tab in the portal, just to make the user experience of the portal easier. Or maybe a provider doesn’t want to offer these capabilities at all to its customers. Whatever is the use case, there’s a way to remove the tab. Just remember, this is totally unsupported!
Fix NSX host preparation errors with manual installation of the components
I started to install VMware vCloud Director in my new lab, as I want to be ready to test the upcoming Veeam Cloud Connect Replication v10, with its native support for this cloud management platform. One of the requirements of vCloud Director is NSX, so I started with its installation. As I hit some errors in the “NSX Host Preparation” step, I learned how to fix them manually and how to automate a bit VIB deployments.
Don’t forget latency when you calculate network performance
In my job, I have to learn a lot about multiple topics of IT. Especially in the virtualization market, many people are usually well prepared when it comes to infrastructure, servers and storage, but I found out that the weakest point is many times networking. There are some topics that are obscure for many, like Layer2 vs Layer3, BGP, Spanning Tree, but there is one topic that is really important even for infrastructure guys, yet it’s almost unknown to them: Latency.
Disable VM MAC conflict in vSphere for Veeam replicated virtual machines
During Veeam replication jobs, your vCenter triggers the VM MAC conflict alarm. This happens because when a VM replica is created, it has the same MAC address and UUID as the original VM. This situation is totally expected because a newly created replica is an absolute copy of the original VM with exactly the same properties. This doesn’t create any issue, since the replicated virtual machine is not powered on, but more importantly because vCenter changes both replica’s MAC address and UUID. So, the issue is gone after a few moments, but the alarm remains in the console and it may be annoying. So, here’s how you can suppress the alarm.
Use VeeamPN to access Cloud Connect tenants
Last week, during the VeeamON 2017 conference, one of the announcements has been a completely new product, called VeeamPN (Veeam Powered Network), a solution to easily create virtual private networks betweens multiple public clouds, remote locations and roaming users. Even if the main use case of the solution is to ease the access to Azure virtual machines, I’ve found another interesting use case that I’m sure the service providers running Veeam Cloud Connect will like.
Public cloud is not infinite (if you ever thought it really is…)
I’m working on some heavy lab tests in these weeks, plus I’m travelling a bit more than usual, so my blogging activity has slowed down a bit. As I’m catching up on the news I read around, I found two different articles that can give to all of us a good perception about two things about the public cloud, or the so called “hyper-scalers”. They have insanely massive resources, but as insane as they are, they are not infinite.