New year, new Let’s Encrypt automation: goodbye ACMEsharp, hello Posh-ACME!

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.

Automate Let’s Encrypt certificate renewals with AWS Route53 DNS records

I wrote already two articles about this topic. I know that managing SSL certificates can be a cumbersome task, so any option to automate the process is a great addition to any IT administrator toolbox. This is why Let’s Encrypt certificates are becoming so popular, not just because they are free but also because the automated platform that they use allow for some amazing automation solutions. In my first article Use Let’s Encrypt free certificates in Windows for Veeam Cloud Connect I explained the basics of Let’s Encrypt technology, and how to use its certificates on a Windows machine using ACMEsharp libraries with Powershell. Then, in the second article Improved Powershell script for Let’s Encrypt certificate renewals I optimized the script even more. But still, there was room for improvement and even more automation.

The new book about Veeam Cloud Connect 9.5 Update 4

More than two years ago, when we released Veeam Cloud Connect 9.0, I massively reworked my original paper on the topic, and the final result became a book available as a pdf. The book was also printed and I have some copies at home; not something to win any nobel price, but it's nice to see them there as remind me of the massive work it took. Then, the cloud was calling, and I decided it was time to make it more modern and after some re-editing and learning how markdown and github work, the book became an online resource that people can freely and easily read.

Automated Veeam Cloud Connect deployment: 3 – connect to VMware virtual environment

In the previous posts we completed the automatic configuration of the Veeam Cloud Connect environment. In this third post of this short series, we will add additional resources in order to offer replication services. In fact, all the Cloud Connect components are now successfully deployed, so Backup services can already be offered, but to offer also replication services we need to connect our environment to the virtualized platform. Historically, Veeam Cloud Connect supported VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V, but since the soon-to-come 9.5 Update 4 will also add support for VMware vCloud Director, we will see how to add both to the infrastructure.