Tag: Backup

Oct132020October 13, 2020October 13, 20201Commentby Thomas Maurer
Automanage for Azure virtual machines

Automanage for Azure virtual machines

Posted in Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Windows Server, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019

For me, one of the most impressive announcements at Microsoft Ignite, next to many of the Azure Arc and Azure Stack announcements, was the announcement of the Azure Automanage for virtual machines (VMs) public preview. As you know, Microsoft Azure offers many management services for Azure virtual machines (VMs). However, finding and configured these services can be some work. Azure Automanage for virtual machines helps to address precisely that. Azure Automanage for virtual machines is a service that eliminates the need to discover, know how to onboard, and how to configure certain services in Azure that would benefit your virtual machine.

In summary, Azure Automanage provides the following features to reduced cost by automating Windows Server management, improved workload uptime with optimized operations, and implementation of security best practices.

  • Intelligently onboards virtual machines to select best practices Azure services
  • Automatically configures each service per Azure best practices.
  • Monitors for drift and corrects for it when detected.
  • Provides a simple experience (point, click, set, forget)

You can find more information on Microsoft Docs.

Read More

Oct092019October 9, 2019October 9, 20190Commentby Thomas Maurer
VeeamON Virtual 2019

Experts Lounge at VeeamON Virtual 2019 Conference

Posted in Cloud, Events, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Speaking, Thomas Maurer, Virtualization, Windows Server, Windows Server 2019, Windows XP

I am happy to announce that I will be part of this year’s VeeamON Virtual Conference for Cloud Data Management. I will be part of the virtual expert’s lounge during the online event. As a Veeam Vanguard, this is a great opportunity and I am already looking forward to being part of this event. VeeamON Virtual will be on November 20, 2019, and you can find more information here.


Oct312016October 31, 2016September 2, 20180Commentby Thomas Maurer
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365

Posted in Cloud, Exchange Online, Microsoft, Office, Office365, PowerShell, Web, Work

Some weeks ago Veeam announced Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 and now you can finally download the Beta of it. To be honest with you the installation is brutally boring and simple, so I will only show you how you quickly can create a new backup job.

First create a new job

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 New Backup Job

Select a which mailboxes you want to backup

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 New Backup Job Select Mailboxes

configure schedule and retention and you are ready to go

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 New Backup Job Schedule

And guest what, with the Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange, you can also restore mails from your Office 365 mailboxes.

Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange

Check out the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 here.


Apr042016April 4, 2016November 1, 20180Commentby Thomas Maurer
Veeam Vanguard

Veeam Vanguard 2016

Posted in Cloud, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Virtualization, Web, Windows Server, Work

Today I had some great news in my inbox. I got awarded with my second Veeam Vanguard award in a row. I was one of the first Veeam Vanguards in 2015 and now I am proud to receive the Veeam Vanguard Award for 2016.

A Veeam Vanguard represents the Veeam brand to the highest level in many of the different technology communities in which Veeam engages. These individuals are chosen for their acumen, engagement and style in their activities on and offline.

Veeam Vanguard 2015


Jan062015January 6, 2015June 26, 20198Commentsby Thomas Maurer
DPM Deduplication

Deduplication in System Center Data Protection Manager

Posted in Cloud, Hyper-V, Microsoft, PowerShell, Private Cloud, System Center, Virtualization, Windows Server, Windows Server 2012 R2, Work

Today Microsoft announced support for Deduplication in System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM). To use Deduplication together with System Center Data Protection Manager you have to meet the following criteria:

  • The Server running System Center Data Protection Manager must be virtualized.
  • DPM Server has to use Windows Sevrer 2012 R2
  • The Hyper-V Sever where the DPM VM is running on has to be Windows Server 2012 R2
  • System Center Data Protection Manager must be version 2012 R2 with Update Rollup 4 (UR4) or higher.
  • The Data Storage of the DPM Server must be VHDX Files attached to the DPM VM.
  • DPM VHDX files need to be 1TB of size.
  • The VHDX files of the DPM Server must be stored on a Scale-Out File Server Cluster using SMB 3.0
  • All the Windows File Server nodes on which DPM virtual hard disks reside and on which deduplication will be enabled must be running Windows Server 2012 R2 with Update Rollup November 2014.
  • Deduplication is enabled on the CSV of the Scale-Out File Server
  • It is recommended to use Storage Spaces but it is not required
  • Use Parity Storage Spaces with enclosure-awareness for resiliency and increased disk utilization.
  • Format NTFS with 64 KB allocation units and large file record segments to work better with dedup use of sparse files.
  • In the hardware configuration above the recommended volume size is 7.2TB volumes.
  • Plan and set up DPM and deduplication scheduling
  • Tune the File Server Cluster for DPM Storage

DPM Deduplication

The combination of deduplication and DPM provides substantial space savings. This allows higher retention rates, more frequent backups, and better TCO for the DPM deployment. The guidance and recommendations in this document should provide you with the tools and knowledge to configure deduplication for DPM storage and see the benefits for yourself in your own deployment.

To get more information checkout the following TechNet Article: Deduplicating DPM storage

 


Dec172014December 17, 2014September 2, 20187Commentsby Thomas Maurer
Azure Backup Agent

How to Backup a Windows Client to Microsoft Azure

Posted in Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Private Cloud, System Center, Virtualization, Web, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Work

Today Microsoft announced that Microsoft Azure Backup now not only supports Windows Server or System Center Data Protection Manager, it also support Windows Clients, including Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.

To backup your Windows Client machine you have to go to the Azure Portal and create a new Backup Vault.

Create Azure Backup Vault

After that you have to download and install the Microsoft Azure Backup agent and the vault credentials which are needed to register the machine to your Backup Vault.

Azure Backup Agent

Now during the installation of the Azure Backup Agent you have to use the vault credential file to register your server. There are two different ways of registering machines to the backup vaults that store data:

  • Option #1: Register one machine per backup vault. The backup vault is created under Recovery Services in your Azure subscription. Please be aware that only 25 backup vaults can be created per subscription using this option. If you have more machines to backup to Azure, please use the second option.
  • Option #2: Register multiple machines to the same vault. This enables up to 50 machines to be registered with a single backup vault.

In both the options, access to the backup data is controlled using an encryption passphrase. At the time of registering a machine to a backup vault, an encryption passphrase is provided by the user – and this is used to encrypt and decrypt the data being backed up. With different encryption passphrases being used for different machines, isolation is guaranteed.

 

In both the options, access to the backup data is controlled using an encryption passphrase. At the time of registering a machine to a backup vault, an encryption passphrase is provided by the user – and this is used to encrypt and decrypt the data being backed up. With different encryption passphrases being used for different machines, isolation is guaranteed.

Azure Client Backup

Now you can see your machine in the Azure Portal in the recovery vault. After the Agent is installed you can launch the Microsoft Azure Recovery Services Agent to configure your backup.

Microsoft Azure Backup

After the first Backup is done, you can also start recovering data from Azure.

Azure Backup Recover Data

Some notes:

  • If you are running Azure Backup on your notebook or tablet, the backup will only run if the computer is not on battery mode. If your notebook is running on battery the backup will run the next time the machine is connected to a power source.
  • If you pick the backup time of your machine make sure the machine is not shutdown during that time.

Oct082014October 8, 2014October 8, 20140Commentby Thomas Maurer
Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE

Veeam Announces Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE

Posted in Microsoft, Virtualization, Web, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Work

This week I had the chance to be in Las Vegas at the VeeamON 2014 conference and so far it was an absolutely great event, but I will write about that in another blog post. Veeam also did announce the Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE which allows you to backup not only Windows based notebooks, tablets and desktops, it also allows you to backup physical Windows Server machines, which will make a lot of people very happy. Veeam points out that this will be a free release of a standalone product which will not be integrated in to the Veeam Suite. This means there will be no central management console which kind of makes it not useful for large scale deployments. But for highly virtualized environments this can be a great solution to backup a few of your remaining physical servers.

One More Thing

A beta version of Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE will be released in November and Veeam is looking for feedback. If you want to know more about it checkout Mike Resseler’s (Product Strategy Specialist for Veeam and Microsoft MVP) blog post.

Veeam Endpoint Backup Free



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    Thomas Maurer

    My name is Thomas Maurer. I am a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft. I am part of the Azure engineering team (Cloud + AI) and engage with the community and customers around the world. I am located in Switzerland. I am focusing on Microsoft technologies, especially cloud and datacenter solutions based on Microsoft Azure, Azure Stack and Windows Server. Opinions are my own.

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