This World Backup Day, WIN with Altaro!

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As World Backup Day approaches, we’re reminded of all the mishaps, backup scares, and near-catastrophes that we’ve experienced over the years – and how grateful we were to have backup during those times!

If you use Microsoft 365/Office 365, Hyper-V or VMware, celebrate with us. All you have to do is sign up for a 30-day free trial of either Altaro VM Backup or Altaro Office 365 Backup – it’s your choice!

What can you win?

· Receive a guaranteed €20 Amazon voucher when you sign up for and use the trial of Altaro Office 365 Backup or Altaro VM Backup

· Get a chance to WIN one of our Grand Prizes when you tell us about your funniest IT catastrophe!

What are you waiting for? Sign up now!

Nakivo Backup & Replication 9.3 is available

This week Nakivo Backup & Replication 9.3 has been released. There are a lot of cool features within Nakivo Backup & Replication, but one special new feature is support for Oracle RMAN. It’s now possible to backup Oracle databases using Oracle RMAN. Within a few steps, your databases are protected now.

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The installation is really straightforward. It is possible to install Nakivo Backup and Replication on Windows, Linux, virtual appliance (VMware and Hyper-V), on NAS devices as well, like QNAP, Synology, NETGEAR and even on a Raspberry Pi. You can find the list of supported devices and hardware here. Also the deployment requirements for Nakivo Backup and Replication.

Features of Nakivo Backup and Replication:

Oracle backup and restore – there is integration with Oracle RMAN to backup and restore your Oracle databases, using the native Oracle tools. You can schedule and automate your backups.

Backup to cloud – you can send backup copies directly to the cloud (AWS EC2 or Microsoft Azure)

Protect physical, virtual and cloud environments – support for AWS, VMware, Hyper-V, Office 365, Nutanix AHV cluster, physical machines (Windows and Linux)

P2V – backup physical machines and recover it to a virtual machine, like VMDK, VHD or VHDX.

Backup Office 365 mailboxes – backup user mailboxes and recover single items in the origional mailbox, or in a different mailbox

Cross-platform Recovery – export your virtual machine in the desired format and recover it on your hypervisor (VMware or Hyper-V)

Support for Windows Server 2019 – also support for Windows Server 2019, including Hyper-V Server and cluster environtments

Performance – creat performance optimizations like Advanced Bandwith Throtteling, Deduplication, LAN-Free Data Transfer, Network Acceleration using multiple transporter instances

Huge variety of integrations

Nakivo Backup and Replication offers a huge variety of application and platform integrations. ensuring that your critical data, applications and workloads are safe.

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Conclusion:

Nakivo Backup and Replication is a really powerfull and easy to manage backup and recovery solution. The setup is easy, with a great performing webinterface/GUI. It supports a lot of different platforms and cloud environments. Hopefully support for Microsoft Azure workloads will come in the future, but at this moment it is not possible. Support for backup and restore Oracle databases is really powerfull!!

You can get Nakivo 15 days trial and you’re up and running within 2 minutes.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication – Installation, Configuration, and Backup

Disaster Recovery and Replication for Hyper-V VMs using Altaro VM Backup

Free White Paper

If you are responsible for virtualized workloads using Hyper-V, ensuring the highest possible availability and minimising downtime should be one of your biggest priorities. Experiencing a loss in a business-critical application or service can result in an interruption in services affecting the ability to carry out work and affect your reputation as a reliable service provider.

Altaro VM Backup is a fast, reliable, and easy to use backup solution for virtualized workloads and features disaster recovery (DR) and replication which can drastically reduce downtime when the unexpected occurs. Altaro prides itself on its industry-leading support, however, knowing the basics of DR and replication can be hugely valuable in getting the most out of the software.

This whitepaper explains how to secure critical business operations and ensure availability of critical VMs in your infrastructure using Altaro and Public Cloud technologies. It covers everything you need to get started including:

· Defining RPOs and RTOs

· How to set up replication and conduct the initial replication

· How to monitor replication jobs

· How to failover to a DR site

Download the White Paper

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Vembu BDR Suite v4.0 Generally Available (GA)

This week Vembu BDR Suite v4.0 became Generally Available (GA). With a lot of new features, customer requests and performance enhancements, it’s a realy nice product to backup your workloads.

My attention goes sepcially to Hyper-V backup, because I’m a real Microsoft geek!!

Here’s a overview of some enhancements:

  • Hyper-V Failover CLuster Support;
  • Checksum Based Incremental Tracking;
  • Shared VHDX support for Hyper-V;
  • Credential Manager;
  • Improvements to the User Interface (UI);
  • Reconnection for VMware and Hyper-V jobs;
  • New Disk Addition for VMware and Hyper-V;
  • Live Recovery to VMware;
  • Live Recovery to Hyper-V;
  • Quick VM Recovery Report;
  • API for VM list with Storage utilization report;

Some major features in the new Vembu BDR Suite:

  • Agentless Microsoft Hyper-V Backup with CBT Incrementals;
  • Disk Image Backup for WIndows Servers and Workstations;
  • Native Tape Storage support;
  • File & Application Backup for Windows, Linux and Mac;
  • Bare Metal Recovery;
  • Vembu Universal Explorer;
  • Failover and Failback;
  • Free Edition support;

This is only just a bunch of new features and major features in the new Vembu BDR Suite v4.0. Check the release notes here.

Personally I’m realy happy with the Hyper-V Failover Cluster Support!! In my daily job I’m designing and building a lot of Hyper-V environments, inclusing huge and complex clusters.

The whole team from Vembu did a realy great job with the new release of Vembu BDR Suite v4.0. Great enhancements, great new features and realy easy to use! With the new features, new major features, enhancements and support for cluster environments, Vembu BDR Suite v4.0 is a very powerful solution for backup and disaster recovery.

Below some handy URL’s. Check it out and try Vembu BDR Suite v4.0 yourself!!

Note:

Vembu BDR Suite v4.0 is available only for fresh installation. Soon it will also be available for existing environments to upgrade from older versions.

 

 

 

 

Upgraded my homelab!!

Last week I’ve upgraded my homelab again. Now Windows Server 2019 is GA, this setup is running Windows Server 2019 with the Hyper-V server role enable. This machines has capacity enough to run several virtual machines and also nested virtualization. Very useful to install for example a virtual Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) cluster of other Hyper-V clusters!

So let’s rock and create some virtual machines running Windows Server 2016 and 2019!!

  • AMD A8 3870K 3.00GHz 4MB FM1 Box
  • Asus F1A75-V PRO AMD A75, SATA600 RAID, HDMI
  • Corsair 32GB PC3-14900 DDR3 SDRAM Vengeance (4x 8GB, 1866MHz
  • 1 x Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250 GB
  • 1 x Crucial CT512MX100SSD1 512 GB
  • 1 x WD Cavlar Green 1,5 TB

And this setup is fast….realy fast!! The boot tinme of a virtual machine running Windows Server 2019 is around the 5 seconds!!

     

     

Build a virtual S2D cluster with Windows Server 2019 build 17744

Windows Server 2016 and 2019 Storage Sapces Direct (S2D) allows building HA storage systems using storage nodes with local storage, such as SATA or SSD disks.

In this blogpost, I’ll deploy a two node S2D cluster based on Windows Server 2019 build 17744. The main machine is a HP ProBook 450 G5 with Windows 10, 16 GB memory, 512 GB SSD disk, and Hyper-V enabled.

First of all, I’ve deployed the following virtual machines:

  • S2D-W2019-DC01 (Domain Controller, DNS, Group Policies)
    IP address: 172.16.0.100
  • S2D-W2019-HV01 (Hyper-V host, S2D node)
    IP address: 172.16.0.101 (LAN)
    IP address: 10.10.0.101 (Live Migration)
  • S2D-W2019-HV02 (Hyper-V host, S2D node)
  • IP address: 172.16.0.102 (LAN)
    IP address: 10.10.0.102 (Live Migration)

All the servers are installed with Windows Server 2019 build 17744. The first server I’ve configured is the domain controller. My internal domain is s2dlab.local.

For both S2D nodes (S2D-W2019-HV01 and S2D-W2019-HV02), you’ve to configure some additional settings, because this servers are virtual. So we’re going to run Hyper-V in Hyper-V and on that Hyper-V host there’re some guest virtual machines (nested virtualization) 😀 Cool stuff!!!


$S2DHOST1 = 'S2D-W2019-HV01'
$S2DHOST2 = 'S2D-W2019-HV02'

# List all virtual machines
Get-VM

# Enable nested virtualization on virtual machines
Set-VMProcessor -VMName $S2DHOST1 -ExposeVirtualizationExtensions $true
Set-VMProcessor -VMName $S2DHOST2 -ExposeVirtualizationExtensions $true

Next, you’ve to Configure the following settings within the VM configuration:

  • Disable dynamic memory;
  • Set the number of virtual processors to 2 or 4;
  • Turn on MAC address spoofing on your network interface(s);

           

Now the domain controller is up and running and both S2D nodes are installed and configured with Windows Server 2019, it’s time to add some storage. Both servers have 3 x 50 GB virtual disks attached! Note!! this is only for testing and demo!! 

So we’ve 300 GB storage available for our S2D cluster. After this is done, you can install the following roles and features within Windows Server:

  • (Role) File and Storage Services;
  • (Role) Hyper-V;
  • (Feature) Failover Clustering;

           

Now all the components are ready to build the cluster. It’s recommended to run the cluster validation before building your cluster! The name of my cluster is ‘S2D-CL01’ with IP address 172.16.0.200/16. Note!! Uncheck the option ‘Add all eligible storage to the cluster’!!

The cluster is up and running. As you can see within your Active Directory and DNS configuration, there’re three computer objects (two cluster nodes and one Failover Cluster object).

                 

The last step before enabling ‘S2D’ on our cluster is checking the disk configuration.


# List all available disks within the cluster nodes
Get-PhysicalDisk

# Enable Storage Spaces Direct on the cluster
Enable-ClusterS2D

# List all Storage Pools within the S2D cluster
Get-Storagepool S2D*

     

Now our cluster is Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) enabled. The last step is to create a virtual disk within our Storage Pool and add it as a Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) to the cluster, wo we can store workloads on it! Bacause we’ve a two node cluster, the only Resiliency type is Two-Way Mirror.

                 

Wrap Up:

In this blogpost we’ve builded a two nodes virtual Storage Spaces Direct cluster in Hyper-V (Windows 10). The S2D nodes are running Windows Server 2019. It’s really a nice opportunity to run this configuration virtual on your laptop or desktop, while nested virtualization is supported and it works great!!

In the next blogpost I’ll show you to install and configure a virtual machine within our S2D cluster. Also performing some live migrations to show the high availability and resiliency of our setup!

Failover Hyper-V cluster nodes with mixed Upper & Lower case names

I’ve seen a lot of Hyper-V clusters during my daily work. Most of the time, I see a mixture of none standardised names or letters. Also a mixture of upper and lower case names.

There’s is only one option to have all your cluster nodes in Upper case names within the failover cluster manager, you’ll have to use the command line! For example:

cluster.exe /cluster:<name of the cluster> /add /node:<name of the node in UPPER case>

For this command to work, you’ve to install ‘Failover Cluster Command Interface’.