I am proud to announce my first blog sponsor, Veeam! I am using the Veeam Backup & Replication application at my home lab, company network and all of my customer sites. The software is simply awesome. It does what is says, backup & replicate. When a backup is made you can restore this backup in so many ways, and so fast is surprises me every time again.
So I am very happy and proud that they are my first sponsor.

Company info.

Veeam Software, an Elite VMware Technology Alliance partner, develops innovative products for virtual infrastructure management and data protection. Customers can reduce costs, minimize risks and fully realize the promise of virtualization with Veeam.

Veeam is an international company with North American headquarters in Columbus, Ohio USA; European headquarters in Reading, Berkshire UK; and APAC headquarters in Sydney, NSW Australia. Veeam has more than 30,000 customers worldwide and is currently adding new customers at the rate of 1500 per month. The company’s free FastSCP™ tool is used by more than 150,000 VMware professionals, making it the most widely used tool to help manage VMware.

The company was founded in 2006 by the team previously behind Aelita Software, well known for its Windows Server management solutions. In 2008, Veeam acquired nworks, adding solutions that bridge the gap between VMware and enterprise management systems from Microsoft and HP.

Veeam is rapidly expanding its presence and its partner network around the world and will continue to offer innovative and practical solutions to help IT professionals better manage their virtual infrastructure. Today the company focuses on managing VMware, but has announced support for Microsoft Hyper-V.

The Products

Veeam Backup & Replication™ with vPower™ provides advanced Virtualization-Powered Data Protection™ and is the #1 VM backup solution.

Veeam nworks extends enterprise monitoring to VMware and includes the nworks Management Pack™ for VMware management in Microsoft System Center and the nworks Smart Plug-in™ for VMware management in HP Operations Manager.

Veeam ONE™ provides a single solution to optimize the performance, configuration and utilization of VMware environments. It includes Veeam Monitor™ for easy-to-deploy VMware monitoring; Veeam Reporter™ for VMware capacity planning, change tracking and documentation; and Veeam Business View™ for VMware business service management and categorization.

Last week I was trouble shooting a problem that has appeared after I upgraded the Veeam Backup & Replication version 5 to version 6. Before the upgrade the backups where working correctly. No errors and everything was working accordantly. Then I upgraded the application, this went without any problems. The version that is running is 6.0.0.153.

The backup is configured to index the files of the backup so if there is a need to restore a file the customer can search through the backup and select the file that’s need to be restored.
After the upgrade I ran an test backup, this job failed with an error. The backup went fine, but the indexing of the backup file failed. The error was:

Failed to index guest file system. Details: Error: Cannot read data from volume Win32 error:The handle is invalid. Code: 6

In my case both servers where converted from a physical server to a virtual server on an VMware vSphere 4.1 platform. Both servers where running Windows 2003 Server.

I started looking for a solution on internet, Google is your best friend. I found a Veeam Forum article called Guest file indexing. See http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9721
This article describes exactly my problem. Also a converted Windows 2003 server. With Veeam version 5 no problems, with Veeam version 6 indexing error.

After reading the whole article my solution for the fix is patch 2 for Veeam 6. How to get this Patch 2, because it is not available for public download. So I created a support case. I uploaded the log files, and after a few hours I received an e-mail with the link to the patch that I need to install. After installing the patch my index error message went away, so the patch worked. Great work Veeam Support for the fast response.

Things that get fixed with patch 2 (http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9533#p41806) are:

• Issue 1. Direct SAN Access processing mode does not work for certain SAN makes and models.
• Issue 2. Virtual Appliance (Hot Add) processing mode does not work when backup proxy is installed on localized version of Microsoft Windows.
• Issue 3. Upgrade related issues affecting jobs created in v5 – poor incremenal backup performance, and large VIB file created on the first incremental run.
• Issue 6. Guest file system indexing fail on certain VMs with the “Win32 error:The handle is invalid” error.
• Issue 8. For v6 backup servers that were upgraded from v5, jobs fail to send email notifications if SMTP server requires authentication.
• Issue 9. Reversed incremental backup mode jobs scheduled to run on specific days only will also start on synthetic full backup day (as set under incremental backup mode options in the advanced job settings). Due to the same bug, Replication and VM Copy jobs will always start on Saturday (which is the default day for synthetic full backup).
• Issue 10. For jobs writing to CIFS-based backup repositories, backup results are not set in the selected VM attribute upon job completion.
• Issue 11. Added support for Cisco Nexus 1000V switch (port groups were not visible in UI).
• Issue 13. Added VM heartbit check for Migration jobs. Original VM files will not be removed until the heartbit is received. This was needed because it was reported that under certain circumstances (we were not able to reproduce this to date), the migration job fails to copy the virtual disk contents correctly, but nevertheless deletes the original.
• Issue 15. Under certain circumstances, the job fails with the following error: “Client error: Cannot allocate memory for an array. Array size: [4198400].”
• Issue 16. For VMs configured to use VMware DVS (Distributed Virtual Switch), restore and replication into a different vCenter server will fail.

Just as last year, Veeam has a Christmas gift for us as nerds…. A free Veeam Backup & Replication v6 license for in our home lab!! Great…

See http://www.veeam.com/news/holiday-gift-from-veeam-free-veeam-backup-and-replication-v6-licenses-for-your-lab155.html

Holiday gift from Veeam: free Veeam Backup & Replication v6 licenses for your lab

Free NFR Licenses for Evaluation and Demonstration Use available to VMware vExperts, VMware Certified Professionals, VMware Certified Instructors VMUG members, Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, and Microsoft Certified Professionals

Click to Tweet: Free holiday gift from @Veeam for vExperts, VCPs, VCIs, VMUG members, MVPs, MCPs http://vee.am/freenfr

Columbus, OH – Dec. 14, 2011

Who: Veeam Software, innovative provider of data protection, disaster recovery and management solutions for virtual datacenter environments,  today announced a holiday gift for VMware vExperts, VMware Certified Professionals,  VMware Certified Instructors, VMUG members, Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, and  Microsoft Certified Professionals.

What: Free software for home labs. In an expansion of last year’s program, any VMware vExpert, VCP, VCI, VMUG member, Microsoft MVP or MCP can receive a free two-CPU socket Not for Resale (NFR) license of Veeam Backup & Replication™ v6 for evaluation and demonstration use.

Where: NFR licenses are available at http://www.veeam.com/nfr/free-nfr-license and http://www.veeam.com/nfr/free-nfr-license-hyper-v.
“Veeam Backup & Replication v6 was downloaded more than 15 thousand times in its first week of availability, and with new support for Hyper-V, we are glad to extend our offer of NFR licenses to the Microsoft community as well as the entire VMUG community,” explained Doug Hazelman, Vice President of Product Strategy for Veeam Software.
“Access to free NFR licenses of Veeam Backup & Replication is another great perk of VMUG Membership. Thank you, Veeam, for supporting the VMUG Community,” said Jim Millard, VMUG member in the Midwest. Derek Schauland, Microsoft MVP said, “Veeam for the Microsoft Community?  Awesome! Having a program giving NFR licenses of Veeam software to the Microsoft community will be invaluable to the home lab and test needs of IT pros in pursuit of training, blogging and other activities. I look forward to this program.”

Today at the Dutch VMUG Veeam have announced they are giving VCP, vExperts and VCI a FREE two-socket license of Veeam Backup & Replication v5 with vPower and / or Veeam One Solution which incorporates Veeam Monitor Plus and Business View. Of course as there are NFR’s they can only be used for non production!

To claim your free license pop over to Veeam’s website and register.

http://www.veeam.com/nfr/free-nfr-license

More info why, see Veeam blog http://www.veeam.com/blog/happy-holidays-from-veeamnfrs-for-vcps-vcis-and-vexperts.html

Many Thanks Veeam!