Register for this webinar and learn how to manage, utilize and defeat challenges. Topics include:

• Your replication jobs
• Bandwidth throttling
• Replication in combination with backups
• Real-life replication challenges
• Veeam replication functionalities, such as replication mapping, replication seeding and more

What is a Virtual Lab

A virtual lab is an isolated virtual test environment where verified VMs with all components required for their proper operation are started and tested. A virtual lab is created using existing resources in your virtual environment and ensures secure integrity and functionality testing for backed up VMs.

When a new virtual lab is created, Veeam Backup & Replication adds a new VM folder, vSwitch and an optional resource pool on the host where the virtual lab is registered. The network configuration in the virtual lab mirrors the configuration of the production network. For example, if a tested VM and its dependencies are located in two logical networks in your production environment, these two networks will be recreated in the virtual lab and mapped to corresponding production networks.

To enable communication between the outer world and VMs in the virtual lab, Veeam Backup & Replication uses a proxy appliance that is created and registered in the folder and resource pool of the virtual lab. The proxy appliance is a VM that acts as a gateway routing requests from the production network to the isolated network.

To connect to isolated networks, Veeam Backup & Replication adds to the proxy appliance a vNIC adapter for each network. Each vNIC adapter gets an IP address from the network to which it is connected, which is typically the same as the IP address of a default gateway in the corresponding production network.

If the application group to be started in the virtual lab does not have a DHCP server and some applications in this group as well as verified applications require DHCP, you can enable the DHCP service on the vNIC adapter for each isolated network. You can also select specific DNS servers from the production network that should be started in the isolated network. Keep in mind that to be able to add a DNS server, you should have it virtualized in your production environment, and you should also have its backup.

To ensure correct work of applications, VMs in isolated networks are run with the same IP addresses as in the production network. To avoid IP address conflicts between VMs in production and isolated networks, Veeam Backup & Replication uses IP masquerading. For each isolated logical network, Veeam Backup & Replication assigns a masquerade IP address, and adds a new route to the IP routing table in the Veeam Backup console, where a proxy appliance is specified as a gateway to access VMs in this network.

For example, when trying to access a VM with IP address 172.16.10.1 in the isolated network, Veeam Backup & Replication sends a request to the masquerade IP address 172.17.10.1. According to the routing rule added to the IP routing table, all requests are first sent to the next hop – the proxy appliance. The proxy appliance performs address translation, substitutes the masquerade IP address with a real IP address in the isolated network, and forwards the request to the necessary VM in the isolated network – in our case, to 172.16.10.1.

Sometimes it is necessary to provide many clients with access to a restored VM, which is especially the case for user-directed U-AIR restores. For example, you may want to provide access to a backup copy of the Exchange Server for employees using web-based access (Outlook Web Access). In this situation, it is impossible to update the routing table on every client machine. Veeam Backup & Replication enables you to get access to a VM in the isolated network directly from a production environment. To get access to a VM in the isolated network, you should reserve a static IP address in the pool of production IP addresses and specify which IP address of the VM powered on in the isolated environment it matches. This static IP address will be assigned to the proxy appliance NIC connected to the production network. IP traffic directed to the specified static IP address will be routed by the proxy appliance to the VM powered on in isolated network.

For example, to access a VM that has IP address 192.168.1.20 in the isolated network, you can reserve IP address 192.168.1.3 (in production) for it. You should also register an alias record in the production DNS server for the reserved IP address. For the example mentioned above, you can register backup.exchange.local as an alias for the IP address 192.168.1.3.

Creating a Virtual Lab

When setting up a virtual lab, you should select an ESX host on which it should be created, a datastore to hold redo logs and files of the proxy appliance, and specify settings for a proxy appliance and isolated networks.

To create a new virtual lab, you have to start the New Virtual Lab wizard. Do one of the following:

• Right-click the Virtual Lab item in the menu on the left and select Create virtual lab from the shortcut menu.

• Click Virtual Labs under SureBackup in the management tree, right-click anywhere on blank area in the information pane and select Create virtual lab from the shortcut menu.

Step 1. Specify Name and Description

Enter a name and description for the new virtual lab. The default description contains time at which the lab was created and user who created it.

Step 2. Select a Host

Click Choose to select an ESX(i) host on which the new virtual lab will be created. You can select a standalone ESX(i) host or the one being a part of a cluster.

Note If you want to create a virtual lab on the ESX(i) server being a part of the vCenter hierarchy, make sure that this vCenter server is added to the Veeam Backup & Replication console. If such ESX(i) server is added as a standalone host, a virtual lab will not be created on it.

For every new virtual lab, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a dedicated folder and a resource pool where all tested VMs and the virtual proxy will run during recovery verification process. By default, the folder and the pool have the same name as the virtual lab. To change the name of the destination folder and/or resource pool, click Configure and enter the necessary names in the Destination Options section.

Note In clusters with disabled DRS no resource pools can be created. If the destination host is included in such a cluster, click Configure and clear the Create resource pool check box. For details, refer to the VMware Knowledge Base.

Step 3. Select Datastore

Click Choose to select a datastore on which redo logs for tested VMs should be stored. Redo logs are auxiliary files used to store all changes that take place when a VM is run from a read-only backup. As soon as a recovery verification jobs completes, redo logs are deleted.

Step 4. Set Up Proxy Appliance

To enable automatic recovery verification of VMs, select the Use proxy appliance in this virtual lab check box. The proxy appliance acts as a gateway that provides access from Veeam Backup server to VMs running in the isolated virtual lab. If you do not select this check box, you will only be able to verify VMs and perform item-level restore using built-in temporary VM console in Veeam Backup & Replication, or using vSphere Client, and perform heartbeat tests.

By default, the virtual proxy uses the name of the virtual lab. To change the default name, click Configure in the Proxy appliance VM settings section and specify the name of the created virtual appliance.

Click Configure in the Production network connection section to select a network where the proxy appliance should be created, specify its IP address and settings of DNS server to be used. You can choose to automatically obtain IP address for the proxy appliance and DNS server, or set them manually.

Important! If you assign a proxy appliance an IP address from the same network where the Veeam Backup server is located, Veeam Backup & Replication will automatically add a new route to the routing table on the Veeam Backup server. If you assign a proxy appliance an IP address from the network other than that where the Veeam Backup server is located, you will have to manually add a new route to the routing table on the router in the production network. Otherwise you will not be able to access virtual machines in isolated networks.

Step 5. Select the Networking Mode

Select the type of network settings configuration. Veeam Backup & Replication offers two types of networking for the created virtual lab:

• Basic – this type of networking is recommended if you have only one production network, and the Veeam Backup server is located in that network. Veeam Backup & Replication will use parameters of this network to automatically configure an isolated network to verify tested VMs.

• Advanced – this type of networking is recommended if you are planning to verify VMs that have dependencies on other VMs located in different networks. In this case, you will have to configure network parameters for these isolated networks manually.

Step 6. Specify Isolated Networks

This step is available if you have selected the Advanced networking option at the Networking step of the wizard.

At this step of the wizard, you should create isolated networks where verified VMs should be started, and map them to production networks where these VM are located.

To add a network, click Add and select a production network in which a VM from the application group or a verified VM resides. Then, specify a name for an isolated network that should be mapped to this production network, and enter an identifier for the created virtual network.

Step 7. Specify Network Settings

This step is available if you have selected the Advanced networking option at the Networking step of the wizard.

At this step of the wizard, you should specify settings for every created isolated networks and how a proxy appliance should connect the production network to these networks.

Communication between the production network and an isolated network is carried out through the vNIC adapter that is added to the proxy appliance. A vNIC adapter is added for each isolated network.

To add an adapter, click Add and specify its connection settings.

Select the network to which you want this adapter to be connected. Specify the IP address that the proxy appliance should have in this isolated network, and the subnet mask. Typically, the IP address should coincide with the gateway IP address in the production network.

Note Network addresses for different adapters should be different. For example, if the first adapter has address 192.168.0.1 with mask 255.255.255.0, and the second one – 192.168.0.2 with mask 255.255.255.0, such configuration will not be supported.

Once you specify the IP address, Veeam Backup & Replication will automatically configure a masquerade IP address for accessing VMs running in the virtual lab through the production network.

Select the Enable DHCP service on this adaptor check box and specify settings of a virtualized DNS server if necessary. Click OK to save settings.

Select the Route network traffic between vNICs check box to enable communication between isolated networks. When you select this option, make sure that the IP address of the proxy appliance in the isolated network matches the IP address of a proxy appliance in the production network.

Step 8. Specify Static IP Mapping

At this step of the wizard, you can specify static IP address mapping rules to make VMs in the virtual lab accessible from any computer in the production network.

To add a new static IP relation, click Add. In the IP relation window, specify an IP address of a VM in the production network, and its masquerade IP – a free IP address from the production network that will be used to access it in the isolated network from the production environment.

Step 9. Apply Parameters

Review the parameters of the virtual lab which will be created. You can go back to any previous step to adjust the parameters. If everything is fine, click Next to create the virtual lab.

Important! Use Veeam Backup & Replication to modify or delete a virtual lab. If you change lab settings or delete any of its components from outside (for example, using vSphere Client), the lab will be corrupted and its component such as created vSwitch, resource pool and so on will remain in the virtual infrastructure.

I also found a Youtube movie about the working of the Virtual Lab. This movie is created by Andreas Neufert of Veeam.

Some key points are:

• Real-time monitoring and alerting
• Storage monitoring
• Advanced alerting capabilities
• Easy documentation and management reporting
• Customizable dashboard

See http://www.veeam.com/virtual-server-management-one-free.html?utm_source=defaultreasoning&utm_medium=textad&utm_campaign=onefree for more information.

There is also a Licenced version of Veeam One. To see a comparison see http://www.veeam.com/veeam_one_free_en_ds.pdf

*** Update 24-04-2012 ***

Found a youtube movie about the features of Veeam One.

When I completed the configuration of the backup job my scheduled date was not the last Friday of the month but the next Friday.

This is not correct, in my case the backup should start at Friday 30 march.

So I started looking on the internet, also checked the Veeam forum, found another post http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10704. I decided to install the latest patch for Veeam B&R v6, patch 3. I checked the release notes, but it no info about a scheduling problem. I installed it anyway, you never know…

After a reboot my schedule was corrected, the job is scheduled to run at Friday 30 march. Problem solved…

Patch 3 can be downloaded here: http://www.veeam.com/kb_articles.html/KB1442

Patch 3 release notes.

These are the issues resolved by the Patch 3 for Veeam Backup version 6.0.0.153. All patches are cumulative so each below fix is contained in this patch.

• Application-aware processing fails for SQL server where Veeam configuration database is located.
• Cannot specify “0″ in re-IP rule.
• Hot add operation can sometimes cause a very long backup source/target proxy Virtual Machine stun. This stun can be so long that it can cause all jobs using this backup proxy to fail due to timeout with:”Error: Client error: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time”.
• CBT may fail on virtual disks other than Hard Disk 1 with the “Soap fault. A specified parameter was not correct” error when the hot add processing mode is used.
• Backup console UI freezes periodically (upon automatic refresh event) when there is a large number of managed objects exist.
• Any job processing the same Virtual Machine longer than 48 hours is forcibly terminated.The new timeout is set to 7 days.
• Very large jobs start failing with the “Failed to save file content” error after the VBM metadata file reaches 4 MB in size.
• Hyper-V CSV ownership change during backup or replication preparation process may take too long with certain storage devices, causing bug check (BSOD) on Hyper-V hosts.
• Hyper-V virtual disks with the disk file’s extension in capital letters (.VHD) are backed up like regular files, and not like virtual disks.
• Copying very large files to Linux or ESX host with service console credentials specified may fail.

Enhancements

• For VMware virtual machines with multiple disks, hot add was changed to only happen once for each processed virtual machine instead of multiple times, before each processed disk.
• Improved VMware replication failback performance by enhancing the virtual disk digest calculation process.
• Improved vPower NFS performance by removing some excessive logging.
• Changed the warning about outdated VMware Tools on the processed virtual machine to an information event.
• Removed CBT warning from the initial run of backup and replication jobs which have backup and replica mapping configured.
• Added support for adding Hyper-V with Veeam Backup and Replicationg installed. Previously, adding the host would fail with the “User credentials cannot be used for local connections” error.
• Improved bottleneck analysis formulas for proxy and network processing stages. For example, heavy backup target load should no longer affect the Network stage percent busy value.

• %AllUsersProfile%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories\Windows PowerShell\Windows PowerShell.lnk
• %AllUsersProfile%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Administrative Tools\Server Manager.lnk
• %AllUsersProfile%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Administrative Tools\Windows PowerShell Modules.lnk

Keep in mind the path for %AllUsersProfile% is typically C:\ProgramData.  When you add the files using Group Policy Management you will select the files by drilling down to C:\ProgramData, Microsoft, Windows, Start Menu, etc, but you will notice when you’ve added them it auto-magically changes the path %AllUsersProfile%.
Use the “Configure this file or folder and propagate inheritable permissions to all subfolders and files” option on all three files.  Make sure to attach the new OU to your RDS OU or modify your existing RDS GPO. Run gpupdate /force from the command prompt on your RDS servers after adding/modifying this GPO and you’re ready to go!

Off course you can also configure the security settings manually or script.

icacls "%ProgramData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories\Windows PowerShell" /T /inheritance:d
icacls "%ProgramData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories\Windows PowerShell" /T /remove:g "BUILTIN\Users" Everyone
icacls "%ProgramData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Administrative Tools\Server Manager.lnk" /inheritance:d
icacls "%ProgramData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Administrative Tools\Server Manager.lnk" /remove:g "BUILTIN\Users" Everyone

Symptoms

• After every reboot, Windows 2008 virtual machines lose their Gateway IP address.
• Gateway IP address is lost or reset after rebooting

Resolution

This issue may occur if there is a problem with the registry keys DefaultGateway and DefaultGatewayMetric.

Microsoft has identified this issue and has released a hotfix. For more information and to download the hotfix, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 973243.

To work around this issue:

1. From the Windows Registry Editor, navigate to HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/Tcpip/Parameters/Interfaces/%CLSID%.
2. Check the DefaultGateway and DefaultGatewayMetric keys for issues. For example:

• Remove any newline feeds before the correct default gateway IP
• If the address is missing, add it manually.

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.

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.

The result is that I cannot change any drivers or devices.

The solution is very simple but not obvious. My computer name is longer than 15 characters. This is a problem for NetBIOS computers. It turns out this is also a problem for the device manager. So I changed my computer name to a name with less than 15 characters, now everything works normal again.

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.”