veeam

Fixing Veeam Backup & Replication Proxy Install Errors

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Every once in a while I struggle a little to add a new Veeam Backup & Replication hot-add proxy. If you’re like me and seeing proxy install errors maybe some of these will fix you up. This is what worked for me on Windows Server 2016 when I was getting error 0x00000057, “Failed to create persistent connection to ADMIN$” and some other unhelpful messages. If you’re using a hardened Windows installation all bets are off, since the goal of hardening is to intentionally disrupt remote access. I’d get it running with as close to a stock Windows installation as possible and then work from there if you need to secure things further. There are also ways to manually install the Veeam …

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No VMware NSX Hardware Gateway Support for Cisco

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I find it interesting, as I’m taking my first real steps into the world of VMware NSX, that there is no Cisco equipment supported as a VMware NSX hardware gateway (VTEP). According to the HCL on March 13th, 2018 there is a complete lack of “Cisco” in the “Partner” category: I wonder how that works out for Cisco UCS customers. As I continue to remind vendors, virtualization environments cannot virtualize everything. There are still dependencies on things like DNS, DHCP, NTP, and AD that need a few physical servers. There will also always be a few hosts that can’t be virtualized because of vendor requirements, politics, and/or fear. Any solution for a virtual environment needs to help take care of those …

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Fixing Veeam “Can’t Delete Replica When It Is Being Processed” Errors

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I’ve used Veeam Backup & Replication for a long time now, and when we restructure storage, redeploy VMs, or change our replication jobs we sometimes get situations where we get the error: Error: Can’t delete replica when it is being processed Here’s how I fix it. As always, your mileage may vary, and free advice is often worth what you paid, especially from a stranger on the Internet. Veeam support is probably a safe but much higher latency source of non-free advice. Stop the affected jobs and disable them. Ensure that the replicas are gone, from both the VMware environment (vCenter) and in Backup & Replication (Replicas -> Ready, then right-click and Delete From Disk). Don’t delete it from the …

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When Should I Upgrade to VMware vSphere 6?

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I’ve been asked a few times about when I’m planning to upgrade to VMware vSphere 6. Truth is, I don’t know. A Magic 8 Ball would say “reply hazy, try again.” Some people say that you should wait until the first major update, like the first update pack or first service pack. I’ve always thought that approach is crap. Software is a rolling collection of bugs. Some are old, some are new, and while vendors try to make the number of bugs go down the truth is that isn’t the case all the time. Especially with large releases, like service packs. The real bug fixing gains are, to borrow a baseball term, in the “small ball” between the big plays. …

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Two Big Vendor Takeaways from Storage Field Day 5

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Storage Field Day 5 is now over and was a marathon of vendor information and tech information. A marathon. I’m tired from 17 hour days, I’m addicted to caffeine, and my brain and body hurt. We had some great people along, on both sides of things. We had great vendors all around, even if some of the presentations were more controversial than others. That’s what I want to talk about here. Problem #1: Efficient Use of Time Tech Field Day participants and viewers already know a lot about the problems a vendor is addressing. We’re on the front lines of this stuff. We help our customers and organizations work around these problems every day. We know budgets aren’t infinite, that …

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VMware Engineering, Are You Fixing Anything?

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I was just reading Josh Andrews’ account of a serious bug still present in the latest releases of VMware vCenter 5.0 (5.0b): This bug has been known for a while and while U1 contained some mentions about fixing it – we now have U1b and the problem still exists…. Make sure you have a cluster with HA and/or DRS turned on…. Enable VM Storage Profiles… Now return to your cluster summary to verify HA and DRS have been turned off and all settings have been lost. This is epic bad stuff here, because if there’s one good way to mess a lot of things up it’s to disable DRS. Especially if you have a vCloud Director setup, since if you shut DRS off …

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The Realities of Single Panes of Glass

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The folks at Virtualization Tech Field Day 2 were tweeting about single panes of glass (I think they were playing buzzword bingo) and reminded me of my feelings on the topic. I’ve never thought a single pane of glass was all that special, or necessary. Once upon a time, when I was the IT guy for a small environment, I never used them because I didn’t feel like dealing with the hassle of tying everything together, arbitrarily creating dependencies and unnecessarily complicating my life. Now, as an “enterprise” guy, I can’t use a single pane of glass to see into my storage, network, backups, etc. because of the politics & silos with the storage, network, and backup teams. And even if …

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Why Your Company Should Be A Part of Tech Field Day

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Next week I will be participating in my third Tech Field Day, this one in Austin, TX. It’s a great opportunity for both independent bloggers and companies. Here are four big reasons I think more companies should be participating in Tech Field Day. 1. The ability for actual users, and potential users, to give you direct feedback. Who is your company listening to for feedback? How does your company get feedback from actual users of your products, or potential users of your products? If it’s through your marketing or PR channels you might be getting a filtered version. Analysts are good, but in many cases they’re not actually going to use your product. With Tech Field Day there’s no filter. …

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