Daryl Hunter - Church IT Guy

Veeam Backup - Part 2 (and a half) - Servers and Jobs

Welcome back!  I sure hope you haven't been holding your breath for the last 5 months since my first post on Veeam Backup.  If so - impressive!

Here's what I've written so far - so you can catch up.

• Veeam Backup - Part 1 - Background & Installation
• UPGRADED: Veeam Backup & Replication v4.0

Since the last post, the Veeam Backup & Replication v4.1 bits have dropped - so - I've upgraded again.  The upgrade process is so easy, I won't bore you with details.  It happened just like the v4.0 upgrade.  Next next next.

What I wanted to focus on here is adding servers & jobs.  I've built and rebuilt this particular setup a dozen times and have finally landed the plane.

Adding Servers
Let's start by launching Veeam Backup & Replication (duh!)

Looks good, right?  Now, click the "Add Server" button in the upper toolbar.

We're going to add all 6 of our ESX hosts (and both clusters).  This is done best via our vCenter Server - and that is our physical "backup" server - cleverly named BACKUP.  Click Next.

Gotta enter a username with appropriate credentials.  We'll use the "veeam.admin" service account.  Also, note that we use the non-standard port 4430 for the vCenter services.  Port 443 is already in use on this box - so - I just picked another port. Click Next.

 

Verify - all looks good.  Click Finish.  Now, you'll see all our ESX hosts, and clusters, in the Veeam Backup & Replication GUI.

Now, let's enter our credentials for logging onto the hosts.  Pick a host, right-click on it and choose properties.

 

Here's where we'll enter a "local username" and then "root" credentials for the Veeam Agent to connect for all the magic to happen.

That's enough of that.  Let's get a job going.

Creating A Backup Job
So, we have Veeam Backup & Replication v4.1.  We've got vCenter loaded (with all our servers).  We've got credentials set for all the servers.  Let's create a job.  Launch the GUI and click on the "Backup" button to start the job creation wizard.

Give it a useful name.  This is a screenshot from a job backing up an Application server called APPS03.  Click Next.

 

Choose your backup method - API (direct storage), VCB (VMWare Conlidated Backup), or Network. We want to use API - this will open some CBT (changed block tracking) capabilities for us. Click Next.

Now, let's choose a VM to backup.  Click Add.

Expand out to find the VM we want - we want to backup APPS03.  Click Add.

 

Great.  This is what we want. Click Next.

Great - now - let's choose a good destination. We can choose a "local" destination or a "remote" destination.  We'll choose "okcesx01" - that's the remote/DR datastore.

There - that's what we want.  Click Advanced.

Choose any settings.  Click the Compression tab.

We like inline dedupe - let's do that.  Click the vSphere tab.

 

CBT - hooray!  This is only for ESX4 and only when running virtual hardware 7 (VH7).  Click the Backup tab.

Here's how we can choose how many "rollback" points to keep.  14 is the default.  We'll adjust this later.  Click OK.  Click Next.

Do you care about VSS?  If so - info here.  Click Next.

Automatically run?  Click Next.

Verify - decide whether to run the job automatically? Click Finish.

Run That Job
Great - now - run the job!  I'm missing some screenshot here, but, basically... here's how backup works...

• Job verifies the VM(s) to be backed up, and gets all sorts of information
• VB&R checks licensing
• VB&R creates a "snapshot" for the VM to be backed up
• Job Runs
• Job cleans up snapshots
• Job presents a report

So... Here's what it looks like at the end

So - Job is done.  Click OK.

Now, let's run it again... this is where it gets fun...

Look at that... 10x faster... Thank you CBT!  :)

That's about it from here...  I'm compiling some "gotchas" for the next blog post... and I'll probably, once I've got this finalized, just do a brain dump on my jobs and the where/why/how we are doing this...

Helpful?  Tell me if so.  Also, if I'm missing something that you wish you knew, I'll drag out some screen shots for you. Enjoy!

Exchange 2007 - Blocking Stupid Spammers

So... every once in a while some stupid spammer will harvest our email addresses from our website.  And, chances are this spammer doesn't agree with our Church and proceeds to email us telling us why we suck.  And emails us again.  And again.  And again.  To everyone.  Or many people.  And I get the helpdesk ticket to fix it.

We use MXLogic as our anti-spam processing service - and each person individually could black-list the spammer, but I haven't found the "global" blacklist yet.  It may be there, I just haven't seen it.

UPDATE: Big props to @dszp - I had a major brainfart and forgot this was set in the policies.  See picture below:

Carry on...

But, we run Exchange 2007 - and there are built-in anti-spam technologies.  Let's use those.

Install Anti-spam
On Exchange 2007 - launch the Management Shell (the Powershell stuff) and navigate to the Program Files \ Microsoft \ Exchange Server \ Scripts folder.  We need to do two things:

1) run the "install-AntispamAgents.ps1" script

2) restart the Exchange Transport service

That process looks like this:

 

Reject the Spammer
Now launch the Exchange Management Console (the GUI).  Navigate to the Organization Configuration / Hub Transport section.  On the right-hand side you'll see a new tab called "Anti-spam" - click there.

Right-click on Sender Filtering & go to properties.

The "Action" tab lets you choose what to do with the spammer.  I choose "Reject" and it sends back an NDR saying "your email was rejected - stupid spammer" - or something like that.

Click "Add" to Add the spammer's email address (or domain) to the reject list.

 

Click OK.  Click Apply.

You're done.

No, really.

Verify the Config
You can verify all this by going back to the Management Shell and running the "get-senderfilterconfig" cmdlet:

 

I know, nothing super exciting.  It is a very easy way to block spammers at the Exchange level - if you need to do that.  I did, and learned how to do this today by reading this blog.

Rebooting My Workflow

So, the last few weeks have flown by. 

In many ways, both physically & electronically, I've rebooted my workflow.  I've had a GTD-like work process for quite a while, but have gotten sloppy as of late.  So, I took about 10 days and "refocused" my Inbox (currently at zero), my Deleted items (currently at zero), reorganized my email-system and de-cluttered my physical office (I threw away tons of "stuff" that I was honestly never going to read or look at again - papers, cables, gadgets, etc.).

My reorganized email system (Exchange 2007 SP2 / Entourage 2008 EWS) looks like this:

For those of you wondering - here's a quick overview of GTD - Getting Things Done.

How do you keep up with your tasks?  projects?

How do you keep your "RAM" clear - so you can focus on the most important things of the day?

How often do you think we should "reboot" our workflow?

Am I the only one that has been spinning my wheels lately?

#discuss #honesty