I believe in Hyper-V!

Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.0 is now Generally Available and includes Tape Support & Flexible Restores

It is highly important that data needs to be backed up and there should be an effective Disaster Recovery plan in case of data threat or a catastrophe. While data continues to grow and there are number of technology providers who offer better and comprehensive storage techniques to businesses, there has not been an alternative to the concept of backup. While costs are a major factor for businesses, having a steady backup plan to counter data threats and compliant to strict regulatory standards(including the upcoming EU’s GDPR) is necessary. Be it virtual environment backup like VMware Backup, Microsoft Hyper-V Backup or legacy environment backup like Windows Server Backup, Workstation backup, Vembu BDR Suite has been offering Backup & Recovery with their own file-system, VembuHIVE thereby easing the backup process, storage management at an extremely affordable pricing.

Last week, they did announce the release of Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.0 which offers manifold features and enhancements to meet the different needs of Diverse IT environments. According to them, the overall goal of the new version v3.9.0 is to provide advancements in terms of Storage, Security, and Data Restoration.

Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.0 release is distinct because a number of critical features are incorporated for maintaining business continuity and to function effectively for high availability. Here are some of the key highlights of this release:

Tape Backup Support

Vembu now provides the popular 3-2-1 backup strategy( copies of backup in 2 medias(Disk and Tape) and 1 backup copy at offsite) to businesses by announcing the support for Native Tape Backup for Image-based Backups (VMware, Hyper-V, and Physical Windows Servers & Workstations) providing an option for Long-Term Archival and Offsite storage. Also, Vembu Tape Backup Support makes the DR possible on any physical or virtual environment. Thus Vembu Tape backup is designed keeping in mind the future needs of the ever evolving IT demands.

clip_image002

Quick VM Recovery on ESXi host for Hyper-V and Windows Image Backups

As we speak of data backup, recovery of data is equally important, if not more. While data recovery is crucial, the amount of time taken to restore data decides the business continuity of any organization. In the previous versions, Vembu has provided instant recovery capabilities only for VMware Backups from the GUI. From this release v3.9.0, Vembu makes the instant recovery process much simpler and quicker than before by making the Quick VM Recovery possible on VMware ESXi from Vembu BDR backup server console for all image-based backups(VMware, Hyper-V and Microsoft Windows). Thus, Vembu lowers the Recovery Time Objectives of the organizations and provides quicker data regain and access.

clip_image004

Backup-level Encryption

With the newest release, Vembu provides the ability to encrypt the data while creating a backup job. Each backup job that is configured from the distributed agents or through the Vembu BDR backup server is now highly secured through Backup-level Encryption. By using customized passwords, users will now be able to enable additional security for their backup jobs. And the backup data can be restored/accessed only by providing the password. Thus, the data is encrypted and can only be accessed by authorized users. This step is to fight data threats and also to ensure data compliances.

clip_image006

Auto Authorization at Vembu OffsiteDR Server

Offsite data protection is critical in terms of business continuity and is primarily done to keep a backup instance of key business data. To increase data security, Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.0 has Auto Authorization feature at Vembu OffsiteDR server that lets only the registered BDR backup servers to connect to the OffsiteDR server. Vembu BDR servers are authorized through unique registration key generated at the OffsiteDR server. Thus, safeguard all your backup data even if they are transferred to offsite through Auto-Authorization at OffsiteDR server

clip_image008

Pre/Post backup scripts

Many businesses are in a need to execute certain business logic before or after a backup job. But running these logics manually through scripts is difficult and is not feasible for organizations having multiple backup jobs running in their IT infrastructure. To make this process simpler, Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.0 provides a separate wizard in NetworkBackup, OnlineBackup and ImageBackup clients, where one can add a number of pre and post executable commands/scripts. This helps in automatically executing the added commands/scripts at specific stages based on the configuration and provides the ability to run the custom actions before/after the backup schedules.

clip_image010

Besides all the listed features, Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.0 has few interesting features like Windows Event Viewer Integration along with some Enhancements.

Interested in trying Vembu BDR suite?, Try Now on a 30-days free trial: https://www.vembu.com/vembu-bdr-suite-download/

Cheers,

Romeo

Romeo Mlinar
January 22, 2018
Administration, Hyper-V, Recovery
0 comments

Black screen when opening Virtual Machine Connect

Hi to all,

Long time no see. I had a lots of work in the last couple of months and didn’t have time to write something smart Smile. I have a bunch of posts in queue and now one of them need to be published. Today I had issue with login on one of my local virtual machines.

I have a few of virtual machines on my lab with no connection to outside world and because of that when you try to connect to virtual machine, will see black screen and need to wait couple of seconds to see login screen.

To avoid this we can do as follows:

– Connect your system to the Internet and open VM Connect ONCE!
– Tell Windows to not attempt to update the root certificate by running these command in PowerShell:

New-Item -Path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\SystemCertificates\AuthRoot
New-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\SystemCertificates\AuthRoot -Name DisableRootAutoUpdate -PropertyType DWord -Value 1 –Force

I found this solution on Ben’s blog “Delay when opening VM Connect on disconnected systems” . If you want see more, please read his post.

Cheers,

Romeo

Romeo Mlinar
October 23, 2017
Hyper-V
0 comments

Convert/Copy the content of pass-through disks to .VHDX file format

Hi there,

In this blog post I’d like to show you how to convert, copy the content of past-through disk to virtual hard disk, .VHDX.
I’ll not write about differences between those two disk format, will only show you how to simple convert. To be honest, this post is note for me Open-mouthed smile.

So, let’s start, step by step.

  1. Ensure that you shut down the virtual machine that is connected to the pass-through disk.
  2. Make sure you have sufficient hard disk space to store the new VHDX file when it is converted.
  3. Open Hyper-V Manager console.
  4. Select the virtual machine with the pass-through physical hard disk.
  5. In the action pane, click New, and then click Hard Disk.
  6. The New Virtual Hard Disk Wizard appears. Click Next.
  7. Click .VHDX, and then click Next.
  8. Choose which disk type you want, Dynamically expanding or Fixed size, and then click Next. Usually I choose Dynamic virtual disk.
  9. Specify the Name and Location of the new .VHDX file, and then click Next.
  10. Click Copy the contents of the specified physical disk.
  11. Click the name of the appropriate offline physical hard disk from the available physical hard disks, and then click Next.
  12. Click Finish.

  13. At the end, remove pass-trough disk from the virtual machine and add new .VHDX

  14. Start virtual machine and enjoy Winking smile

    15. The contents of the pass-through disk or the direct-attached storage disk will be converted to the .vhdx file format. This might take some time depending on the size.
    For example: For 1.2TB pass-trough disk I needed almost seven hours on the SAS 15K disk drives.

    NOTE: Keep in mind that your virtual machine will be unavailable during the convert/copy process.

    Source: Technet

    image

    Cheers,

    Romeo

Romeo Mlinar
June 22, 2017
Administration, Hyper-V, Virtualization, Windows Server
0 comments