This is a special guest post by Veeam SE Mike Beevor from the United Kingdom. Follow mike on Twitter @MikeBeevor.

Over the last few months, I have found myself being asked more and more about Veeam’s permissions, coming face to face with the ultra-paranoid of the IT world: the Security team. Having promised to send out the Permissions Guide to a customer with a rather unusual set up, I thought that I would blog about some of the more interesting questions I’ve been asked and some of the more useful information I’ve discovered.

The customers in question are often services organizations who look after multiple large financial customers and, as such, are at the forefront of data protection, IT security and general, all-around paranoia regarding anything accessing their networks at all.

The first part of the security aspect isn’t really that unusual; it involves creating the Veeam Service account, commonly specific to the Veeam product that you are using, and assigning the specific AD users or groups to that account. This generally stems from a requirement internally to work on a “needed permissions” basis, thus removing any non-critical permissions from the service account in either the vCenter or in the active directory infrastructure.

An alternative to this, and we generally see this in larger environments, is to create a service account group in Active Directory specific to a particular role within the product. Backup, for example, would commonly see the following user roles with the following abilities:

Once this is done, we then look at the permissions that this role requires inside of VMware; after all, this is what we are working to back up, or report upon. The list of permissions for creating backups on Veeam Backup & Replication v5.0.2 is found in the table below:

The interesting things to really note here are around the different modes that Veeam is able to back up over and subsequently, the ability to tighten the permissions required to the specific environment. Virtual Appliance mode requires the add existing disk, remove disk and change resource permissions because Veeam uses the VMware HotAdd functionality to attach the source drive to the Veeam VM to transfer the data to the target storage, and has been doing so since v3.0 of Veeam Backup & Replication. Disk lease in the SAN mode of Veeam Backup and Replication is required, as Veeam physically takes management of the VMFS volume from the ESX(i) environment for the period that it copies the data over the physical storage infrastructure.

Once we’ve created the service account with the appropriate permissions, it often turns to firewalls and port numbers, so we examine the communication ports that Veeam operates across. Ports 9392, 9393 and 9394 are used for Backup and Replication Services, the backup catalog and the Veeam Enterprise Management console respectively. These ports are all standard TCP ports and can be amended to fit into a corporate firewall infrastructure. It is definitely worth checking with the security team that these ports are open and available for use without causing conflicts and having them added as trusted ports in the port database.

In today’s market, VSS-enabled backups are expected, and application-aware backups are certainly at the top of the desirable list as more and more organizations need to perform object-specific recoveries into complex applications. I’ve always found DBA’s to be slightly touchy about backups, since agents can have unintended effects on the databases that they are used on, especially if they are developed in house, and additional permissions are required for the agent to be able to communicate with its relevant backup server.

Veeam’s own VSS implementation for backups is innovative, using a transient piece of code to initiate a VSS flush within the application. This is done using the application’s own VSS engine with the framework provided by the operating system. The conversation soon turns to the breadth of customization of the VSS interaction on a machine basis. The long and the short of this is that a lot of secure environments will not provision an over-arching, domain-wide VSS service account, but rather rely on machine specific VSS credentials to perform a flush. Veeam gives you the ability to set individual VSS credentials per machine within a job, ensuring that the appropriate level of permissions are maintained on a set once basis.

Having done this, and dependent upon whether the application owners wish to retain the log files for their own log shipping purposes for Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft SQL, the option to truncate the logs at the start or the end of the backup, or not at all, ensures flexibility on a per machine basis.

One of the longest and most protracted of the discussions, with several opinions being voiced, is where the Veeam server itself should reside in infrastructure terms, both in relation to the notion of keeping data separated and also in relation to the location of the vCenter that it was working on. This is followed swiftly by the number of Veeam servers you should have and whether you should manage them all with the Enterprise management server!

To answer the point on the location of the Veeam server first, the best argument we could make is that, in the truly secure environment that we were working in, a Veeam server should be in the DMZ and should only have access to the SAN that the production VM’s were located on and the VLAN that the vCenter Server was running on. This was then expanded to include each of the Veeam servers for each segmented environment, although this presented an additional management overhead through not being able to include all Veeam servers in the Veeam management console. This does serve to reduce some of the rollup reporting capabilities for the environment as a whole, and can present some issues in the approval of Veeam virtual lab creation, which is overcome by installing the Veeam Management console on one of the Veeam servers in each segmented environment.

This leads to a much needed conversation about whether SureBackup is a feature set that customers wish to implement in a secure environment. Whilst it is a no-brainer that the functionality is useful, there are some security aspects to take into consideration.

Firstly, there are the additional permission requirements below, and as is evident immediately that there are a lot more “intrusive” permissions that allow a Veeam administrator to make changes to the virtualized environment itself through the Veeam console. In the case of one POC, this was considered a step too far, as the backup team had no permissions in the virtual estate, and given the choice of the virtualization team, never would!

Further questions arose regarding interaction with the vCenter Server and the fact that Veeam SureBackup jobs were able to create and remove virtual machines into the virtual lab and be accessed for the potential removal of data. Whilst the second of these fears is easily allayed by the fact that the Active Directory permissions on the server in the Virtual Lab are maintained, so that the user is required to have the appropriate permissions on the application server to remove the data. Should these permissions be held however, there is the potential for data to be removed from the environment without permission.

The final piece of the POC was a puzzling one, which admittedly took me a couple of hours to resolve. Since security was key to the environment, all extraneous ports had been removed from the virtual switches inside the ESX(i) hosts to ensure that no unnecessary traffic or openings were left exploitable. This included the vmkernel port being removed from all but the vMotion VLAN, which precludes an NFS volume from being mounted on a host, and therefore prevents Instant VM Recovery being performed. So just note to have a quick check to see that the vmkernel port is present on the VeeamV if you are planning to use the feature!

Wrap up and Veeam Backup & Replication v6

If you haven't heard, we have released Veeam Backup & Replication v6, which brings in a few additional considerations; especially when vSphere 5 comes into play. In v6, at least one granular permission needs to be added. Under Roles, Virtual Machine -> Provisioning -> ‘Allow virtual machine download’ also needs to be checked to allow network mode to work. This is specific to vSphere 5 and VDDK 5.0; but is critical to provisioning security and roles for the enterprise. If you haven't checked out v6, start with our launch page here: http://go.veeam.com/v6-backup-replication

What do you do to ensure that your Veeam environment is as secure as it should be? Share your comments below!

As Veeam moves forward and starts to become focused two virtualization platforms, I thought to myself now is the time to work out how I’m going to introduce Microsoft Hyper-V in my lab environment. I wanted to know if it could be virtualized running inside a VMware virtual machine of some sorts. Veeam has been very successful in presenting its solutions through the use of portable labs running for example on laptops nested under VMware Workstation. We would often have a nested ESX server, vCenter, DC and Veeam apps running on a single laptop and I wanted to know if Hyper-V could be thrown into the mix.

This post will function as a how-to guide and provide a step-by-step process to run Hyper-V virtual machines on either VMware Workstation 8 or ESXi 5.

For a long time, I was told it was impossible, and a few months ago, I heard a passing rumour that it would be possible when ESXi 5 came out. I’d also heard that ESXi 5 running on Intel Nehalem or Intel Core i7 was going to allow nested hypervisors to also contain running, nested 64bit virtual machines. So firstly, I went about making sure that when I was due for a new laptop, I would have this Intel architecture, or equivalent AMD, in my system. I also managed to build a lab with the same architecture that I plan to use on the road for events.

Through Twitter, someone sent me a link to a few blogs that helped me start my quest:

http://www.vcritical.com/2011/07/vmware-vsphere-can-virtualize-itself/#comment-12442

http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2011/07/how-to-enable-support-for-nested-64bit.html

By the time I’d gotten a chance to give it a whirl, ESXi had gone GA. What I found from the blogs posted above was there were some great pointers, but when I followed either post’s instructions, all I got was a blank Black Screen like a few other people were reporting. No matter what additional information I gave, it just would not work. Undeterred, I decided to try something different. I installed VMware Workstation 8 instead of ESXi 5 and managed to get a nested Hyper-VM working. At this point, I knew my hardware was going to be compatible with nesting Hyper-V. The blog posts above stated the key to making it work is a feature found in your CPU/BIOS called Intel EPT. Now, I read that if you have Nehalem/Core i7, you should have Intel EPT; the blog posts suggested that it should be enabled through the BIOS. However, I didn’t find this option in either of my system BIOS.

While testing what would work, I decided to use Windows 2008 R2 Standard and enable Hyper-V as a Role rather than install the standalone Hyper-V product. I only did this to make my life easier, but the standalone Hyper-V product is a fine option as well.

Nesting a Hyper-VM on VMware Workstation 8

So, following are the steps to create a Microsoft Hyper-V VM running in VMware Workstation 8, but later I’ll show you how to do it in ESXi 5 as well:

1. Create a New VM with version 8 hardware

2. Give it 4 GB RAM and 2 x vCPUs with about 80-100 GB disk space, depending upon how many VMs you wanted nested underneath Hyper-V.

3. The instructions lead you to believe that you should pick a VMware ESX option as the guest OS... STOP! DON’T! Select Windows 2008 R2 x64.

4. When you are finished, make sure you add another NIC to the VM used as the Hyper-V virtual network,

5. Under the settings of the VM > CPU, make sure you have the option to pass-through the Intel VT-x/EPT feature.

6. Make sure you have set the VM to boot from Windows 2008 R2 x64 media ISO.

7. Before booting, you should edit the config file .vmx and add the parameter: hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = “FALSE”

8. Now Boot and Install Windows 2008 R2 x64.

9. Once finished, open up Server Manager and click “Add Role”.

10. Select and install the Hyper-V option. At this point, you will know if your system is working correctly and passing the Intel EPT feature, because if it doesn’t, you won’t be able to go past this point.

11. You’ll also have to select the network adapter used for the virtual network.

12. Now install Hyper-V, which will need a reboot.

13. After it is completed, open Server Manager drill down to Hyper-V and connect to the local server.

14. Now create and install a virtual machine.

Once done, you should be able to use it as normal, albeit slow.

Nesting Hyper-VM running ESXi 5

Now, doing the same thing on ESXi 5 is a little trickier although some of the steps are the same.

1. Before anything you need to place an entry in the /etc/vmware/config file found in the tech support mode on your ESXi 5. I enabled SSH through the security profile in the vSphere Client. Then used putty SSH into the ESXi system.

2. From there I executed the following command which is needed to allow nested hypervisors :

# echo 'vhv.allow = "TRUE" ' >> /etc/vmware/config

Notice the use of single and double quotes in the command-line

3. Now create a virtual machine using version 8 hardware, 4GB (or as much as you can spare), 2 x vCPUs, 2 or more vNICs and a 100GB virtual disk.

4. Before booting up the VM and installing Hyper-V we need to add two lines the virtual machines config file .vmx

You can try this through the vSphere Client in the settings of the virtual machine > Configuration Parameters, whereas I had better luck doing it from command-line

To add them using command-line move back in SSH > change into the directory where you Hyper-V VM is installed

# echo 'vhv.allow = "TRUE" ' >> /etc/vmware/config

In my example the config file is called Hyper-V.vmx. Type the following commands:

# echo 'monitor.virtual_exec = "hardware" ' >> Hyper-V.vmx

# echo 'hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = "FALSE" ' >> Hyper-V.vmx

5. Now back in the VM settings > Options > CPU/MMU Virtualization make sure you have the option to pass the Intel EPT feature.

6. Now in the Options area > CPUID Mask click on Advanced

7. Add the following CPU mask Level ECX: ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- --H- ----

8. Now Install Hyper-V or Windows 2008 R2 and enable the Hyper-V role.

9. You are ready to roll.

Gotchas/Tips

Here are a few tips from Ricky to avoid any of the stopping points along the way:

• On my system part way through install of Microsoft Hyper-V the OS requires a reboot. When you do this after Hyper-V has been installed it blue screens...DON’T PANIC because it doesn’t blue screen while actually using Hyper-V
• With both my server and laptop I had no way of telling if my systems had Intel EPT it was a case of seeing if VMware passed Intel EPT without complaining and if Hyper-V spotted it. The give a way for me was when I’d tried VMware Workstation first and it worked straight off. I’ve read a million and 1 things about this subject, but my gut feeling is if you look for Nehalem or Core i7 and a motherboard that supports Intel VT. I think that is a safe bet. I read you need Intel VT –x2 which I don’t have (I don’t think) so that was misleading...If I can narrow the field of information I will update this post.
• Remember nesting a hypervisor means it’s going to run very, very slow...however installing the nested hypervisor in a datastore that is on SSD disks helps big time.
• The 2 blogs linked above presented 2 methods for creating the VM using version 4/7 hardware or version 8 hardware. I first went with version 8 hardware and no joy at all. All I got was a blank black screen. I actually tried a combination of the tweaks in both methods and that is what worked for me.
• The port group that the nested Hyper-V machine resides on should be set to Promiscuous Mode: Accept
• In one of the blogs there was a note suggesting making the entries manually in the config files (instead of using the GUI) was more stable. I found this too, so hence why I changed the config files in a shell session using putty.

Do you have any tips around installing Hyper-V virtual machines on ESXi 5 or VMware Workstation 8? Please share your comments below!

By now, you’ve likely heard about VMware’s latest release of its industry-leading vSphere virtualization suite, vSphere 5. If you are a blogger or technical person, I’m sure you have some level of deep dive with the product or were even a beta tester. Either way, it’s an exciting release, and one that has generated plenty of chatter around the globe. So much has already been said about vSphere 5, good and bad, but I want to focus on what I think are the coolest new features of the Cloud Infrastructure Suite release. (I promise this article won’t have anything to do with licensing; I think enough has been said about that.) There are so many top ten and top five lists out there; I thought I would be unconventional and share my two favorite vSphere 5 features. Frankly, there are so many cool features of vSphere 5; it’s hard to pick! Here are my two favorite features of vSphere 5.

With the release of vSphere 5, VMware has included the vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA). Up to this point, in our virtual datacenters, we’ve had to create a virtual machine dedicated to vCenter Server. This virtual machine had to have a Windows Server operating system installed so that it could host the vCenter Server. Along with the vCenter Server, you also needed to have a separate database server (VMware best practice). That being said, vCenter Server came with SQL Server Express, which only works in very limited situations due to its limit of 50 virtual machines. Since your datacenter has or will have more than 50 VMs, you would need to have a licensed copy of SQL Server 2005 or 2008 (sorry I can’t mention Oracle) to go along with your licensed copy of a Windows Server OS. Unfortunately, the vCenter Server been a necessary evil to get your vSphere environment off the ground and to be in control of management. With vSphere 5, you can simply install the vCSA and have your vCenter up and running in just a few minutes. With vCSA, there’s no longer a need to rely on a Windows Server OS license to install vCenter. You can save a lot of time that otherwise would be spent on installing a Windows Server, a database server, and then having to install vCenter. Further, vCSA comes prepared out of the box with a local database capable of storing your vCenter data; I’m stoked about this development, as I hate configuring SQL Server. Once you have the vCSA in place, you download the vSphere Client, which allows you access to vCenter Server’s full inventory of clusters, hosts, VMs, datastores, and resource pools.

With the release of the vSphere Web Client, you can effectively manage your virtual environment via the web. The key word here is effectively. The Windows-based vSphere Client is currently written on C#, while the new vSphere Web Client is written on Adobe Flex, which makes things much nicer and more presentable to the end user. What’s even more convenient for the end user is simply that it’s a web based client that can be accessed remotely without sacrificing functionality or presentation. With the vSphere Web Client, you get enhanced accessibility to the vCenter Server by providing the virtualization administrator with the ability to carry on with his or her familiar user experience; only now, from his or her platform of choice by delivering it via a web browser.

The user interface is very similar to that of the Windows client. There are three columns, or panels, that you see when you log in. As you select objects from the left panel, the center panel screen changes to display informational panels called portlets. These portlets will display the object’s details and configuration information, and they are fully customizable. You can collapse them as needed and re-order them to see only the information that you want to see. At the top of the client, there is a search box that you can use to search your entire vCenter inventory. You can use the advanced search to specify more detailed search criteria, such as virtual machines, resource pools, and clusters. It’s important to note that getting started with the Web Client requires the installation of the vSphere Client Web (Server), which is an install done on vCenter Server. When the install is complete, the next step is to allow vCenter to connect with your Web Client, which is also a simple procedure. Once the install is complete and vCenter is talking to the Web Client, you simply point your browser towards the server with your new vSphere Web Client URL. The full installable version of the vSphere Client is still available with the installation of ESXi, but it’s more likely that the vSphere Web Client will reign supreme in the months to come. Here’s a great demo video from VMware that you will help acquaint you with the vSphere Web Client. Check out this YouTube video of the vSphere Web Client.

About Greg Stuart

Greg Stuart lives in Mesa, Arizona and writes the vDestination blog. Greg can be followed on Twitter @vDestination.

As I was exploring possibilities of Veeam Backup & Replication, I took a close look at SureBackup – the new functionality that lets you automatically verify the recoverability of virtual machine (VM) backups.

So, what does SureBackup actually do?
With Veeam Backup & Replication, you can publish and start a VM right from a backup in a Virtual Lab. A virtual lab is a dedicated environment isolated from the rest of your infrastructure. Every virtual lab includes a set of isolated networks, virtual switches and port groups. It is important to note that these objects do not connect to any physical networks. This avoids any contention with production virtual machines[rv1] . [hk2] When you create a virtual lab, you select one or more ESX(I) hosts on which your VMs will run, choose storage that will keep temporary log files, and define network settings.

The other key component to a virtual lab is the Application Group. The Application Group contains VMs you want to verify. In the simplest case, the group can have just one VM; in most cases, however, there are a number of VMs to verify. For example, to check application servers—a web server or a mail server— you may need to deploy infrastructure services (such as DNS, directory service and database servers). When you create the group, you should define in which order the VMs will be started, and what tests will be used to verify each of these VMs.

By default, Veeam Backup & Replication offers a number of predefined test sets also known as Server Roles. When you create an application group, you can assign each VM a specific role to define what tests will be performed for its verification. Role definitions are stored in .xml files in the %ProgramFiles%\Veeam\Backup and Replication\SbRoles folder. You can modify these files to match your requirements. There are several ways to verify your VM using SureBackup:

• Get a heartbeat signal from the VMware Tools agent running inside a VM
• Send a ping request to a VM network address
• Execute test scripts to check whether the applications inside VM are working correctly

Testing the VM heartbeat is obvious enough; but the other two options allow a more granular verification configuration.

SureBackup Isolated Network Configuration
To access an isolated network, Veeam uses a specific virtual machine— a proxy server appliance that is created automatically when you set up your virtual lab. This proxy server uses one of its interfaces to connect to a production server and another one to connect to an isolated network. If there are several subnets in your production infrastructure, the proxy server will also act as a router between these isolated networks. As a rule, the proxy server appliance should acquire router's IP address in each of the subnets on the isolated networks side.

Both production and isolated networks use the same range of IP addresses. To avoid IP address conflicts when accessing VM in isolated network from production network, Veeam Backup & Replication uses network masquerading. Every IP address of a node in an isolated network acquires a similar IP address in the masquerade network: for example, 192.168.1.0/24 goes to 192.168.254.0/24. When you start a virtual lab, a static route to a masquerade network is added automatically on the Veeam Backup & Replication server. The proxy server appliance's production network IP address is used as a gateway address.

When the Veeam server needs to access a verified VM, it uses the VM’s masquerade network address rather than the production address (for example, 192.168.1.36 goes to 192.168.254.36). According to the routing table, the packet is sent to the proxy server.

The proxy server here functions as a NAT device. It receives the packet and changes the sender’s IP address to its own IP address in the isolated network (in our example, 192.168.1.1). It also changes the masquerade network IP address to the production network IP address, and then sends the packet to a receiver in the isolated network. This can be monitored with a tool such as Microsoft Network Monitor.

Therefore, while the production and test networks are completely separated, the Veeam Backup server still has the ability to communicate with verified VMs.

SureBackup Script Creation and Management
Finally, with Veeam Backup & Replication, you can run scripts to verify VMs. All predefined roles use the same script - VmConnectionTester.exe, a simplified counterpart of a Telnet. Arguments of the script are an IP address of the server and a TCP port that need to be verified. A small but important comment here— Veeam Backup & Replication considers that the test has passed successfully if the script is completed with the return code 0. If it is completed with any other code, the test has failed.

To verify VMs, you can use your own custom scripts—Veeam Backup & Replication supports .exe, .bat, .cmd, .js, .vbs, .wsf files. To run scripts, you need to be logged in under the same account that is used to run Veeam Backup & Replication services.

In general, with VmConnectionTester.exe you can verify whether network services are available on the VM. However, there are services that do not use the TCP protocol—these are client services and services running locally. To verify these services, you can use the following PowerShell script (query-service.ps1) which checks if the service on a remote machine is started:

#query-service.ps1
param(
[string] $ip, #IP address of checked server
[string] $service ) #Service name
$result = (get-Service -ComputerName $ip -Name $service -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)
if($result.status -eq "Running")
{
exit
}
else
{
write-host ("Error 1, Service '" + $service + "' not running or not found.") #if service not found or not running, then echo
$host.SetShouldExit(1)
exit
}

The script takes an IP address of the VM and a name of the service as input parameters. If the service is not started or there is no such service, the script will terminate and pass error code 1 to the Veeam Backup handler. For the script to run as a PowerShell script (.ps1) on the Veeam Backup & Replication server, the execution policy must be set to ” remotesigned”. To do this, run the following command in the PowerShell console:

set-executionpolicy remotesigned

Next, you need to make sure that the account under which the script will run has the required permissions on the remote machine (for example, this account can be a part of the local Administrators group). This is required to get information about started services.

And finally, the Windows firewall on the remote server should allow remote connections. To configure it, you can enable corresponding rules or turn off the firewall.

Because Veeam Backup & Replication does not allow you to run PowerShell script files (.ps1) directly, you can use a batch file as a shell (query-service.bat):

REM query-service.bat
@ECHO OFF
powershell.exe -noninteractive -noprofile -command "& {C:\Temp\query-service.ps1 %1 %2 }"
EXIT /B %errorlevel%

Now you need to save both files to any folder on the server (by default, I used C:\Temp\) and edit one of the application groups by adding a script, define a path to the query-service.bat file in the Path field, specify the VM IP address (in the %vm_ip% variable) and the service name as arguments. In this example I verified a DHCP client.

Now, the VM will pass the test if the script completes successfully and the service is started. If the service is not started for some reason, Veeam Backup will notify you about it and automatically power off the virtual lab.

SureBackup – A Wealth of Options
In this post, the deep dive describes one of the options that help automate recovery verification of VM backups — a routine and rather boring task that many backup administrators have to perform. If you do not normally perform backup verifications, this article may give you a good reason to start doing so. There is actually nothing more useless than a backup that cannot be recovered.

Andrey Konovalov is a Senior Engineer at Helios IT Solutions and writes the VM Press blog at http://vmpress.blogspot.com/ and is on Twitter @omnimod.

If you were like the rest of us in the Midwest and Great Lakes region recently, you got socked by one the worst blizzards. Here in Central Illinois the kids missed 3 days of school, and work was shut down for a day and half. Well, as luck would have it, Veeam had scheduled my webinar, "Essentials of Legacy-Free Data Protection" at noon on Friday of that week. My guess is that many of my Midwestern friends and colleagues were probably digging out from the missed work midweek, and were unable to attend as a result.

If that was the case for you, don't despair! We recorded it.. Veeam has posted the webinar recording here for your viewing and listening pleasure. There was some great Q&A at the end of the webinar, and I was especially interested in the questions surrounding the integration of VMware SRM and Veeam Backup and Replication. Combining VM-level backup and replication with storage array replication is a use case I am personally interested in exploring in the coming months. In addition to the recorded webinar, you can also read the whitepaper I authored on the same topic titled, The Essential Guide to Legacy-Free Disaster Recovery.

Unfortunately for folks that missed the live webinar, you missed out on some great book giveaways and live Q&A at the end of the session. But don't lose all hope, there’s a ton of great content coming from Veeam and their independent contributors. So you’ll get another chance to learn some great tips and tricks to managing your virtual world. I'm also beginning work on my next whitepaper right now with the webinar already scheduled for May 25, so stay tuned. Hope to see you there!

Follow Sean on Twitter @vseanclark or visit his webpage at: http://seanclark.us/

Thank you to everyone who attended the recent webinar on “How to Manage System Center Operations Manager Using Groups”! I am always excited to get a chance to talk with other members of the community and to share some lessons learned (usually the hard way) on Operations Manager. If you are interested in going deeper in this area I recommend the corresponding white paper that we have available as well as several blog posts available on this topic.

Additional reference links:

Simple to Complex groups:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2010/07/27/authoring-groups-from-simple-to-complex.aspx

Custom Groups in Operations Manager:

http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/cfuller/archive/2009/08/12/how-to-use-customized-groups-to-simplify-the-opsmgr-console-for-server-owners-%E2%80%93-using-custom-groups-to-create-views.aspx

I hope that you got some good information from the recent webinar and look forward to presenting the next webinar which will occur on June 16. The topic will be related to tuning Operations Manager using Synthetic Transactions and Distributed Applications.

If you have any thoughts or questions on these topics, feel free to post your comments here (who knows maybe they will get integrated into the white paper!).

The Essential Guide to Legacy-Free Disaster Recovery by Sean Clark

In this whitepaper, Sean navigates through the journey we have all experienced in one way or another-from traditional server environments to the virtualized data center. What about data protection? Sean explains howdata protection needs to be changed along the way as well.

VMware and Microsoft VSS: What You Need to Know by Greg Shields

VSS has been in use for a number of years and across a number of different applications. However, not until you read Greg’s whitepaper on VSS will your understanding be complete. Greg explains why VSS is important as well as the risks of not using VSS properly as applied to virtualized environments.

The Expert Guide to VMware Data Protection by Eric Siebert

Chapters one and two of this e-book are a great resource to identify the key concepts of VMware virtual machine backups, best practices and real world examples of using VMware data protection strategies. More chapters from Eric are on their way, and this series will bring something for everyone.

We need more great content from virtualization experts like you.. If you are interested in writing a whitepaper or other product for Veeam, here are some of the things we are looking for:

• Virtualization experience: Above all else, we need community content that is based on real-world experience with virtualization.
• Focus on content: Let the Veeam Teeam make the formatting magic happen in the white paper – you just have to bring the unique content.
• Timeliness: We need to be able to set a delivery date with you and stick to it.
• Good ideas for content: Experience is a great source of content, and if you have experiences related to virtual machine data protection and management that can be presented clearly; we’d like to talk to you.

What is involved with writing a whitepaper for Veeam?

First of all, these are sponsored whitepapers in which a negotiated fee is set to create content that the contributor is interested in writing and Veeam is interested in sponsoring. A delivery date, word count and other big picture content objectives are set; and that is it!

If you are interested in contributing content to Veeam, please email Zorian Rotenberg, Veeam’s VP of Special Projects at zorian@veeam.com.

To become a VCP VI3 you need to do three things:

1. You have to take the VMware authorized course. No if, ands, or buts! The classes are instructor led and will allow you to get your hands dirty with VMware. There's three courses you can take.

• VMware Infrastructure 3: Install and Configure V3.5
• VMware Infrastructure 3: Deploy, Secure and Analyze V3.5
• VMware Infrastructure 3: Fast Track V3.5

2. Get hands on experience with VMware. What's the point of trying to get a VCP without using it!?

3.Sign up and pass the exam: http://www.pearsonvue.com/vmware

Now that doesn't sound too hard, does it? Well, I wouldn't say taking IT exams is easy. (Unless, you're dumping, which I completely do not agree with.) Usually the hard part of getting a VCP is money. $2500-$3000 a course seems a little steep for a lot of people.(Although, Fast Track = $5495 but includes the exam) I see where VMware is coming from, especially due to the current state of IT certification. (i.e. people cheating/dumping exams.) Also, with the course you receive a VMware messenger bag, I mean, that's totally worth $3000, right?

After you have passed your exam, you will receive a complimentary license of VMware workstation, a $175 "savings". Interesting that the course itself costs about the same.

So, why get your VCP? Why does anyone get IT certifications? We all have different reasons, career advancement, your employer requires you to, or you just like to learn. Whatever your reason may be, getting certified in a technology is always beneficial.

Below are some resources you can use to learn more about VMware certifications:

VMware Education Services

TechExams.net Virtualization Forum

The Value of the VCP (VMware Certified Professional)