Posted on Uncategorised

Supermicro: How to replace the CPU fan in our Superserver 5028D-TN4T with an Noctua NF-A6x25

Greetings friends, today I bring you a very interesting post, I have already told you on previous occasions the team that I am using the Supermicro 5028D-TN4T for my homelab, I leave here some posts: Some time ago I told you how to monitor all the IPMI with PRTG too, so we can have very important information like temperature: With the rising temperatures these days, I've been having performance problems on the server, not only that, but I've also seen the CPU temperature reach the always problematic 93C: Which as you can imagine is crazy, we're not going to have good performance and we'll probably burn the hardware in no time.

Noctua to the rescue

I've known the Noctua folks, at desktop level for many years, and I've always recommended it, what I wasn't sure about is that they also have fans as small as this one that comes perfect to install in the Supermicro, I leave you the link to Amazon for this Noctua NF-A6x25: Technical comparison between the both: Noctua (link)
  • Max speed: 3000 r.p.m
  • Airflow: 29,2 m³/h
  • Max pressure: 2,18 mm H₂O
  • Acoustic sound: 19,3 dB(A)
Supermicro (link)
  • Max speed: 6500 r.p.m
  • Airflow: 23,04 m³/h
  • Max pressure: 5,89 mm H₂O
  • Acoustic sound: 33,5 dB(A)
When the box arrived, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a perfectly finished product, with high quality packaging:
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Posted on veeam

Veeam: Best practices for Veeam Gateway Server and how to configure it correctly in multi-datacenter environments

Greetings friends, I found myself the other day with an issue I had not seen before, I will explain below the symptoms of the issue, but first let's remember what the Veeam Gateway Server is and what it does in a simple Veeam topology.

Veeam Gateway Server

When configuring an SMB type repository in Veeam, the following options are available:
  • Automatic selection of the server as the SMB gateway proxy (i.e. the server that will host the transport component on the destination side and thus play the role of a data writer to the SMB shared resource itself).
  • Select an specific server (among the managed Windows servers available in Veeam Backup & Replication) as an SMB gateway proxy.
The second option is very useful in situations where the SMB share is in a remote location, as it prevents auto-selection from using a non-local server for the SMB share, so all synthetic operations or backup jobs are performed over the WAN link (which is usually slower than the local link). It is always recommended to use an SMB gateway server as close as possible to the SMB storage. By specifying the SMB gateway we are more likely to keep data flow under control and prevent data from unnecessarily crossing WAN links.
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Posted on veeam

[Recorded Webinar] Are Your Backups Usable? Backup Testing and Automation Using Veeam SureBackup

Greetings, a few months ago I had the chance to present a Veeam webinar around Veeam SureBackup, which mentions all the benefits of the DataLabs and the power of this technology, you can watch now this one hour webinar and learn much more about SureBackup. Applications like SQL, Active Directory and Exchange are driving our business nowadays. So, keeping critical applications available is a crucial part of DR planning for companies. But how can we ensure that our backups are tested and our recovery plan will work? Watch this recorded webinar with Systems Engineer Jorge de la Cruz to get into the world of perfect backups and learn:
  • Why are you backing up your data
  • How are you sure a backup is good and recoverable
  • How to set up automated backup testing with Veeam® SureBackup®
  • And much, much more!
Duration: 1:00:42
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Posted on veeam

Veeam: Veeam Agents update, what’s new in Veeam Agent for Windows 2.2 and Veeam Agent for Linux 2.0.1

Greetings friends, along with the new version of Veeam Availability Suite v9.5U3a have also been released updates for the Veeam Agents, for Windows and Linux, let's see what these new agents include.

What's New in Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 2.2

The new Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 2.2 is fully integrated into Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 Update 3a allowing administrators to deploy, control and manage the protection of laptops, desktops, critical servers or cloud applications based on Microsoft Windows. The new features included in this new version 2.2 are:
  • Support for Microsoft Windows 10 April 2018 Update and Microsoft Windows Server 1803. Added support for the latest Microsoft operating systems.
Once we update our agents in a very comfortable way from our Veeam Backup & Replication Console, we will be able to see the new agent installed:
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Posted on veeam

Veeam: Install or update to the new Veeam vCenter plugin from Enterprise Manager v9.5U3a (includes vSphere Client HTML5 support)

Greetings friends, for all of you who are using Veeam Enterprise Manager, many of you will already know that there was a plugin for vCenter that allowed us to see at a glance the status of our Veeam copies, repositories, etc. It was something similar to this but Veeam has given it a complete redesign: With the new vSphere 6.7, where the HTML5 client is now GA, and the latest update of Veeam with its v9.5 U3a version, we will find a plugin that has been rewritten from scratch by Veeam to work seamlessly with the new HTML5 client, and not only that, but we will also find integration for VeeamONE and more, we will see how to update or install it step by step.

Install or update our vCenter plugin from Veeam Enterprise Manager

Remember that this plugin only works on vSphere 6.7, so if you are using vSphere 6.5 you may not be able to view it. We will go to our Veeam Enterprise Manager and login:
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Posted on nutanix

Nutanix: Deploy a Single-Node Nutanix Community Edition 5.6 (ISO) on VMware vSphere 6.5 in Nested mode

Greetings friends, in previous posts about Nutanix I showed you how to launch Nutanix Community Edition on VMware vSphere using the.img image that Nutanix offered us: These posts and videos, with hundreds of visits were fine, but now and in real great news, Nutanix has announced its Nutanix Community Edition 5.6, which in addition to all the news that includes AOS 5.6, give us a simple ISO image so that we can deploy Nutanix Community Edition much more easily, when you finish, you can view a PRISM like this:

Downloading the Nutanix Community Edition

You will need to login at next.nutanix.com and go to the Nutanix Community section and then to Download Software.
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Posted on veeam

Veeam: A Veeam Gem – Self-service DataLabs on-demand sandbox using Veeam Enterprise Manager

Greetings friends, sometimes we overlook some features that the products include, such as Veeam Enterprise Manager, and all the features that this allows us. Today I come to talk to you about a wonderful hidden and little-known feature, DataLabs on demand using Veeam Enterprise Manager.

Diagram with the use case

The first thing I want to show you is the technical diagram of where this solution can be a good practice, let's imagine:
  • There are several technical groups in an Infrastructure
  • The developers group does not have access to the VMware, Veeam and/or production network infrastructure, only a VPN that gives them access only to the DataLabs Proxy Appliance
  • This group of developers must be able to create DataLabs with a group of applications when they need them on demand from Enterprise Manager
In this way, the group of Developers located in a remote office can access the Enterprise Manager portal via the Internet for example, or via a DMZ, launch their On-demand Sandbox requests as long as they need, and then access those DataLabs using a VPN to the DataLab Virtual Proxy, which will give connectivity to the VMs that are in that on-demand sandbox.
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Posted on veeam

Veeam: Don’t let your dog eat your blog –Protecting cPanel multi-tenant using Veeam Agent for Linux and Veeam Cloud Connect

Greetings friends, today I bring you a very interesting blog post for Service Providers, but not limited to these. Today I bring you a step further, and it's about taking advantage of the functionality of being able to launch Backups from cPanel users to a Cloud Connect Provider that includes Veeam Agent for Linux 2.0, each backup assigned to its tenant, etc.. As this Blog post has been a little long for me, I leave you the menu so that you can jump to where it is more interesting for you:

1.- Topology and brief explanation of the Infrastructure

As always, I would like to leave you with a diagram of how this Infrastructure and the data flow between cPanel, Veeam Cloud Connect and the tenants will look like: To make this whole environment work we'll have to have the following:
  • A cPanel WHM license, and root access to shell. (We could also extra polarize this to a LAMP server with multiple workloads, etc, but it would be more manual)
  • Veeam Agent for Linux 2.0 Server Edition - We will use the Server version as we want to create multitasks, one for each tenant, and of course make use of the pre-freeze and post-shaw scripts that will generate the backup of each tenant.
  • A provider, or Veeam Cloud Connect providers, you can have a look at the list here - https://www.veeam.com/find-a-veeam-cloud-provider.html
Once we have everything ready, we can move on to the next point.
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Posted on microsoft

Microsoft: Six Microsoft Office 365 features that boost your productivity and collaboration

Greetings friends, I have already told you about my recent migration to Microsoft Office 365, after many years in other technologies the truth is that moving to Microsoft Office 365 is a breath of fresh air, today I want to show you those features that have surprised me for good and I am sure you will love if you migrate.

Start Menu - Quick access to Apps

The small welcome dashboard is greatly appreciated once you log in to Microsoft Office 365, with all the applications there, with the latest files edited and uploaded to OneDrive, the ability to upload new ones, and above all the ability to install desktop applications from here. Not only that, from any online application, we can click on the top left corner, where the 9 little squares, and we can see the shortcuts to all the applications too, it goes without saying that I use this every day.
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Posted on veeam

Veeam: Backup and restore workloads to Microsoft Azure – Migrate workloads from Microsoft Azure to our Datacenter

Greetings friends, I continue with this very interesting series about Veeam and Microsoft Azure, we have already seen practically all the steps: from interconnecting Microsoft Azure with our Datacenter, deploying the VBR in Azure, launching the copy job jobs, and of course restoring Microsoft Azure, today I bring you how to bring those VM in Azure back to our Datacenter, as you can see in this illustration:
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