Veeam Community Forums Digest for dandvo [Aug 21

Veeam Community Forums Digest for dandvo [Aug 21 - Aug 27, 2017]

Veeam Community Forums Digest

August 21 - August 27, 2017

THE WORD FROM GOSTEV

Last week, VMware has made an important announcement for all vSphere users > vCenter Server for Microsoft Windows is going away! Basically, the next vSphere release (rumors are it will be numbered 6.7 and released early 2018) will be the last release to have Windows-based vCenter, with the following vSphere release (which, and I speculate here, will be called 7.0 and released in somewhere in 2019) shipping exclusively with the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). So not too soon, but many of us need to start planning for the switch. What does this mean for Veeam users? Not much, as we've supported VCSA since its inception and the migration tool provided by VMware claims to migrate moRef IDs along (I will ask our QC to schedule some time to validate this though). And if you chose to do the clean install, we have the vCenter migration utility that crawls both old and new vCenter servers, matches VMs and updates moRef IDs in the Veeam configuration database to ensure all the existing jobs can continue running without interruption.

Not so good news for Windows 10 users – it looks like Microsoft is intended to limit the ability to create ReFS volumes to "professional-use" Windows 10 editions only (Windows 10 Enterprise and the upcoming Windows 10 Pro for Workstations) in the next update aka Fall Creators Update. Honestly, I have no clue why they've made this decision after positioning ReFS as the file system of the future. I guess this means big change of plans on their side, and that NTFS will not be going away any time soon. Anyhow, this is a pretty unfortunate change for the home users since we do not limit advanced ReFS integration to paid versions of Veeam Agent for Windows – it is available in the free edition as well.

Microsoft has been talking a lot about Windows-as-a-Service lately – and here's a good summary on what this really means for us all, presented by Mark Minasi at the TechMentor conference and captured by my fellow MVP Sami Laiho – with my comments. As it has been announced before, Microsoft will from now on be releasing two new versions of Windows 10 every year – inline with SCCM and Office365 releases. They only support each version for 18 months, then you won't get patches anymore! This is a VERY short time comparing to the previous life, where Windows XP has been supported for 12 years – almost 10 times lifecycle reduction, wow! Now, regarding patching – every month, they release one big "super‐patch" rather than separate ones. You must install this patch in 30 days or it will install itself – which can be painful, but after seeing all the recent issues due to unpatched systems I personally am convinced this is a great change. Another benefit is that this "super‐patch" simplifies patching of offline systems. As far as patch delivery in the enterprises – SCCM is the recommended patch management tool going forward, with WSUS nearing deprecation. And to alleviate concerns on the patch sizes, Microsoft recommends leveraging the BranchCache technology.

We are often asked about NFR licenses for home labs and similar uses - so I am happy to share that we have updated NFS pages for all of our products, here's the blog post with all the links consolidated > How to get a free Veeam NFR key

For those attending VMworld Europe, everything you need to know is here. Most importantly – and this is a difference from VMworld US – do note that due to immense popularity, Veeam party is by invitation only. If you've been at one before, you know how crowded our favorite Shôko Club can be, at least until attendees start spilling out to the beach. So, if you want to be eligible to enter, be sure to register and also come early because the admittance will be granted on a first come, first served basis even with the registration. See you there!

VEEAM CLOUD & SERVICE PROVIDER CORNER

August usually is a slow season for any activities, but not for Veeam people and our Vanguards. In this digest, I would like to briefly touch on the integration topic.

Lately, I have been approached by many users asking for integration with ServiceNow, Autotask and other applications. Every use case had its own specifics, but in every scenario, there was a possibility to use our RESTful APIs and PowerShell to integrate Veeam products into existing customers workflows. One of the examples I would like to share with you today was made by our Vanguard Craig Dalrymple (aka Cragdoo). In his series of blog posts, Craig shared how to create a backup dashboard using our APIs, which I highly recommend for review > Veeam Availability Console API and SquaredUp – API Dashboard

Stay tuned for more news coming out soon! Have a great week.

-Vitaliy

BEST POST OF THE WEEK

Re: Feature Request : Web Console [BY: Niels Engelen • LIKED: 4 times]

Web clients is a quite new thing to be honest. Years ago there were a few companies who tried to create web client as the new thing but failed in doing so. This is mostly due the fact that back then the frameworks as we know them now didn't exist. This resulted in every action being a new page and a new call. Companies then left the idea and went for hard clients (such as vSphere Client as an example here). Keep in mind that this means another service (or multiple) needs to be monitored and up and running all the time.

Over time things have changed and the 'web' improved a lot. Things got more fluent and 'snappy' with the perfect example being Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (social media). While these aren't apps they are a perfect example how smooth things can be.

VMware felt the need to try it again but made the initial wrong choice of going for flash compared to HTML5, javascript & CSS (such as AngularJS, bootstrap, ReactJS,... plenty of choice there is). They failed by doing so and the first few web clients were unusable and sadly due to this many people still refuse to use the web client. However VMware made the wise choice to switch to HTML5 thanks to the success of their fling. If you look at how good the web client has become in 6.5 it's a perfect example on how to do it correctly. The bigger problem I see with the way VMware handled things is the full redesign of their client. I've spoken quite some people about it (in regards to getting feedback how we should do it ;-)) and many feel they are 'lost' and the learning curve is 'high'. Of course this is also due to the fact that the fat client has been along for quite a while so this is just a matter of time.

While I can't say where Veeam is going I can give my personal opinion on how things are changing.

The first example (as Craig mentioned) is the Veeam Availability Console. This is a full HTML5 management web interface which comes with a RESTful API meaning you can make your own interface if you don't like ours but it also allows you to integrate certain aspects within your own portals.
The second example is the upcoming Veeam Backup for Office 365 1.5 release (currently in BETA) which has exactly the same options. It comes with a RESTful API making sure you can do pretty much all the calls you can do via the fat client via REST. This allows us to integrate with portals or create an own design (which I am working on as an example - keep an eye at https://github.com/nielsengelen/vbo365).

For those who are saying 'no don't do it' in this thread; my question is simple. Why wouldn't we open up with a REST api allowing people to create a HTML5 interface? Is this due to the VMware example?

For those who says 'yes go for it': which are things you would like to see in it? Keep in mind that doing a full switch with 1 release isn't feasible so this would be step by step.

Also I am not a developer nor in product management but I am all up for the idea of 'Veeam flings' to help demands.

ddprecist

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Veeam Community Forums Digest for dandvo [Aug 21 - Aug 27, 2017]

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