New vCenter Same Veeam

The Story

The Niche Situation

Now I know the title might sounds strange, but this is to cover a niche issue which may randomly arise out in the industry. vCenter died, there was no backup, a new vCenter was spun up in its place with all the same hostname, IP address and everything, and the hosts re-added, and you happen to use Veeam as your backup solution. Now I have been down this rabbit hole in the past, and I have blogged about an unsupported method to fix the Veeam jobs in the situation. But it’s technically unsupported, so I asked what the “supported method” would be on the Veeam forms.

The short answer, “Oh just use the VM-Migrator tool”, as referenced here.

“Veeam Backup & Replication tracks VMs in jobs using Managed Object Reference IDs (MORef-IDs), which change after migration or recreation of vCenter, causing MORef-ID misalignment.

Veeam VM Migrator utility is integrated into Veeam Backup PowerShell module, and it allows you to resolve MORef-ID misalignment. As a result, your backup incremental chains will remain intact after an inventory change in vCenter.

The utility consists of the following cmdlets:

Set-VBRVmBiosUuid — this cmdlet updates the BIOS UUIDs of existing VM entries within the Veeam Backup & Replication configuration database based on information from the old vCenter.
Set-VBRVCenterName — this cmdlet modifies vCenter name by adding the _old suffix to its name.
Generate-VBRViMigrationSpecificationFile — this cmdlet generates a migration task file which contains the list of mapping tasks.
Start-VBRViVMMigration — this cmdlet starts MORef-IDs update.”

So, this tool is supposed to do what I did via the backend but this is a supported frontend tool to do it, but I case is generally different than what the tool wants in that my old and new vCenter are the same, and not simply two unique instances of vCenter with unique names both running live in parallel. Mines simply been directly rebuilt in place.

Step 1) Realize your vCenter is toast.

However, you realize this, will be random and situational, in my case my trial expired, and all ESXi hosts show disconnected. I’m gonna treat this as a full loss, by simply shutting down and nuking all the VM files… it’s simply dead and gone…. and I have no configuration backup available.

This is why this is considered a niche situation, as I’d hope that you always have a configuration backup file of your critical infrastructure server. But… what if (and here we are, in that what if, again)…

Step 2) Rebuild vCenter with same name.

Yay, extra 20 min cause of a typo, but an interesting lesson learnt.

Renaming vCenter SSO Domain – Zewwy’s Info Tech Talks

Let’s quickly rebuild our cheap cluster, configure retreat mode and add our hosts back in…

OK so now we’ve set our stage and we have a broken Veeam instance, if we try to scan it it will be no good cause the certificate has changed, from the center changing… so David says “So in your case, if you can restore Veeam’s configuration database to before you made these changes, instead of your step 4 there, you will begin the migration procedure and use the Set-VBRVCenterName cmdlet on the existing vCenter in Veeam, re-add your newly rebuilt vCenter to Veeam, and then perform the migration.”

Step 3) run “Set-VBRvCenterName”.

So far, so good.. now..

Step 4) Add new vCenter to Veeam.

Step 5) Generate Migration File.

Now I’m back to assuming, cause instructions are unclear in Veeams provided guidance. I’m assuming I have to run the generate command before I run the start migration command….

Checking out the generated file, its a plain text file with a really weird syntax choice, but the VM-IDs are clearly as I was doing manually in my old blog post.

Step 6) Start the Migration.

I have no clue what that warning is about… I mean the new vCenter was added to Veeam, the VM IDs matched what I see in the URL when navigating them, like my old blog… I guess I’ll just check on VBR console…

I did a recalculate on the VM inside the backup job and it calculated, so looks like it worked. Let’s run a backup job and check the chain as well…

The Job ran just fine… and the chains still intact. Looks like it worked, this was the supported way, and it did feel easier, especially if scaled out to hundreds of VMs.

Hope this helps someone.

December 3, 2025

Adding a Hyper-V host to Veeam

Before You Begin – Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide for Microsoft Hyper-V

Before you add a Microsoft Hyper-V server to the backup infrastructure, check the following prerequisites:

Check permissions required to add the server. For more information, see Permissions.
- Admin permissions based account got it…
[For SCVMM] SCVMM Admin UI must be installed on the backup server. Otherwise, you will not be able to add SCVMM servers to the backup infrastructure.
SCVMM console version must match the management server version.
Make sure that you do not add to the backup infrastructure Hyper-V hosts or clusters managed by an SCVMM server if this SCVMM server is already added to the backup infrastructure.
- Nope just a stand alone host

File and printer sharing must be enabled in network connection settings of the added Microsoft Hyper-V host. Otherwise, Veeam Backup & Replication will fail to deploy required components.
- Uhhh wut?

Make sure that the NETBIOS name of the Microsoft Hyper-V Server is successfully resolved.
- Uhhh wut?

If you get the “Invalid Credentials” error when adding a Hyper-V host using a local account, see this Veeam KB article.

This is gonna suck..

Unable to add a single Hyper-V host to Veeam. : r/Veeam

i am unable to add Hyper V hosts to Veeam | Veeam Community Resource Hub

Why?…

When you add a Hyper‑V host to Veeam Backup & Replication, the product deploys its transport service and integration components remotely using Windows’ built‑in administrative shares (ADMIN$, C$). That’s why File and Printer Sharing must be enabled on the NIC: without those hidden shares, Veeam cannot copy files or install its agents. By default, only the built‑in Administrator or domain admin accounts can access these shares remotely, because User Account Control (UAC) strips remote admin rights from other local accounts. This often surprises people who harden their hosts by disabling the Administrator account or removing shares, since Veeam’s deployment model depends on them being present.

On standalone Hyper‑V hosts, this creates a security trade‑off. You can either leave the built‑in Administrator enabled (simpler, but harder to audit), or disable UAC remote restrictions so named local admin accounts can access the shares (more auditable, but technically weaker security posture because all local admins gain remote rights). In practice, many administrators prefer creating a dedicated service account for Veeam and a separate account for human administration, then disabling the built‑in Administrator. This way, activity is traceable and controlled, while still allowing Veeam to function. The nuance is that Veeam chose the “lowest common denominator” approach — SMB admin shares — which works everywhere but clashes with modern hardening practices, so standalone hosts require careful balancing of convenience, auditability, and exposure.

Step 1) Enable SMB

Install-WindowsFeature -Name FS-FileServer -IncludeManagementTools

Edit your firewall rules as required as this will create 3 new ones and open them up (135 DCOM, 445 SMB, and dynmic ports one), in my case I disabled them and only enabled the SMB restrictive rule.

Check off Microsoft file and print sharing service under the NIC settings for which will be used to add Hyper-V to Veeam.

Maybe we can enable it only during deployment then disable it, lets find out. On Hyper-V lets create a dedicated Veeam admin account, then disable remote UAC while adding the host to Veeam. Done, adding host to Veeam…

Option 1) Specify the local administrator account. (Usually disabled on hardened servers)

Option 2) edit registry to allow remote uac, so the built in admin shares can be accessible by admin account that is named and not the built in administrator account.

Why Veeam does allow for the ability to prepare a Hyper-V host via these install packages manually without exposing the post to these additional attack surfaces is honestly beyond me. I usually love Veeam but this one is kind of dumb.

Step 2) Disable Remote UAC restrictions

I’ll stick with option 2: User Account Control and remote restrictions – Windows Server | Microsoft Learn

To disable UAC remote restrictions, follow these steps:

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER.

Locate and then click the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

If the LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy registry entry doesn’t exist, follow these steps:
1. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then select DWORD Value.
2. Type LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy, and then press ENTER.
Right-click LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy, and then select Modify.
In the Value data box, type 1, and then select OK.
Exit Registry Editor.

Now open a file explorer window in Veeam Server, and point to \\IPofHyper-V\admin$ it should prompt you for creds, you should be able to provide the creds of the named admin account and it should connect.

Well I got past the error…

Sigh n’ groan…. ughhhh.. too be continued, time to make a Server 2025 image…

Lets try again..

And this time success…

Restore Storage Theory

🖥️ Scenario

Source: Veeam is running inside a VM on ESXi.
Repository: Local storage attached to that VM (so Veeam sees it as a local NTFS/ReFS volume).
Target: A standalone Hyper‑V host with only local storage (no SMB shares, no clustered SOFS).

🔧 How Veeam Writes the VM HDD Files

Restore job starts
- You pick the Hyper‑V host as the restore target.
- Veeam knows it must deliver VHDX files + VM configuration to that host’s storage path (e.g., D:\VMs\MyVM\).
Transport service on Hyper‑V host
- Veeam deploys or uses its Veeam Data Mover Service (part of the Veeam transport service) on the Hyper‑V host.
- This service is responsible for receiving blocks of data and writing them to disk.
Data transfer
- The Veeam server (on ESXi) reads blocks from the backup file in its local repository.
- Those blocks are sent over the network to the Hyper‑V host using Veeam’s own transport protocol (TCP/IP).
- Important: This is not SMB — it’s Veeam’s proprietary data mover channel.
File creation on Hyper‑V host
- The transport service on the Hyper‑V host opens a file handle on the local filesystem (NTFS/ReFS).
- It creates the target VHDX file and writes the incoming blocks directly using standard Windows file I/O APIs (CreateFile, WriteFile, etc.).
- VM configuration files (.vmcx, .vmrs) are also written directly to the host’s local storage.
Completion
- Once all blocks are written, Hyper‑V sees the restored VM files in its local storage.
- Veeam registers the VM with Hyper‑V Manager if you chose a full VM restore.

✅ Key Points

No SMB is used here.
Veeam uses its own transport service to push data over TCP/IP to the Hyper‑V host, which then writes the files directly to local disk.
SMB only comes into play if the repository or Hyper‑V storage is on a remote file server (like a NAS or SOFS cluster).

Retore to Hyper-V

Here a whole video on the process, cause I wasn’t sure how to do it as when I selected restore entire VM to new location, only my ESXi hosts were selected, AI said it not possible, Googling said that Instant Restore was the only option… mhmm that video showed the same thing…

I won’t lie I felt so dumb at first cause the restore prompt said “waiting on user input” and there was an open console link at the bottom of the instant restore wizard, so I clicked that and it kept asking for creds (I thought the hyper-v ones) and it kept failing… till I realized you just have the VM already running (or not based on your selection) but it’s already registered to the host, you have to finish an instant restore by clicking migrate to production option.

I tell ya… that made me feel really…. reallllly dumb…..

anyway I hope this posts helps someone.

November 17, 2025

Migrating/Restoring Veeam

In one of my pervious posts I discussed upgrading Veeam, today I want to discuss migrating it entirely. Or recovering it, as this process here is essentially the same.

Disclaimer what you do in your own environment is on you, everything in this blog is for educational purposes only. This also doesn’t cover encryption management all data is moved in-place (E.G disconnecting, and reconnecting an HDD from one machine to another), with the data at rest being unencrypted.

Step 1) Sign in to Veeam portal

I didn’t have a paid product license, so my download section was full of free trial links. Since I’m using CE (community edition) from here: Free Backup Software For Windows, VMware, & More – Veeam

Step 2) Download the ISO

it’s a doosy at 13 GBs

Step 3) Read the update notes for any expected issues/outcomes.

For all the FAQs go here: Veaam Upgrade FAQs

For basic System Requirements and release notes see here: Veeam Backup & Replication 12.3 Release Notes

The main thing will be the change of the server SQL service, moving from MS SQL Express, to PostgresDB, Though it’s not directly mentioned from what I can see other than the step 8 in the Upgrade path: Upgrading to Veeam Backup & Replication 12.3 – User Guide for VMware vSphere

Step 4) Attach the ISO

Attach it to the server being upgraded or installed on.

in my case this time, I’m simply cloning my freshly semi hardened Windows11 image, giving it a whopping 8GB of RAM, and 64Gig HDD for the OS and Veeam App to live on. While that’s being prepared lets take a config backup of our veeam server to make our lives easier.

Step 5) Backup Config.

I’d hope you’d have this configured before your Veeam server failed.

Veeam B&R -> File -> Backup Config, in our case save it to backup data drive as that will be moved and mounted first thing, we can then use that to load the config and should be good to go.

Now it shows up under Drive:\VeeamConfigBackup\Hostname\Hostname_Datestamp.bco

Step 6) Install Veeam on New Server

Depending on your Uptime requirements, you can either spin up the new server with a temp different IP, get the Veeam app and services installed, then move your discs and change IP’s. Since I don’t care in my lab, I’ll fully shutdown my existing server to free up the IP and system resources. then boot up my new server, attach the downloaded ISO in step 1, and install Veeam.

Hostname, networking, and other prerequisites are not discussed in details here.

I like how it knows, click install…

Install B&R

How long we wait is based on the Matrix. Looking at the VM resource usage, and my machines based on the setup, looks like it’s reading from the ISO to load installation files. and writing it somewhere to disk, my setup only yielded me about 40 MB’s and took roughly 8 minutes.

Agree to the EULA.

License upgrade: (I’ll try not selecting this since CE, nope wizard wouldn’t let me for CE, shucks hahah)

Service account, Local System (recommended). I left this default, next.

This is why I like Veeam, made by sysadmins for sysadmins.

Install, and now we wait… once complete

Step 7) Attach disk with backup data

How you do this is up to you, I got the needful done.

Step 8) Open Veeam B&R Console, and import config backup.

In Veeam B&R Console, click what should be file -> Config Backup, then click restore button.

Now, I picked restore since I shutdown my OG server to move the data as a whole, so I picked restore:

The config deets check em over, I don’t know what the minimum gap between version is allowed, but in this case 12.3.1 source, to target 12.3.2

Target Data is localhost, pay attention to the login name, if you ever change the local admin account or whatever account installs Veeam, this could be an issue to your SQL Veeam config.

yes…

Restore…

Yes…

Wait for services to all stop…

success… until it’s not…

This for some reason failed…

I clicked start and it seemed to start everything up just fine…

But no matter what when I tried to rescan any repos in the console it would complain that not all components were upgraded. Everything AI was telling me was off and felt wrong.. I found this one thread with the statement “It seems that not all Windows 10 installations are facing this problem. We’ll try to figure out of certain builds are involved in this. On the other hand, a fresh v12 install in Win10 works without any problems.” Well This is a fresh install, it happened after the backup import, when I did the last upgrade back in March, it was ain in place upgrade from 12.1 to 12.3, and I didn’t have this problem.

After enough fooling around I found my answer here, which was to run the provided script. finding the component listed with 0.0 as noted in the thread. Strange.

Then finally the part of the wizard completed:

March 19, 2025

Update Veeam 12.3

Grab Update file from Veeam.

Step 1) Sign in to Veeam portal

Step 2) Download the ISO, it’s a doosy at 13 GBs

Step 3) Read the update notes for any expected issues/outcomes.

For all the FAQs go here: Veaam Upgrade FAQs

For basic System Requirements and release notes see here: Veeam Backup & Replication 12.3 Release Notes

Step 4) Attach the ISO to the server being upgraded or installed on

My case a 12.1 based server.

My case it’s a VM, so I just attach it via VMRC.

Step 5) Run the Installer

Make sure you stop any “continuous” jobs, and close the B&R Console.

Double Click Setup.exe on the mounted ISO’s main directory.

If you haven’t guessed it, click Upgrade. Yes, nice to see coding done where it just does a check and knows it’s a Veeam server, so the only option is to Upgrade.

In my case I again only have one option to choose from.

Agree to the EULA.

Upgrade the server, here’s you have a checkbox to update remote components automatically (such as Veeam proxies). In my lab the setup is very simply so I have none. I just click next.

License upgrade: (I’ll try not selecting this since CE, nope wizard wouldn’t let me for CE, shucks hahah)

Service account, Local System (recommended). I left this default, next.

Here’s the OG MS SQL instance:

… yes?

For the Veeam Hunter service… ignore (Shrug)

free space… needs more than 40 Gigs… holy molly….

43.1 GB required, 41 GB Available. Unreal, guess I’ll extend the drive, great part of running VMs. 🙂

Finally! Let’s Gooooo! and sure enough first step.. here comes the new SQL instance.. this is probably why it requires over 40 gigs to do the install, to migrate the SQL instance from MS SQL to Postgres…. Wonder if space will be reclaimed by removal of the MS SQL Express instance….

Roughly half hour later…

Mhmmm checking the services I see the orginal MS SQL instance is still there running. I see a postgres service.. not running… uhhhh mhmmm…

All Veeam services are running, open the Veeam B&R console, connect, and yup it opens. The upgrade component wizard automatically opened, and it updated the only item.. itself.

*UPDATE* Patch for latest CVE of 9.9. If you have a domain joined Veeam server.

KB4724: CVE-2025-23120

*thumbs up* It’s another 8 gig btw…

November 27, 2024

Veeam VM Restore failed: Cannot apply encryption policy. You must set the default key provider.

So in my Lab vCenter went completely POOOOOF. So, I installed it fresh.

After vCenter was installed, I updated my Veeam configuration to ensure my backup chains wouldn’t break which still works great by the way.

One VM was missing from my vSphere. So I went to restore it when all of a sudden:

I remembered by post about configuring a Native Key Provider cause it was required as such to have a vTPM. So I thought, is this a “PC Load Letter” problem, and it’s actually just complaining that I didn’t configure a NKP for it to “apply encryption policy”?

Follow the same old steps to configure a NKP.

Log in to the vSphere Client:
- Open the vSphere Client and log in with your credentials.
Navigate to Key Providers:
- Select the vCenter Server instance.
- Click on the Configure tab.
- Under Security, click on Key Providers.
Add a Native Key Provider:
- Click on Add.
- Select Add Native Key Provider.
- Enter a name for the Native Key Provider.
- If you want to use hosts with TPM 2.0, select the option Use key provider only with TPM protected ESXi hosts.
Complete the Setup:
- Click Add Key Provider.
- Wait for the process to complete. It might take a few minutes for the key provider to be available on all hosts.
Backup the Native Key Provider:
- After adding the Native Key Provider, you must back it up.
- Click on the Native Key Provider you just created.
- Click Backup.
- Save the backup file and password in a secure location.

Once I did all that…

No way that actually worked. But will it boot? Well it def “booted” but it asked for the BitLocker key (which makes sense since we created a new TPM and it doesn’t have the old keys). I checked my AD and sadly enough for some reason it didn’t have any BitLocker keys saved for this AD object/VM.

Guess this one is a loss and the importance of saving your encryption keys.

June 23, 2023

Veeam Backup Encryption

Story

So, a couple posts back I blogged about getting a NTFS USB drives shared to a Windows VM via SMB to store backups onto, so that the drive could easily plugged into a Windows machine with Veeam on it to recover the VMs if needed. However, you don’t want to make it this easy if it were to be stolen, what’s the solution, encryption… and remembering passwords. Woooooo.

Veeam’s Solution; Encryption

Source: Backup Job Encryption – User Guide for VMware vSphere (veeam.com)

I find it strange in their picture they are still using Windows Server 2012, weird.

Anyway, so I find my Backup Copy job and sure enough find the option:

Mhmmm, so the current data won’t be converted I take it then…

Here’s the backup files before:

and after:

As you can see the old files are completely untouched and a new full backup file is created when an Active full is run. You know what that means…

Not Retroactive

“If you enable encryption for an existing job, except the backup copy job, during the next job session Veeam Backup & Replication will automatically create a full backup file. The created full backup file and subsequent incremental backup files in the backup chain will be encrypted with the specified password.

Encryption is not retroactive. If you enable encryption for an existing job, Veeam Backup & Replication does not encrypt the previous backup chain created with this job. If you want to start a new chain so that the unencrypted previous chain can be separated from the encrypted new chain, follow this Veeam KB article.”

What the **** does that even mean…. to start I prefer not to have a new chain but since an Active full was required there’s a start of a new chain, so… so much for that. Second… Why would I want to separate the unencrypted chain from the new encrypted chain? wouldn’t it be nice to have those same points still exist and be selectable but just be encrypted? Whatever… let’s read the KB to see if maybe we can get some context to that odd sentence. It’s literally talking about disassociating the old backup files with that particular backup job. Now with such misdirected answers it would seem it straight up is not possible to encrypt old backup chains.

Well, that’s a bummer….

Even changing the password is not possible, while they state it is, it too is not retroactive as you can see by this snippet of the KB shared. Which is also mentioned in this Veeam thread where it’s being asked.

So, if your password is compromised, but the backup files have not you can’t change the password and keep your old backup restore points without going through a nightmare procedure or resorting all points and backing them up somehow?

Also, be cautious checking off this option as it encrypts the metadata file and can prevent import of not encrypted backups.”You can enter password and read data from it, but you cannot “remove the lock” retroactively”

“Reason why Veeam asks for passwords even on non-encrypted chains, is because backupdata metadata(holding information about all restore points in the chain, including encrypted and non encrypted ones) is encrypted too!”

“Metadata will be un-encrypted when last encrypted restore point it describes will be gone by retention.”

Huh, that’s good to know… this lack of retroactive ability is starting to really suck ass here. Like I get the limitations that there’d be high I/O switching between them, but if BitLocker for windows can do it for a whole O/S drive LIVE, non-the-less, why can’t Veeam do it for backup sets?

Summary

Veeam Supports Encryption
- Easy, Checkbox on Backup Job
- Uses Passwords
- Non Retroactive

I’ll start off by saying it’s nice that it’s supported, to some extent. What would be nice is:

Openness of what Encryption algos are being used.
Retroactive encryption/decryption on backup sets.
Support for Certificates instead of passwords.

I hope this review helps someone. Cheers.

May 21, 2023October 10, 2025

Manually Fix Veeam Backup Job after VM-ID change

The Story

There’s been a couple time where my VM-IS’s change:

A vSphere server has crashed beyond a recoverable state.
A server has been removed and added back into the inventory in vSphere.
Manually move a VM to a new ESXi host.
- VM removed from inventory, and readded.
Loss vCenter Server.
Full VM Recovery via Veeam.

What sucks is when you go to run the Job in Veeam after any of the above, the job simply fails to find the object. You can edit the job by removing the VM and re-adding it, but this will build a whole new chain, which you can see in the repo of Veeam after such events occur:

As you can see two chains, this has been an annoyance for a long time for me, as there’s no way to manually set the VM-ID in vCenter, it’s all automanaged.

I found this Veeam thread discussing the same issue, and someone mentioned “an old trick” which may apply, and linked to a blog post by someone named “Ideen Jahanshahi”.

I had no idea about this, let’s try…

Determine VM-ID on vCenter

The source uses powerCLI, which I’ve covered installing, but easier is to just use the Web UI, and in the address bar grab it after the vms parameter.

Determine VM-ID in Veeam

The source installs SSMS, and much like my fixing WSUS post, I don’t like installing heavy stuff on my servers to do managerial tasks. Lucky for me, SQLCMD is already installed on the Veeam server so no extra software needed.

Pre-reqs for SQLCMD

You’ll need the hostname. (run command hostname).

You’ll need the Instance name. (Use services.msc to list SQL services)

Connect to Veeam DB

Open CMD as admin

sqlcmd -E -S Veeam\VEEAMSQL2012

use VeeamBackup
:setvar SQLCMDMAXVARTYPEWIDTH 30
:setvar SQLCMDMAXFIXEDTYPEWIDTH 30
SELECT bj.name, bo.object_id FROM bjob bj INNER JOIN ObjectsInJobs oij ON bj.id = oij.job_id INNER JOIN Bobjects bo ON bo.id = oij.object_id WHERE bj.type=0
go

Some reason above code wouldn’t work on my latest build/install of Veeam, but this one worked:

SELECT name, job_id, bo.object_id FROM bjobs bj INNER JOIN ObjectsInJobs oij ON bj.id = oij.job_id INNER JOIN BObjects bo ON bo.id = oij.object_id WHERE bj.type=0

In my case after remove the VM from inventory and readding it:

As you can see they do not match, and when I check the VM size in the job properties the size can’t be calculated cause the link is gone.

Fix the Broken Job

UPDATE bobjects SET object_id = 'vm-55633' WHERE object_id='vm-53657'

After this I checked the VM size in the job properties and it was calculated, to my amazement it fully worked it even retained the CBT points, and the backup job ran perfectly. Woo-hoo!

This info is for educational purposes only, what you do in your own environment is on you. Cheers, hope this helps someone.

Postgres SQL

Step-by-Step: Find and Connect to the Right Database

1. List All Databases

Inside the psql shell, run:

\l

This will list all databases on the server. Look for one that resembles VeeamBackup, veeam_db, or something similar.

2. Connect to the Veeam Database

Once you identify the correct name, switch to it:

\c VeeamBackup

(Replace VeeamBackup with the actual name if different.)

3. List Tables

Now that you’re in the right database:

\dt *.*

This will show all tables across all schemas.

SELECT bj.name, bj.id AS job_id, bo.object_id
FROM bjobs bj
INNER JOIN ObjectsInJobs oij ON bj.id = oij.job_id
INNER JOIN BObjects bo ON bo.id = oij.object_id
WHERE bj.type = 0;

UPDATE BObjects SET object_id = 'vm-62' WHERE object_id = 'vm-24';

May 16, 2023May 21, 2023

Share NTFS USB HDD via SMB on FreeNAS

I’m boiling down an entire night of knowledge as short as possible:

Is it possible? Yes, reference (this post)

Does the internet say it’s possible? No and More, No

Jeff “In the FreeNAS documentation it says using USB attached devices as shares is not allowed.”

Let’s do it anyway. Couple point notes:
*I created an account on FreeNAS “veeam” account ID 1001.

Mounting The USB HDD to FreeNAS:
Using the “Import Disk” option doesn’t work well:
1. requires existing zpool aka volume, configured.
2. when completed doesn’t show files properly.
3. Mounts Disk in Read Only.
4. Much like the link shared above we just mount it manually via the backend.
  1. ```
  ntfs-3g /dev/da6s1 /mnt/USBHDD/ -o rw,user_allow_other,uid=1001,gid=1000
```
2. to make this stick after reboots have to edit fstab file. *I haven’t done this yet, when I have and tested it, I’ll update this area.
3. The command mounts the NTFS using FUSE, and you can’t change ownership of files n folders after mounting only during.
Sharing the Drive via SMB:
1. Attempting to create a share via the Front End UI will show the path available in the path selector but it will simply state “This field is required” when trying to create the SMB Share. or you might get “The path None does not exist“.
2. symlinking or mounting directly to existing zpool pool path that’s already shared via SMB, results in failure accessing the drive and Freenas Logs “smbd: dnssd_clientstub write_all(36) failed -1/53 57 Socket is not connected“
3. The above line alone, I went through hell trying to solve, it’s what lead me to learning about FUSE and the chown issues and all that jazz, I went down so many rabbit holes I thought I was defeated, till I had one final idea: just like I manually mucked with the backend to get NTFS mounted in RW, maybe I can edit the backend Samba config to share the path since the front end python scripts were coded to prevent it.
  1. Find the config file: Samba config file:
```
/usr/local/etc/smb4.conf
```
  2. Add a shared path entry:
```
[usbhddd] 
    path = "/mnt/USBHDD"
    printable = no
    veto files = /.snapshot/.windows/.mac/.zfs/
    writeable = yes
    browseable = yes
    access based share enum = no
    hide dot files = yes
    guest ok = no
```
  3. Save the file and restart the Samba Service:
```
service samba_server restart
```

When I saw that share path available, and when I double clicked it and I saw the files saved there show up, my jaw dropped!!! I couldn’t believe it worked.

Much like the manually having to edit the FSTAB to get the drive to mount automatic at boot, I have a feeling the smb4.conf file maybe overwritten at boot, which may require a cron job script to resolve. I again haven’t got to that point yet, I just finished this proof of concept that was, from my research, deemed to be impossible. Yet here I am blogging my success. See below for some info regarding Samba.

Samba options

Samba for FreeBSD

Key take away is that there’s a “link” between the Unix user and the “SMB” user. “FreeBSD user accounts must be mapped to the SambaSAMAccount database for Windows® clients to access the share. Map existing FreeBSD user accounts using pdbedit(8):”

pdbedit -a -u username

Final Note. I did this so I could have Backup Copy Jobs run, the Veeam server is a VM and this allows the VM to be migrated to other hosts while still being able to do both regular backup jobs and Backup copy jobs. and now that the USB drive on FreeNAS is NTFS based, I can just take the drive plug it into a windows machine and start restore operations. Having said that I’m doing this for my HomeLab and is for educational purposes only.

Here’s a snip of the repo in use via Veeam.

July 11, 2022

Veeam Backup Failed – SSL/TLS handshake failed

Another day, another issue.

Processing VirtualMachineName Error: Cannot get service content.
Soap fault. SSL_ERROR_SYSCALL
Error observed by underlying SSL/TLS BIO: Unknown errorDetail: 'SSL/TLS handshake failed', endpoint: 'https://vcenter.domain.localca:443/sdk'
SOAP connection is not available. Connection ID: [vcenter.domain.local].
Failed to create NFC download stream. NFC path: [nfc://conn:vcenter.domain.local,nfchost:host-#,stg:datastore-#@VirtualMachineName/VirtualMachineName.vmx].
--tr:Unable to open source file

If you come across this error, check if you have any firewalls between your Veeam proxy Server, and the vCenter server.

I’ve blogged about this type of problem before, but in that case it was DNS, in this case it’s a Firewall.

In most cases it’s either:

1) PEBKAC
2) DNS
3) Firewall <— This Case
4) A/V
5) a Bug

You may have noticed a lack in posts lately. It’s not that I can’t figure out content to share, it’s a lack pf motivation. I’ve been burnt out with work from the pandemic when everyone got a bunch of free money and time off… I just got more work, did I get more pay? I’ll let you decide. The amount of support calls, sheesh. That’s my only real motivation — is not to be hassled. That and the fear of losing my job, but y’know, it will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

This site has earned me $0, so that also doesn’t help. Thanks everyone for all the support keeping this site alive.

January 13, 2022

Veeam As Built Report

Source: HomeLab – Veeam VBR Documentation with AsBuiltReport – A Technology Blog (zenprsolutions.net)

Prereqs:

Ughhh…

Google!! … Let’s try this…

[Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12

Nice it worked…

You can use the commands like in the source guide, I however simply downloaded the source files and extracted to Veeam server c:\temp.

Don’t forget to use recursive… lol

As you might be able to tell, my Veeam instance is non domain joined. Using the local Admin account to run everything.

Let’s GO!

Little missing field validation, but not important for what will just be text field in a report.

and failed cause bad credentials, right I forgot to put in my password when making the snippet, lets build the credentials again properlly and run through again…

Alright some file checking here, nice….

and success short lived… Enterprise Edition… like what??

Well I tried… I’ll update this blog once there’s an update from the Dev.