Transcript
Hello and welcome to episode 210, and we already broke the rule and switched it up. I am Rick Vanover, the Rickatron. I said I was going to be in Canada. I go to Maddy, and I say, Maddy, this guy got a busy trip. Can we do it a day early? So that's right. We're recording on a Tuesday, recapping the week already, and then I'm still on my second cup of coffee. But good morning, Maddalena. How are you? Good morning, Rick, and good day, community, wherever you are watching us from, whatever time you are watching us at. So I'm doing well, pretty excited that, you know, we are just a week away, two weeks away from, not even two weeks. Don't say that word. Don't say it. I'm not ready. I'm not ready. Don't get stressed. It's exciting. It's not stressful. It's exciting, Rick. We are going to VIMON, and we are going to be the community in there. So that's super exciting. I'm looking forward to spend some time and to catch up with, you know, the community members that are going to be there and see the team, because there are so many team members that are coming from, you know, different parts of the world, so that's going to be exciting. And a lot of great content and a lot of great activities. So why stress about, Rick? I'll just agree with exciting, because exciting can go any direction. So it'll be a week to remember, and it's very close. But yes, we are heads down on VIMON, but we're breaking the community rule. We got so much good stuff here today. So I say we jump into it. Sound good? Absolutely. And, you know, even if it's Tuesday, we still have a lot of great content. So that means that our community is amazing and is just sharing a lot of great content with us. So let's just start with Andre. Yeah, that's right. We have Andre Puglia up with some diagrams for architecture that are common in the course of the instruction. So this is really cool. I think this is a great share. Absolutely. Great to have you back in the recap, Andre. I don't think we mentioned your name in a while, but probably you've been busy as well, but great to have you back. And, you know, we all use the VIM icons in our presentations to make a better visual representation. And Andre is sharing with us an awesome material in here in a PowerPoint format. I think you have it open as well, right? Yeah, I have the PowerPoint open, but it's also available on Vizio. So this is the download. So you can build your own internal diagrams. Really helps. Yeah. So what he created in here, he created icons with this tool called Draw.io.com. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it correctly. Draw.io. Draw.io. Draw.io. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. For technical icons representing products, you know, futures or different objects and their names, arrows and connectors show the process or connect objects to each other. Areas show the integration of various products and processes. And he has like in that PowerPoint, he has like a full list of different icons in there. So it's pretty, pretty awesome. But you can just do it yourself, of course. Just try on using this tool that he's recommending. We also have our library of VIM icons. And so between all these tools and resources, I'm sure you're going to find the right ones for you. Yeah, and I love how you got like even the intruder, you know, private keys, just like some of the other things as well. Moving it, you know, offline. So a little cute little truck. Come back to moving stuff offline in a bit here. But thank you, Andre. I use these all the time. I can't believe I didn't think of sharing these. But our graphics team makes these and either, you know, with Trolio or whatever. But having them in Visio or PowerPoint or both, depending on what you're doing. Absolutely fantastic. Great share. All right. Next up, Dynamic. It's like second or third time in a couple of weeks we've called his name. Integrating VIM with Sophos Central. This is a good one. Yeah, great to have you back, Dynamic, aka Marcus. You know, after winning blog of the month in March, you know, he's just now pushing harder. I don't know. He wants a second badge. I don't know what kind of badge can we can we give him if he wins again blog of the month. Right. Because I have a feeling that this is going to go again to, you know, to the competition. Let's see. Let's see. But yeah, another awesome article in here, Marcus is discussing VBR and Sophos Central integration, showing us step by step the deployment and possible messages via email or from the Sophos Central dashboard. The goal being to give us an overview of the product. So how to monitor and react to certain events within VBR using the Sophos managed service. And he he says for licensing and activation, you know, he's sharing the respective link and showing us how to activate it. But then Marcus mentions as well, you know, that the license must be purchased in advance through your trusted dealer. And then he moves on to configuration step by step demo. The next step is deployment by open virtual appliance and appliance manager website. And as Marcus says, the you know, the website is the website is quite simple and many options are not even available. Download log files, restart and shut down under settings. You can see the IP information again and then a modification or adaptation would in turn be controlled by a new deployment from Sophos Central. And this finally takes us to the integration in VBR. Here, Marcus shows us step by step how to do this integration, you know, to get data on additional events. Sophos recommends turning on VIMS for eyes authorization. So don't forget to do that. And then Marcus is letting us know that currently Sophos Central is not yet able to communicate with the incident API, but he opened a feature request. Hopefully there are more that did this with Sophos and discusses, you know, a PowerShell script from one of the community members that triggers the incident API in VBR. So you can check that out as well. And at the end, he's just sharing some print screens with Sophos Central dashboard samples. So you can just go there and check that out. Yes, that's the PowerPoint, the PowerShell script that I was talking about. And then, yeah, just scrolling down, you can be able to see the print screens of the dashboard sample. So great article. Very long again, Marcus. Thank you for sharing all that with us. He's also sharing if you're just going to go reading it, reading this article. He's also sharing like some links to some other articles where, you know, community members are talking about this integration. One of them is Sean's article that we actually mentioned it, I believe, last year. So that one is a good one as well, in case you want to go and read it. This is absolutely fantastic because even I have talked about these integrations. But as I was just going through the different screenshots, I could truly see how it works. And it's not just in Sophos, but then in Veeam and then back in Sophos. Just that's the type of thing that I think is really, really awesome. So, Marcus, this is truly fantastic. Thank you so much. Happy to feature this again in our recap. Just where's the like? I need to give you a like. I don't know if there is a like. We don't we don't get points for likes or liking, but you got a like. That's good stuff. All right, next up, Mateus on a path here talking about Sure Backup. I love going back to basics. Yeah, if you think about this is the first time mentioning him in the recap. So great to have you at the hub. Great to have you in the recap, Mateus. Just keep on doing what you're doing. You are on the path. So he's discussing Sure Backup, as you said. He's going really in detail over this feature and he's going over the components of Sure Backup, like the virtual lab, explaining what the virtual lab is, application group as well, Sure Backup job. So he's just explaining all these notions. And then he's talking about the Sure Backup testing process. He says like once configured, Sure Backup automatically execute the sequence of tests, which is a fantastic thing to have. And he's discussing the heartbeat test, the ping test, the application test. And, you know, like at the end of the process, Sure Backup generates a detailed verification report, giving administrators confidence that their backups are fully recoverable. And I'm not going to just really go in super detail because we've been discussing Sure Backup in many, many other occasions. But what I am going to say is that Mateus put together a step by step demo on how to configure Sure Backup in Vim Backup and Replication. So that's fantastic, you know, to go over and learn how to do it if you are new to it. But yeah, we can just appreciate that you put this together for us. Thank you, Mateus, and looking forward for your next article. What I love about this, Maddy, is like a couple examples, like even right here, we're going through some of the advanced options that honestly, if you're playing with Sure Backup for the first time, these are the types of things that can get you tripped up. But then he's also going into some of the new capabilities. Like I really like this option here that came with Sure Backup. And if you are just getting started, this may actually be one to start with as well. Just looking at the content scan of your backups, do a quick threat hunter scan randomly. There's so much to it. Maddy, you think we've been talking about Sure Backup for so long. I have been talking about Sure Backup for 15 years and I still love it. And I never get tired talking about it. I love this technology. So thank you, Mateus. Good stuff. I tell you, the basics always work. Covering the basics. Totally. All right, so we are breaking the rule per my request. I wanted to highlight this post from Darren Rignor talking about enabling MFA for your Veeam account. And it's not just because he started the title with an emoji. Okay, that's not why I picked it. I actually thought this is a good one. And you know what, we just haven't called his name that often. But in normal Rignor fashion, he's bringing us practical tips here about putting multifactor authentication on your Veeam.com account. Now this is actually super important. So dramatic video emphasis. Why is it important? Well, because you don't want someone to get in there and booger up your licenses, obviously. But then secondly, this is something you want to be regular with. And if you think about your multifactor process, like I use the Authly app, where I have all the OTPs in there, a couple of servers I log into, even some of my personal stuff. But you want to make sure that your authorization to your Veeam.com account is at the standard of all the other important things you need. And where I'm going with that is, think about your passwords that you need for service accounts and stuff. A lot of people will put those in like a secret server. Something like your Veeam.com access should go there as well, because if you have to do a complete rebuild, that's a place you're going to start to download to get licenses, etc. But I would also, in that secret server, think about storing things like your bucket keys to Cloud Vault, encryption passwords to Veeam stuff. These are the types of things that can really make you have a quicker recovery and kind of an absolute recovery scenario. So I kind of added some more to it. But I think, of course, Regnor's information is always good. It's good to see him also featured in the recap. Absolutely. Great to have you, Max, in the recap. And you know what? I have an MFA for my Gmail. Yeah, you should. More in this context, you know, like your important data. So you should definitely use MFA. Yeah, and keep those up. You know, just think about the things you need to actually use it. And then protect them accordingly. Right. So that's where I'm going with it. All right. Next up. The other Ben from New Zealand is up with our Vanguard blog Spotlight. And he's talking Homelab. That's always going to get you a shout out on our show. Hey, Ben. Part two of upgrading. He's loving so much details in here. Like really, really a lot of details. It took me some time to go over all that information. It's a lot of technical stuff. But good, good, good stuff. I know you like that one, Rick. And you're going to get the chance to talk about it in a minute. But yeah, it is a really fantastic write up for someone that, you know, especially for someone that is trying to upgrade their lab and has doubts on what route they should take. You know, if you remember in the first part, Ben went over his current Homelab and what he was aiming for with this next gen lab, because he felt like it was a little bit outdated and he was trying a better performance, you know, being able to scale when needed and keeping the power bill reasonable, because that's important. And in this one, you're going to see he's saying like, hey, in New Zealand, you know, electricity is pretty expensive. So that's an important factor in choosing, you know, the hardware in here and, you know, as well, not breaking the bank, because you don't want to break the bank when you build your Homelab, and in this second part, he's showing us the behind the scenes of his research, you know, and show us the different options he considered and what hardware he decided for. And he's saying, like, my initial, you know, focus was like the processor power, but also like, you know, beyond raw processing power, security was an increasingly critical aspect to consider, and as well, like, hey, enterprise grade gear that, you know, offers solid compatibility with enterprise software, and it's built to be expanded. So there was a lot to consider in here. And then the storage, thinking about power efficiency, he says, like, hey, flash storage is a winner. And that takes us to that pic that you really like, right? And then here, he created a short list with some potential ones, you know, like probably he considered more, but these were like his three final options that he wanted to choose from. And the option one was like Dell PowerEdge, 14-gen Intel R64 or R740. Option two, AMD enters the ring, Dell PowerEdge 14- or 15-gen AMDs, R7415 or R7515. And the last one, he's saying, hey, why not going bare-bones DIY? And then Gigabyte or Asus. And he's actually, at the end, he finds something else on their New Zealand eBay. I forgot the name. I think it was Trade Something, Trade Me, similar to eBay in New Zealand. He's talking about the fact that, you know, like, it's not like the eBay in the US or like, you know, in different European tech hubs where you can... It's easy to find second-hand parts. So he had to consider that factor as well. So in the end, he found really something really good on that website, and he went with the XNet app SolidFire Nodes, which was rebranded as QCT, Quanta Grid Servers. And he says, like, this was a rare opportunity, so I had to really go with that, even though initially he considered something else. So, yeah, the foundation for the new home lab is now physically in place, and we are really waiting on part three, where I believe he's going to go over, you know, this new hardware and see what he's going to be able to do with this and, you know, taking us through the initial steps of getting the system operational and see some tests maybe, performance tests. So this is just like, you know, I didn't go that much in detail because if I did, I would have all the show covered with this one article. So, but it's fantastic what he did in there and definitely go and read it all and great options as well. So awesome job, Ben. Yeah, you know, I think I take for granted how easy it is for me to get hardware, right? Some of the logistical and the shipping challenges and other parts of the world. I don't think New Zealand is exempt there. Even some parts of Europe, it's even tricky, you know, and I think he's got an undue burden. But I love just the considerations and the thoughts he put into it. Incredibly intentional research here, Ben. Great job, can't wait to see it all get buttoned up. Oh, yeah, you're going to definitely make it to the VBS. Yes, we got to know how this story ends. Yeah, we need a whole story here, Ben. All right, now I have translated this, but really happy to announce coming up next week. Yep, oh, my schedule's open. We have a user group in China by Albert Fu and Mars. So love Albert Fu, always into good stuff. This will be pretty cool. What are they going to cover here? Well, Rick, first of all, yeah, you translated it in English. Let's just make sure everyone knows that. It's going to be in Mandarin. Chinese, it's not going to be in English, even though you did translate that. So we are going to talk all things VDC. And I think we are going to talk mostly VDC in the region, you know, because it's different from region to region. So it's good to cover it by some really technical experts in that region. We have Albert and we also have Mars, who is one of our technical guys at Veeam in China. So I'm definitely looking forward to this one. It's going to be next week on the 15th, if I'm not mistaken. And yeah, that's going to be in the second part of the day in China. That's my 11 a.m., I think, time. So yeah, that's going to be in the afternoon. I cannot really transform it right now. Their time zone, but it's going to be in the afternoon. So definitely register for this event is going to be awesome. Thank you, Albert. Thank you, Mars. Yeah, absolutely. And really good to get the China group active with unique content. It's actually a pretty big group as well in there. So looking forward to that. And we are going to see Albert at VeeamON as well, because he's going to be there. So looking forward to seeing him in person. All right, next up in special department, another outstanding pair, Mohamed and Amer. Apologies if I didn't get that right, Amer. Amer from Veeam and Mohamed, the incredible tinkerer. This one also will be done in Arabic because this is a VUG Egypt event. I've translated it here to English for this show so we can talk about stuff. And already pretty good pre-reg for next week, the day after on the 16th. Yeah, absolutely. That's going to be also a good one. That's going to be Veeam updates. You should know. So let's see what they're going to talk about, because I don't think they were very specific in their description. But I'm pretty sure it's going to be good because Mohamed, as we always say, we had him in the VBS, we had him sharing some other tips and tricks on the community hub. So we all know that he's also an expert when it comes to Veeam products. Amer, of course, Veeam insider. So definitely you don't want to miss this out. Again, these are very good when you have it in your region, from experts from your region, in your language, it gives you the possibility to ask more specialized, more specific questions to your region. And rather than when the show is maybe in English and the show is from a different region, it's good. You can still ask questions. But I think that this is even better to participate in if you are in that region and working with Veeam in that region. The other thing I think is good about the regional stuff, same thing with the China one, is that if they need a recommendation for help locally, these two know. That's the one challenge with some of the global products. It's like, depends on where you are. But I know Amer and Mohamed may have recommendations on experts and partners, whatever, to help get you there. So thank you, Mohamed. Thank you, Amer. That'll be fantastic. All right. Still in special department, a couple of ones for me. One, I want to draw everyone's attention. Again, I know I go to this one often, but KB4514 has taken an update. If you're Veeam backup and replication servers not connected to the Internet, please read this file because this KB article has the XML file, which I've got right here. We are on version 98. So it's taken an update. Now, this one is both indicators of compromise detection, which maps to MITRE ATT&CK behaviors and then also goes into individual, let's see if I can find the end here, goes into individual ransomwares and stuff. And what I mean by that is towards the end here, looks like LockBit version 4 and Termite have come in and FuncSec expoused exactly. So you can see those are in there. If you're not connected to the Internet, please update this file. Always. And by the way, I've got stories of this stuff really saving organizations from some pretty bad things. So this is absolutely worth doing. And then there's that thing we started with. There's still time to join online. And Maddy, I guess I'll ask you one quick question. What are you looking forward to most with this VeeamOn? Oh, to meet the community in there. You know, that's what I'm looking forward, you know, because I haven't seen our Veeam100 because mostly the Veeam100, but there are going to be some VUG leaders that are not part. I was just mentioning Albert, right, VUG leaders that are not part of the Veeam100 program. And yeah, for instance, I haven't seen Albert since last year, VeeamOn, I haven't seen our Veeam100 members since November. So it's always a great opportunity, you know, to catch up with them and see and discuss and, you know, not just like technical stuff, not just Veeam, but we are all friends in there and just catching up in general and having some a drink and just talk about things. It's always amazing, you know. And then also, I'm looking forward to to have other people stopping by, you know, our booth, our community booth, because we're going to have this amazing booth where our Veeam100 members are going to assist us and be around and answer different questions about the programs, about the community hub. And we're going to have some amazing swag as well. Stop by and get a T-shirt if you are there. We're going to have some really great ones. And yeah, overall, I think it's going to be a great event. So I'm definitely looking forward to it. I guess my the biggest thing I look forward to is when you say community, I'm going to use community in a different word, the bigger ecosystem of customers and partners. I just love their excitement for what's coming. You know, the general sessions, we're going to showcase some really cool current and future innovations. Actually, all of them are technically future, but there's even some beyond future. Just having that excitement for that, that's what I that's why I do it. This is really going to be fun. So I'm excited for it. No, who's new this week because we changed the schedule on Sophia. That's just rude, but we'll we'll double it up next week. But Maddie, as always, thank you so much for rocking the recap here and curating the content for us. It's always my pleasure, Rick. All right. Next week is the last week. Final push. I'll be back home next week and we will see you on 2-11.
