MR IT Surgeon

 Zero to hero YARA rules In this follow-up to a previous blog I wrote on exploration of threat hunting with Veeam & YARA , in this blog I want to go into detail on how to create, maintain & test YARA rules. Checkout my previous post here: Threat Hunting with Veeam : Leveraging Yara for Incident Response (mritsurgeon.co.za)

Continuous Resilience: High Availability through Automated Config Backup and Restore in Veeam V12.1 Introduction: In this post of Veeam Backup and Replication Version 12.1, we'll uncover the importance of Disaster Recovery (DR) and High Availability (HA) strategies, emphasizing the role of the configuration database. While Veeam's self-describing metadata facilitates individual backup recoveries, safeguarding the configuration database ensures seamless continuity of day-to-day operations in the face of primary server failures.

Threat Hunting with Veeam : Leveraging Yara for Incident Response  Introduction : In Veeam version 12.1, a significant addition to its feature set is the enhanced security functionality. Among the standout tools for incident response, Veeam introduced Inline Scanning with Entropy analysis and integrated Yara for post-backup examination. This article delves into the power of Yara and demonstrates how it can be a vital asset in the arsenal of cybersecurity teams. Understanding Yara: Yara is a versatile and indispensable tool in the field of malware analysis. It is a staple in most cybersecurity professionals' toolboxes. YARA rules are customizable patterns used for identifying specific malware, targeted attacks, and security threats tailored to your unique environment.

  Veeam API   with Python as PowerBi Data Source Power BI is a powerful business intelligence tool that allows users to visualize data and gain insights from it. While Power BI provides built-in data connectors to various sources, including SQL Server, Oracle, Excel, and others, it also supports using custom connectors to access data from various other sources.

  I setup a Veeam Agent for Linux on ChatGPT Think Everyone is Familiar with what Chat GPT is , I previously wrote a blog on how to use ChatGPT in your everyday as a Veeam Engineer. In doing so and continued experimenting with the platform I also realized you can get ChatGPT to emulate an operating system terminal, in this short post I will show you how I got it to emulate a Linux Server that had a Veeam Agent for Linux Pre installed.  

How ChatGPT can help you as a Veeam Backup Engineer 10 Tips If you haven’t heard of ChatGPT just yet this post will probably blow your mind , ChatGPT reached 1 Million subscribers in just 5 days this an massive achievement , there are some mixed views on ChatGPT function , but my personal opinion is if used correctly can help you accelerate and better your individual performance as an individual , you can learn from its answers & use the AI large data set to advance your understanding on technology or a specific topic. https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/ 

Veeam Kasten on Rancher K3s running on WSL 2 ,  first App : Guide Intro   I wanted to run a small lab environment on my laptop , i would normally do this contained in a VM on hyper V or Vmware Workstation. Since we can Install Windows Subsystem Linux , i decided why not just use WSL to achieve the same. What I’ve done is install windows subsystem Linux on windows & then Install K3s then install Kasten’s , then install a application called sock shop from Weave Works Here are the steps , from WSL install to Application install  **NOTE  For WSL i recommend creating a config to limit its usage or you will see VMMEM process use most of your system resources.  See the tail end of this post for config example i used. WSL: In PowerShell as administrator run the following : Enable- WindowsOptionalF eature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux wsl -- list -- online wsl --install -d ubuntu-20.04 You will then be prompted with WSL Ubuntu Terminal , fi

Adding Multiple Veeam V11 Backup Servers to Veeam Enterprise Manager through Powershell & API. Haven't written a post in sometime but i had a field request from a customer and thought it was suited for a Automation post.

Restore Database using a Native SQL Query from Veeam Backup & Replication V11 Backups. I Decided to write the following "how to" based on a request through the customer community. The question posed was “ how can you use Veeam Database publish functions from a SQL query rather then the purpose built Veeam Explorer for SQL GUI tool ? “

Veeam Replicate to Azure with PowerShell & API. I’ve done a previous post on restoring VMs into azure using PowerShell Here: http://www.mritsurgeon.co.za/2020/02/restoring-multiple-vms-to-azure-part-2.html I wanted to further enhance this with Azure so that a scheduled script would remove older VM and restore newer VM, I additionally wanted there to be a revert option to older version of the VM through a VM snapshot.

Using Veeam Backup for Office 365 as DataSet for PowerBI using PowerBi Query.  I did a previous post on a self-service Dashboard which is built upon Veeam’s VBO APIs here: http://www.mritsurgeon.co.za/2020/07/single-install-script-for-veeam-backup.html I wanted to see if there was a way to use GET API method to share data with PowerBi as a data source. I previously did a post on Veeam Backup & Replication using its config SQL DB as Data Source for PowerBI here:

Single Install Script for Veeam Backup O365 Self Service Dashboard with Windows Web Server. A colleague Niels Engelen, Principal Analyst, Product Management created a great self-service web portal project that allows, customers & cloud providers to give access to O365 backups so that a user or customer may restore & manage his own O365 backup data.

Veeam Data Re-use All Backups Continued…… So, this is a Continuation of Blog post PART 3 of Data Re-use blog series, Part 3 Here   addressed Business Intelligence with Veeam Re-Use API.

  Veeam V10 Data Re-use (Business Intelligence) So, this is a Continuation of Blog post PART 2 of Data Re-use blog series, Part two here addressed Security Analysis with Veeam Re-Use API. Business intelligence  What is Business intelligence? As Per Wikipedia: According to Forrester Research, business intelligence is "a set of methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information used to enable more effective strategic, tactical, and operational insights and decision-making."

Veeam V10 Data Re-use (Security Analysis) So, this is a Continuation of Blog post PART 1 of Data Re-use blog series, Part one   Here  addressed Data Classification with Veeam Re-Use API. Security Analysis I Don’t need to stress the importance of security in infrastructure and its utmost importance in securing backup data. Backup data has been a key target for hackers and ransomware syndicates in because of this we must ensure that our backups are secure and hold no vulnerabilities. Most cases Only backup infrastructure is hardened and what is overlooked is data contained within backup aka the backup data.

Veeam V10 Data Re-use (Data Classification) So, with all this time in lockdown I’m testing use cases for the Veeam Data Re-use API. From the Graphic above you can see the general use topics of the Feature, so I decided to test use cases for each. There are 4 posts to this series, this post will focus on Data classification. Data Classification 

Veeam with Microsoft PowerBI Creating a backup Statistics & analytics Dashboard with PowerBI With some time at home during lock down I decided to play round with PowerBi & learn. The easiest start for me was to plug this into a SQL database, looking around for a Data Set I thought what not easier than use the Veeam Config Database in my lab as its already holding rich data that I could transform into a Dashboard. I also have an deep knowledge into backup and can understand how & why to transform the Data Set. This was my first Time using PowerBi so bear with me .. First, I downloaded and installed PowerBI Desktop to my Veeam Backup Server (seemed easiest as data set was local to the Tool) 

Restoring Multiple VMs to Azure: Part 2 PowerShell Hopefully you have read Part 1 of my Azure Multiple VM restores though Veeam GUI. This is a continuation of that post where i share how to achieve the same process but using only PowerShell . I built this script off a base script on this Blog post from a Colleague. Michael Cade is a Global Technologist for Veeam Software. Here is a Link to Michael's  Blog & Here is the Original Post. Prerequisites are the same as Part 1 so please follow the same. To execute the Script, you need to Add VeeamPSSnapin & connect to the backup server holding the required backups. Add -Server “Name of your Veeam Backup Server” mine in this case was “veeam” Next we need to set the required Variables, like the Backups we want to use, the restore point , the Azure accoun t & subscription , the network , storage & VM size we will use during the restore. I’ve made Duplicate lines of Variables for each backup point t

Restoring Multiple VMs to Azure:  Part 1 Use Cases:  Migration: The most obvious use would be for migration, moving your Veeam VM backup (AHV, VMware Hyper-V) or your Physical Server backups (Windows or Linux) off your aging infrastructure to a hyper-scaler like Azure. When considering purchasing new hardware for your data centre the discussion on whether to go cloud is always an interesting one. Azure will provide you with a rental type infrastructure ensuring uptime on the underlying hardware. This is in its definition Infrastructure as A Service IaaS . Dev Ops: Customers that are not ready to move production into Azure IaaS can still consider using Azure as a Development platform, this makes a lot of financial sense. Rent Infrastructure for the limited time period that the company will be testing or developing on application workloads, only pay as you use. Why purchase or keep hardware around just to run development on copies of production for the development

  Nesting Azure Stack Development Kit on a VM (ASDK) This is the post on my new blog started 2020, I wasn't sure what to blog about, so I referred to my most recent project which was testing Azure Stack Development Kit. I don’t have the hardware in a lab to run it, so I was forced to nest ASDK on a VM. I searched & reference a lot of websites/blogs & had to alter more than what was suggested. Some of these references got me 50%-60% of way but I had to scrub logs and resolve issues one at a time and then rerun the installer. So, I’m consolidating that all into this one post hopefully making this a much simpler process, with new versions of ASDK installer files being uploaded & different hypervisors being used this could work 100% or get you most of the way. What i will show is how to check the installer log which will reference the errors on script that you can either # out or edit to satisfy prerequisites.