Veeam Backup and Replication 9.5 Update 4b & Veeam Agent 3.0.2 Release Update

THE WORD FROM GOSTEV Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 Update 4b and Veeam Agents 3.0.2 should be shipped this week finally. In fact, we were ready to ship last Thursday – but in the end we decided to give it another weekend in the QC labs to ensure preliminary compatibility with the pre-release vSphere 6.5 U3 build that we've only received literally a few days ago (we also tested U4b against vSphere 6.7 U3 beta build, but that we have had in our hands for much longer). So far everything is looking good, and we're ready to proceed with the pilot deployment as soon as QC signs off the RTM build. As usual, for the first few days we will be offering the build through our support organization to all customers who have support cases open on the issues this new build fixes. I don't expect this phase to be too long this time, since U4b is a fairly minor update in general (new platform versions support + slightly over 100 bugs fixed). Last week, we were also troubleshooting a funny bug with vSphere Storage DRS, which many of you can potentially run into. This started from me noticing this tweet, which looked pretty scary because I knew for the fact that we do manage datastore cluster SDRS settings in Veeam Backup & Replication. This is done to prevent SDRS from moving the VM while it's being processed – and we do this for the source VMs, replica target VMs, as well as VMs serving as hot add backup proxies. Yeah, we have many of these unique "smarts" of a mature solution that you don't even realize exist – until they start causing some issues, that is. However, in this case, Veeam was not to blame! After the deeper investigation, this appeared to be a UI bug of the HTML5 vSphere Web Client, which simply does not remove VMs from the VM Overrides lists even after the Storage DRS Automation Level is correctly reverted by Veeam back to the Default (Fully Automated). Flex-based vSphere Web Client does not appear to have the same issue, and shows an empty list when connected to the same datastore cluster. This next topic makes me really happy that we have the free edition of Veeam Agent for Windows, because this will certainly make it even more popular. Apparently, there was a significant change in Windows 10 version 1803, starting from which Windows no longer backs up the system registry. Registry backups will still show as successful, but backup files being created in the RegBack folder are now empty! Which really looked like a bug – up until last week, when Microsoft confirmed this was done on purpose and is intended "to help reduce the overall disk footprint size of Windows". I guess that's somewhat a valid point, but I find the lack of prior communication about this change very strange > Microsoft Issues Warning For 800M Windows 10 Users Here's an interesting anti-ransomware solution that I find very creative. Conceptually, it is based on so-called "honeypot" tactics, which is about purposely placing "easy targets" in the environment for hackers to go after. Not only they make hackers waste their time on fake production data, but they are also monitored to provide IT with the advance warning on hackers present within their network perimeter. Now, unlike in case of hackers, with ransomware you must react literally instantly, which requires an automated killswitch. And this solution leverages resources already built into Windows to provide just that > Using Windows FSRM to build a Killswitch for Ransomware Something special came up last week to finally justify talking Boeing 737 Max situation here. To sum up my personal take – I consider this an unfortunate "User Experience" design flaw in otherwise the significant safety feature that, implemented correctly, could have previously prevented a number of deadly crashes related to poorly trained pilots executing the "go around" maneuver. I can relate to it because MCAS is not that different from the line holding assistant in my Peugeot, which - having prevented a potential accident - became a must-have feature for me. I also have to "fight it" occasionally when it gets confused by the temporary line marking in construction zones, but it is easy to "overrule" and then it disables itself – which MCAS did not do, resulting in two tragedies. Anyway, as you're well aware, the issue became a huge catalyst for the deeper investigation, which uncovered many issues with the way Boeing did their business recently. And the most recent finding was truly mind-blowing to me: apparently, Boeing outsourced that 737 Max software to $9/hr engineers, recent college graduates from India. Wow... cost cutting should have its reasonable limits, no? Here at Veeam we build software that no people lives are dependent upon, yet we believe data protection is pretty darn important – important enough to build everything in-house. But when you're letting the experienced engineers go, replacing them with low-paid contractors to work on airplane flight control software – this is really beyond me. And I feel so blessed that I'm unable to even start to imagine that something like this could ever happen at Veeam!