In the previous post, we saw how to create a replica in Veeam B&R v12.
Now I’ll briefly show you how to bring that replica into production if needed, and we’ll discuss a few use cases.

Let’s go!

Let’s briefly explain the two features I use most.
Failover now ->: Veeam starts the replica on the host we configured. This is the usual option if production is lost or stopped.
Planned failover ->: Safely shuts down the source and starts the replica without data loss, although there is an outage while the source powers off and the replica powers on.
You can use it to test replicas or run a VM on another host if you don’t have vMotion or something similar.

In our example, we’ll simulate a production outage, so choose “Failover now” and continue.

Once the machine is running as a replica, these are the final options:
Permanent failover: the replica remains as the VM.
Undo failover: discard all changes made to the replica and power it off.
Failback to production: copy changes made to the replica back to the production VM, then power off the replica and start the “original.”

If we lost the source machine or its storage, Permanent Failover is the better option. If we only lost connectivity to the storage array, we can use Failback to Production once connectivity is restored, copy over the changes, and continue as usual.

Let’s run Failback to Production to restore the original setup, copy changes from the replica back to production, and resume normal operations.

As a final step, after failing back the replica to production, we need to commit the operation. This completes the process, applies all changes, and returns the machines to their production and replica states.

Regards.

Join us for this session with Jose Maria, Senior Systems Engineer at Veeam. We’ll focus on protecting Kubernetes workloads with Kasten 10,
along with a brief introduction to the community and a demo!

First, this is just for fun and was set up in my lab for testing.

I’d been thinking about this for a while. Email notifications are fine, but when your inbox is full and you receive 100 or more messages a day, important ones can get missed. I wanted a way to receive important alerts outside of email, which is how I came up with the idea of getting Veeam notifications through Telegram!

Let’s take it step by step. First, we’ll create a Telegram bot to receive messages, then route them to a group chat or somewhere else:

In Telegram:

1. Type @BotFather in the Telegram search bar.
2. Choose the first option, marked with a red verification check (this confirms it is Telegram’s official bot).
3. Click START
4. Type the command /newbot or click it in the list of commands shown in the chat.
5. Next, enter a name for your bot and press Enter (for example, Telegram_Notifier).
6. You’ll now be asked to set a username, which must end in “bot” (for example, telegramnotifierBot).
7. Done! Save the token somewhere safe; we’ll need it for authentication later. Click the link to your new bot to open its chat.
8. Now we need our Telegram ID, so we’ll use another bot:
   Open IDbot and enter the /getid command.
   It will reply with your ID: …
   Make a note of it too.

In Windows, I created a PowerShell file called telegram.ps1 with the following content:

Function Send-Telegram {
Param([Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][String]$Message)
$Telegramtoken = "AQUÍ DEBEIS PEGAR VUESTRO TOKEN"
$Telegramchatid = "AQUI EL ID"
[Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12
$Response = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://api.telegram.org/bot$($Telegramtoken)/sendMessage?chat_id=$($Telegramchatid)&text=$($Message)"}

$A = Get-WinEvent -MaxEvents 1  -FilterHashTable @{Logname = "Veeam Backup"}
$Message = $A.Message
$MachineName = $A.MachineName
$Source = $A.ProviderName

Send-Telegram $Message

Save it wherever you like. Edit it to include your TOKEN and ID!

Next, we’ll use Windows Task Scheduler. I’ll include screenshots to make it easier.

Everything is configured. Let’s run a quick test. Open Veeam B&R, if it isn’t already open, go to Configuration Backup, and increase the configuration backup retention by one day. You should receive a notification in Telegram:

Configuration job has been modified.

If you start a backup job, you’ll receive a notification like this:

From here, fine-tune the events you want to receive from Veeam B&R through Telegram in Task Scheduler.

I hope this is useful.
I’m no programmer, so if you improve it (which I’m sure you will), get in touch so we can update the post and make the Telegram notifications even better!

Regards.