Installing the new Veeam Software Appliance v13

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

It’s finally here – the Veeam Software Appliance, v13!

 

What is it?

A simple to deploy, hardened Veeam instance, which is not installed on Windows anymore, but comes with it’s own (Rocky) Linux – everything packed in a nice software appliance!

Very nice!

 

Naturally, should be installed ASAP! 🙂

 

Installation

So, without actually reading the manual, I went and installed it in my lab (that’s how easy is to start with it!). There will be plenty of time to read the manual once issues start… right?!

Installation has a few steps:

  • obtain the installation ISO image from here (or from your account page):
    • be careful to select Linux appliance, and not the Windows installation ISO

  • prepare hardware to install it to – for me, it’s a Windows Server 2025 Hyper-V VM (4 vCPU, 18 GB RAM, 2×240 GB HDD, SecureBoot (MS UEFI CA) enabled):
    • check the requirements here

  • once you selected and prepared your hardware, you can start the installation – it looks like this:

  • in case you didn’t read the hardware requirements, you may face this error (so, go back, re-read the hardware requirements and update your hardware):

  • and after this question, the (automatic) installation proceeds, with no more inputs required from your side:
    • while waiting for it to install, I recommend you take a look at the nice, shiny, new What’s new document!

  • installation took ~35 minutes on my machine

 

Initial configuration

After the automatic installation finished, there are a couple of initial settings that have to be taken care of:

  • accepting the necessary agreements:

  • assigning a hostname
  • setting up networking
  • configuring time source
  • setting up passwords for the admin accounts (Host Administrator and (optionally) Security Officer):
    • really liked the process of setting up the MFA for host administrator here (as SO is optional, MFA for this account will be setup later, inside the web interface)!
    • don’t use passwords that are too short… or the same! 😁

  • summary:

And… that’s it! Veeam is installed and initially configured, and now you can access it via browser:

  • host management at https://<vsa-ip-address>:10443/

  • Veeam Backup & Replication web interface https://<vsa-ip-address>/
    • (or just use the Windows console for full experience)

What a nice installation experience! Well done, Veeam people! 👏

Of course, next I’ll install my license, add rest of the infrastructure, setup my backup jobs, and connect it to (Veeam One) monitoring.

After all, it’s a “normal” Veeam solution we already know and work with.

Cheers!

Citrix NetScaler 12 – CLI upgrade helps

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 8 Comments

There is a new and shiny NetScaler version available – version 12! Smile

All the news and docs are available here, and you can download the latest bits from here. But, I will not write about them now – there is something else I would like to share.

Unlike with other (minor) upgrades, upgrading to this version… well, there were some “challenges”. If you have used Citrix NetScaler before, it has its nice and simple GUI, through which you can do many things… one of them being a system upgrade.

Upgrade process by using GUI is pretty straight-forward:

  • download the latest firmware from Citrix website (.tgz file)
  • login to the appliance and save current configuration
  • if you are using virtual appliances, you can also do a snapshot or checkpoint (depending on the virtualization platform you are using)
  • go to System – System Upgrade and select the firmware file and click Upgrade

image

  • when installation completes, reboot the appliance
  • enjoy your shiny, new NetScaler 12 (upgraded in just 6 steps)! Smile

And now about “the other way”… Smile

As I’ve observed, upgrade option through GUI was not working (for me) in any of the major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge or even Internet Explorer) – upload of firmware finishes and then… nothing really happens. Strange, but… it’s just my luck. No big deal! Smile

What helped in my case:

  • download the latest firmware from Citrix website (.tgz file)
  • use PuTTY to establish SSH connection to your appliance
  • run save config to save all the changes you have made to your existing configuration (but maybe forgot to save it before Smile)
  • if you are using virtual appliances, you can also do a snapshot or checkpoint (depending on the virtualization platform you are using)
  • type in shell (to enter the shell, where we will work with files)
  • create a folder for the new version (I have simply called it 12, as in /var/nsinstall/12/, where I will upload the new firmware)
  • use PSCP (PuTTy Secure Copy Client), also a free command-line utility to copy firmware to the appliance, inside the newly created folder:

image

  • go back to PuTTy and extract the contents of this firmware:

  • once extracted, run the ./installns command, which will actually do the upgrade (something that was never triggered in my GUI upgrade attempts, obviously Smile)
  • when installation completes, reboot the appliance

image

  • enjoy your shiny, new NetScaler 12 (upgraded in just 11 steps)! Smile

image

image

For a longer, better explained… and official version, please check the Citrix docs, available here.

Note that nothing really changes in your usual upgrade routine – those steps are just in case you have trouble with the GUI, as I did (if your GUI works normally, with your browser, use it).

Hope it helps!

Cheers!