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Managecast News

Managecast Wins Veeam Innovation Award 2020

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CINCINNATI – June 17, 2020 – Managecast Technologies, Inc. was presented with the prestigious Veeam Innovation Award, which celebrates creating new and unique ways to add value to Veeam technology, on June 17, 2020, at VeeamON. Starting in 2018, the Veeam Innovation Award is given out to partners who are making waves in the Veeam space. Managecast created the Managecast Portal for Veeam in 2019 and has been enabling MSPs and clients to more easily monitor backups ever since. This all-encompassing portal utilizes Veeam APIs form Veeam Service Provider Console to provide long-term historical trending of backup jobs and repositories,  ticketing integration, tracking of jobs that have not run, tracking the loss of connection with VBR consoles, a high-level dashboard showing backup activities, fully multi-tenant and MSP enabled to allow third parties to track their client’s backups, acknowledgment and tracking of events, and anomaly detection. “We originally built the Veeam portal for our internal use to monitor client backups and realized other MSP’s could benefit from the tool we built,” says Nathan Golden, Owner of Managecast. “It is a great honor to be recognized by Veeam for our efforts.” You are not required to store backups with us and can use our Veeam portal for your own Veeam service. Managecast welcomes any service provider running Veeam and managing customer backups to see why we were selected as the winner of the Veeam innovation award. ResourcesManagecast Portal for Veeam DemoAnnouncement from Veeam About ManagecastManagecast Technologies is a data protection business founded in February of 2000. Passionate about providing world-class data protection solutions, we offer a broad spectrum of services around disaster recovery and business continuity solutions. We combine professional management and disaster recovery planning services with the ability to deliver complete offsite disaster recovery solutions for virtually any platform and application. Our data centers are located in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Detroit, Michigan and are HIPAA, SSAE, SOX, and PCI compliant/certified. To learn more, visit www.managecast.com About VeeamVeeam is the leader in Backup solutions that deliver Cloud Data Management. Veeam’s Availability Platform is the most complete backup solution for helping customers on the journey to achieving success in the 5 Stages of Cloud Data Management. To learn more, visit www.veeam.com ContactNathan Golden, Presidentngolden@managecast.com(513) 735-6868 x 4002

Veeam

Validate a Backup With Veeam Backup Validator

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Have you ever been asked to validate your backups? Maybe you utilize Veeam SureBackup to validate your backups, but need to validate a specific backup on the spot and don’t want to run the entire SureBackup job? Veeam provides the Veeam Backup Validator tool to manual validate backups immediately. The tool is so simple to use that you could start using it right away. Everything is done through an administrative command prompt. A quick and easy command to start off with is:“C:\Program Files\Veeam\Backup and Replication\Backup\ Veeam.Backup.Validator” /backup:”JobName” You can see below an example of what you would see when running the Veeam.Backup.Validator tool. In addition, if you’d like to generate a report that you can print, save, or email then you can add the parameter /report:”DesiredFilePathToSaveReport.html” to the command to generate an easier to read the report as shown below. You can find more information on the Veeam.Backup.Validator tool by visiting https://www.veeam.com/kb2086 At Managecast, we fully manage and monitor your backups so that you can focus on more strategic initiatives. Interested in learning how Managecast can help your business with its cloud backup and disaster recovery solutions? Fill out this form for more information!

Ransomware

Ransomware Recap – January

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Welcome to our first Ransomware Recap! In this monthly series, we discuss a few of the biggest ransomware stories. Let’s jump in! Travelex Hackers Demand $6 Million On New Year’s Eve, hackers compromised Travelex’s infrastructure with Sodinokibi ransomware. The hack, which was undetected for 6 months prior, forced Travelex to shut down all operations across 30 countries. Alleged information gathered by the hackers included credit card numbers and over 5GB of personal information. Travelex, on the other hand, claims that no customer data was compromised. Currently, the Travelex website is still down, citing “We now have contained the virus and are working to restore our systems and resume normal operations as quickly as possible.” Source: Hot for Security Powred by Bitdefender FBI Warns US Companies About Maze Ransomware Attacks In an ongoing warning to privately owned businesses over the U.S., the FBI cautioned organizations about a progression of attacks utilizing Maze ransomware. The FBI described the recent attacks, stating the hacker would sometimes act as a government agency to steal data from the companies and encrypt it to further extort them. In another case, hackers using Maze threatened to release confidential files unless a ransom was paid. These attacks started hitting American organizations in November of 2019 and show no signs of slowing down. Source: Security Today Hackers Steal $10.5 Million from Real Estate Software Company RealPage, a real estate software company located in Dallas, was recently invaded when hackers obtained employee login credentials. The Hackers were able to access the company’s online financial accounts after an employee clicked on a phishing email. According to NBC DFW, ” Hackers, possibly from Nigeria, stole $10.5 million from a Richardson real estate software company with the help of “money mules” — dozens of Americans who unwittingly accepted fraudulent money into their accounts, transferred it to those behind the scheme and, as the culprits instructed, kept a cut for themselves, according to court documents.” Since the attack, more than $2.9 million of the stolen money has been seized by federal prosecutors. Source: NBC News Dallas Fort Worth New York Cities to Potentially Ban Ransomware Payments On January 14, New York State senators Phil Boyle and Sue Serino issued a proposal to encourage municipalities to ban the use of taxpayer money to pay ransomware demands. According to the bill, “A small investment in local government cybersecurity now, can help stop cyber-criminals from profiting on the backs of New York State taxpayers and protect important state and local government services from disruption… To incentivize these upgrades, the bill will prevent state and local governments from paying ransoms for ransomware attacks after January 1, 2022 by which time they should be able to sufficiently upgrade their cybersecurity systems.” Two days later, Senator David Carlucci introduced a second bill with similar text, the only stipulation being that it omits the creation of a security fund. Source: Threat Post Talk with one of our experts to learn how you can protect your organization from Ransomware. Schedule a meeting here. Enjoyed this Ransomware Recap? Read more on our blog!

General Cloud Backup

Ctrl+Alt+Delete Not Working in vCloud Director

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If you are having trouble interacting with your Failed-Over VMs through vCloud Director, there is a known issue with vCloud Director (VCD) where the proper signal is not sent when trying to CTRL+ALT+DEL from the web console window. The VMWare KB article Addressing this can be found here. As stated in the above article, there are a few workarounds, the easiest just using the Edge or Internet Explorer Browsers. Our preferred method is to use VMWare Remote Console (VMRC). It is an application you install on your workstation that displays the VM console instead of the Web UI. If you need to install VMRC you can download it from VMWare (My VMWare account needed), or if subscribed to our DRaaS service, grab it from the downloads section on our customer portal. Once installed, instead of clicking on the monitor picture to launch the console, use the “Actions” Dropdown and select “Launch VM Remote Console” and accept any prompts from the web browser to allow it to run the application. At this point, you can also click “Download VMRC”, if you haven’t already installed it. This links you to VMWare’s Downloads, where you will need a My VMWare account to continue. That’s it! The console window has a ctrl+alt+del button at the top and it does work. If you weren’t using it already with your local VMWare environment, it is also a good alternative to the web consoles vCenter and ESXi provide.

Veeam

Veeam Agent for Windows Automated Deployment

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The process of installing the Veeam Agent for Windows isn’t especially time-consuming, but what if you need to install on multiple machines? Using the Veeam.Agent.Configurator.exe tool provided in the Veeam Agent install it’s easy to cut out most of the time required to setup. The Veeam.Agent.Configurator tool allows for exporting and importing a configuration.xml file. The XML file will automatically apply the exported settings to a new install. In order to export a config to use for deploying other agents, we need to first install and set up a new instance of the Veeam Agent for Windows. The following script runs an unattended install of the Agent software and exports the config: echo “Installing Veeam Agent for Windows” ## This will be your filepath of the installation media ## C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads\VeeamAgentWindows_3.0.2.1170.exe /silent /accepteula /acceptthirdpartylicenses echo %ERRORLEVEL% echo “Veeam Agent Installation Complete!” echo “Starting Veeam Agent for Windows Service” net start VeeamEndpointBackupSvc echo “Start Configuration XML Creation for Automated instillation” ## Export the configuration file to a location to be used for future installations ## C:\”Program Files\Veeam\Endpoint Backup\Veeam.Agent.Configurator.exe” -export /f:C:\Veeam\configuration.xml ## This will also export the configuration for a job if one is created already ## echo “Export Complete!” Once the initial Agent set up and deployment is complete, you can use the following script to push out the installation and configuration out to multiple computers. echo “Installing Veeam Agent for Windows” ## This will be your file path of the installation media ## C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads\VeeamAgentWindows_3.0.2.1170.exe /silent /accepteula /acceptthirdpartylicenses ## echo %ERRORLEVEL% echo “Veeam Agent Installation Complete!” echo “Starting Veeam Agent for Windows Service” net start VeeamEndpointBackupSvc echo “Installing Product License and Setting Edition” C:\”Program Files\Veeam\Endpoint Backup\veeam.agent.configurator.exe” -license /f:C:\”Users\Administrator\Desktop\Veeam_Agents.lic” /s echo “Complete!” echo “Import Backup Job Configuration and Application Settings” ## This will be the filepath of the configuration file previously created ## C:\”Program Files\Veeam\Endpoint Backup\Veeam.Agent.Configurator.exe” -import /f:C:\Veeam\configuration.xml ## If no job was created a warning/error may occur stating one was not available ## echo “Import Complete! Setup Successful!” And that’s it! Now you’re able to quickly and easily install the Veeam Agent for Windows on multiple machines, saving you a lot of time. At Managecast, we fully manage and monitor your backups so that you can focus on more strategic initiatives. Interested in learning how Managecast can help your business with its cloud backup and disaster recovery solutions? Fill out this form for more information!

Veeam

Veeam Hyper-V Error 32274 & Log on as a Service Right

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Recently, we ran into a case where Veeam backups for Hyper-V VMs would fail after about a day with the Error code: ‘32774’ failing to create VM recovery snapshot. Restarting the Hyper-V VM would resolve the issue temporarily, but inevitably would start to fail again. In a situation where a Hyper-V VM is failing to create a snapshot a good way to determine if Veeam or the Hyper-V is an issue is to attempt a manual snapshot on the Hyper-V hypervisor. We were also seeing “NT Virtual Machine\Virtual Machines group on the HyperVisor does not have the Log on as Service Right” This doesn’t always appear as an error in Veeam, sometimes showing it with a Green checkmark, so it could easily go overlooked. After some research, the Log on as a Service right error always occurred right before the failures start. This led us to investigate the Log on as a Service right on group policies. In this instance, we moved the Hyper-V into its own OU that we manually created a group policy to allow NT Virtual Machine\Virtual Machines the right to Log on as a Service, and to not inherit any other GPO, yet the error continues to occur. We then discovered the Domain had a forced GPO that was overwriting all other individual GPO’s for the OUs. Once this was turned off, the job started working perfectly.   In short, make sure the Hyper-V server has all the rights it needs to do backups and make sure there aren’t any forced GPO’s coming down to prevent this. At Managecast, we fully manage and monitor your backups so that you can focus on more strategic initiatives. Interested in learning how Managecast can help your business with its cloud backup and disaster recovery solutions? Fill out this form for more information!

Veeam

Veeam Monitoring and Notifications for MSPs

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You realize how cumbersome it is to monitor your onsite end-client Veeam backups if you are a managed service provider (MSP) with several clients. Many times the method is to receive emails from the on-premises Veeam backup server which results in having to sift through numerous emails to determine if there are any issues to address with clients. The more clients you have, the more emails, the worse the management headache! Even when using supplied Veeam tools, the job for the service provider is not an easy one. Trust us, being a Veeam Cloud Service Provider we acutely felt this pain and set out to resolve it. Managecast wished to solve these issues for ourselves and focus on the needs of the multi-tenant service provider. The result of our work is the creation of Managecast for Veeam which provides for the following key benefits: Easily view all client backups from a single pane of glassSeeing all clients in one unified view, or filter by individual client allows a team of support engineers to efficiently manage the backups. Acknowledge errors and warnings easily Track who and when your support team acknowledges the errors/warnings, demonstrate to your clients you are checking backups and generate audit reports to show your clients. Enable easy and integrated method to proactively notify clients of issuesSends one-click email notifications to clients, including job name and error messages, with the ability to provide personalized messaging when needed. Store and display long-term historical trend data to more easily see anomalies Visually see spikes or gaps in backup sizes or when backups take much longer than normal. Allow easy viewing of job history to see past errorsQuickly navigate and view past errors or warning messages with the ability to filter for just errors or warnings. Track tickets created for clientsPortal has built-in ticket creation that shows clients their tickets and can integrate with some 3rd party ticketing systems. Enable your clients to see the status of their backup and what you do for themDemonstrates to the client you are actively managing and monitoring backups while creating loyalty when another MSP is unable to provide this visibility. Managecast originally created the Managecast for Veeam system for our own internal needs, but quickly realized we could help other service providers in a similar situation. It will make the Veeam MSP life much easier and your operators more effective in supporting your clients. Contact us if you would like to set up a free trial. See the demo below:

DRaaS, General Cloud Backup

Utility Versus Fully Managed Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery

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Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery are often neglected by organizations until it is too late, and a disaster has drastically impacted their bottom line. Many companies go with the cheaper alternative of a utility service provider when they should be utilizing a fully managed cloud service provider. From the one-person office to the largest enterprise and anywhere in between, every company has information that needs to be managed, backed-up, and stored. In reality, too many organizations do not give backup and disaster recovery the attention it deserves. Why?  Rarely is it someone’s full-time job to manage backups. IT resources are stretched thin and data protection is easily neglected when there are many other competing priorities. Turn-over in IT creates gaps in the management of data protection. IT Staff are rarely professionally trained in areas of backup and DR and lack deep experience. Certainly, organizations can address the issues above –but the question becomes: Is investing in data protection in-house the most strategic decision? Backup is like buying insurance. You could go with the lowest cost provider and hope nothing happens, or spend the extra money and have the security you really need, when you really need it. Two Types of Backup Service Providers Utility Service Provider The “utility” type of service provider is typically a low-cost provider that does not actively monitor your data. It provides the technology and expects you to do the rest of the work monitoring and managing the backups. The utility service provider does not care if your backups do not run for a week, or if best practices are followed by their end-clients. The responsibility for monitoring and managing backups is squarely on the customer. If a business has a dedicated IT staff that can devote all of its time to backups, the utility service provider may be a great choice.  However, the reason Managecast began providing data protection services nearly 10 years ago was that many organizations do not have dedicated and trained staff and do not follow best practices for data protection. Pinning your critical backups on an unqualified IT admin can result in neglected backups and lost data. Fully Managed Cloud Backup Service Provider With the help of a fully managed cloud backup service provider, backups will never be neglected and you will have a team of highly trained, certified, professionals managing your data. Although the service may appear to come at an overall higher price compared to the utility provider, the benefits you receive far outweigh the cost, especially when factoring in the operational cost for internal resources to manage and monitor everything. Investing in a fully managed cloud backup service allows your IT staff to be more strategic and focus on items that enhance your business. So how do you pick the Managed Backup Service Provider that is right for your business? The key is asking the right questions. Four Questions to Ask Potential MSP’s How long have they been in business? In the heavily saturated cloud backup industry, it’s important to know how long a company has been in business. Providers that have been in the industry for many years bring expertise that newer companies don’t have. Determine ahead of time how much experience they have working with businesses like yours, and how reliable they are when it comes to protecting data. What are their compliance standards? Look for service providers audited by third-party organizations such as SSAE SOC audits. SOC audits are specifically for Information Service Organizations and confirm appropriate controls are in place in order to provide a secure and reliable service to clients. Audit results can be obtained from the service provider as requested. Do they use trusted technology? New backup software is popping up day by day, but that doesn’t mean the technology is trusted and well-vetted. It is important to choose a service provider that uses best-of-breed technologies, such as Veeam Cloud Connect, for its backups. Otherwise, the technology could fail and the time and money put into these backups would be wasted, and data would be lost. What is their core focus? Many service providers focus on many aspects of IT, but not many focus solely on data protection. Do they have a dedicated team to manage only backups and disaster recovery? A service provider solely focused on backup and DR will offer a higher level of service. How Can We Help? At Managecast, we fully manage and monitor your backups so that you can focus on more strategic initiatives. Interested in learning how Managecast can help your business with its cloud backup and disaster recovery solutions? Fill out this form for more information!

Disaster Recovery

Understanding Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)

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Disaster Recovery as a Service, commonly known as DRaaS, is a cloud-based solution provided by third-party service providers. It enables organizations to failover to a secondary site in the event of a disaster, without the high expense or complexity of maintaining their own private disaster recovery (DR) environment. Instead of a costly upfront investment, businesses can pay a manageable monthly fee for access to offsite disaster recovery (DR) environments when needed. The on-demand DRaaS setup allows for simplified disaster recovery testing and quick failover recovery during emergencies. Planning for DRaaS While DRaaS simplifies disaster recovery compared to building your own DR site, having a solid plan in place is crucial. Properly incorporating DRaaS ensures that the system is deployed effectively and can be relied on during an actual disaster. Key Considerations for DRaaS Implementation Spinning up virtual machines in an offsite data center may be simple, but ensuring that users can access critical services after a disaster can be challenging. Here are some essential questions to guide your DRaaS planning: Managed and Unmanaged DRaaS DRaaS solutions typically fall into three categories: unmanaged, partially managed, and fully managed. Each option offers varying levels of control and support. Unmanaged, Self-Service DRaaS For organizations with in-house IT expertise, unmanaged DRaaS may be ideal. The client is responsible for correctly implementing the service, conducting disaster recovery testing, and maintaining a DR plan. It’s important to perform annual DR tests or after any major system changes. Partially Managed DRaaS Partially managed DRaaS suits organizations that can handle DRaaS on a part-time basis but prefer some external assistance. Service providers may help with initial setup, monitor the replication process, and alert you to potential issues. Fully Managed DRaaS Fully managed DRaaS is perfect for organizations that lack the time or expertise to manage disaster recovery processes in-house. While fully managed services may come at a higher cost, the long-term benefits far outweigh the expense. With full management, businesses can focus on strategic growth rather than disaster recovery.

Veeam

Enabling Veeam Remote Management

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Whether you are a new customer of ours or have been protecting your data with us for a while, there are many reasons to enable Remote Management on your Veeam B&R or Veeam Agent Installations. Remote Logging: This allows us to see a more detailed description of what is going wrong. Without Remote Logging, we only see info on jobs that sends data to us, and very limited info if something fails. With it on, we can notify you with more detail of issues even on local jobs so you can get your backups running smoother. Self-Service Failover: If you use our DRaaS and have a Failover Plan configured, you can log into our Veeam Availability Console (VAC) and initiate a failover Remote Management: Also from the VAC, you can enable, disable, and kick off jobs without needing access to your Veeam B&R Console Enabling it is easy, just follow one of the methods below. Method 2 is if you are doing Veeam Agent backups to us without a Backup and Replication installation, or Method 1 has trouble starting the services for some reason. Method 1 This requires that Veeam B&R to be installed and you have your Service Provider info from us, or have already connected. During the Service Provider set up, or by going to Backup Infrastructure then Service Providers and right-clicking the provider’s name. Please select the Allow this Veeam Backup & Replication installation to be managed by the service provider at the bottom of the window. Then just finish out the wizard, providing the Service Provider Info for the Credentials if you have not already, and wait for the progress window to complete. You should see the Management agent logo in your systray and it should show connected. If Not, try Method 2 Method 2 This method manually installs the Remote Management Agent service and is required if you want Remote Management of a Veeam Agent backup and a Backup and Replication server is not used. You will need your Service Provider Info. Download the agent manually here, unzip it, and run the installer. After running the installer, check to see if the Agent is running in the system task tray. If the Agent has not connected, provide the Service Provider Info and hit Apply. As always, if you have any issues, please contact our support team and we will gladly assist you in getting the management agent enabled!

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  • sales@managecast.com
  • 8354 Princeton Glendale Rd #108
    West Chester, OH 45069
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