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Veeam Powershell Library

Capstone Proposal

By

Luis Correa

CST 499

Fall 2022
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Executive Summary

The goal of this project is to deploy a github repository that will house scripts and

documentation to be utilized by Veeam clients and partners to further their abilities with the

software. The planned objectives for this project is a set of approximately 30 scripts and

documentation alongside it for maintenance and setup of a Veeam infrastructure. These scripts

will help the audience reduce the time spent on troubleshooting errors and fixing problems that

just require multiple iterations of the same steps. The target audience for this project will be

Veeam clients and partners so that they will have an open resource that will not require support

which isn’t available to free Veeam users. The anticipated outcome of this project is a new

resource will be available to the Veeam community. There are currently no tools recognized by

Veeam support outside of the knowledge base and technical documentation. This lack of

resources leads to the support team being unable to answer questions in a timely manner for

simple issues or not knowing how to resolve issues outside of their particular scope of support

since they are divided by the particular product within Veeam even if they interconnect. I plan on

addressing these areas that might be simple questions but seem to have no documentation or

answers without waiting on support for an answer.

Table of Contents
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Executive Summary 2
Table of Contents 3
Background and approach 4
Introduction 4
Project name and description 4
Problem in technology 4
Solution to the Problem 5
Evidence of Need 5
Project Goals & Objectives 5
Environmental Scan 6

Social And legal Considerations 7

Stakeholders 7
Ethical & Legal Considerations 7
Project Scope 8
Timeline & Budget 8
Resources Needed 9
Risks and Dependencies 9
Preliminary Usability Test Plan 9
Final Deliverables 10
Approach/Methodology 10
References 10
Appendix 11

Background and approach

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Introduction

Project name and description

My project is Veeam Powershell Library and it is going to be a documentation and

scripting hub. Veeam is a Backup software utilized by over 400,000 employees. The ideology

behind Veeam is simplicity, flexibility, reliability, and powerful. This has led to them

constructing a powershell module compatible with Veeam’s software. Due to the scale and

expansive utility of Veeam, there are not many scripts out there for end customers to utilize that

are in the public domain. The goal of this project is to create a Github Repo containing a library

of documentation and scripts that can remedy common errors within Veeam and help setup

backup infrastructure more quickly and at scale. It is needed to help increase the availability of

the knowledge sources for new users to help them repair their issues quickly and find efficient

repairs.

Problem in technology

Current procedure for providers new to Veeam is to have them contact a Veeam partner

to

help them set up their infrastructure which usually requires consultation fees, and most partners

are only familiar with what they have used and nothing else. This led to many issues in the setup

my company, Leverage IT Consulting, faced with our backup infrastructure. This Veeam library

is aimed to be as expansive as possible and cover all the common errors that we face in the

maintenance of an extensive Veeam infrastructure. Alongside that will be more scripts to speed

up deployment and also to repair any issues that may arise during backups or deployment. The

current problem is new Veeam users and partners don’t have any free knowledge base articles
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that can be utilized to avoid utilizing support cases and slow down deployments and repairing

backups faster.

Solution to the Problem

My proposed solution to the problem is to currently deploy a Github repository that

contains useful documentation and scripts that I have found in my 2 years of maintaining a

Veeam infrastructure and others that I have seen need of creation. Eventually I will migrate this

to a website to help create an easier way to read the documentation and scripting that Github

can’t provide

Evidence of Need

There are a few other locations that help but none that are pushed out there and they

usually cover reporting and partner sided software. Veeam support does recommend tools they

are aware of but none are backed by veeam and most are either out of date or don’t contain

sufficient documentation or scripts that fall out of purview of the Veeam powershell module and

would land within Microsoft or Microsoft 365.

Project Goals & Objectives

● Powershell Scripts located into a Github repo dedicated to setup

● Powershell Scripts located in a Github repo dedicated to maintenance

● Documentation for the scripts to explain usage and errors they relate to

● Folder structure split up by the Veeam application that causes the error or setup
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Environmental Scan

There are many scripts and knowledgebase articles out there for Veeam that give out

answers for what to do in the case of certain repairs, deployments, or fixes. The issue is most of

these articles don’t contain useful scripts that can be kept so as to speed up the process. The other

issue is that some of these articles are very difficult to find due to being more rare errors and so

without proper keywords you cannot locate the article when in need.

Veeam Software currently pushes customers and partners to their partners for help with

infrastructure building and layout and only handles repairs of the Veeam software. This leads to

problems with giving the new customer all available options or having them understand how to

publish something quickly and streamline it as most partners charge extra to get any sort of

scripts, if they have them at all. Such a library once built big enough and becoming well known

enough could be utilized by customers and partners alike and broadcasted via the Veeam support

team to help accelerate the growth of the software and the knowledge of those who utilize it. An

example of a relatively unknown repository is the one hosted by VeeamHub1,2. They also share a

curated list of other Veeam technical resources but are still missing support for the Microsoft 365

and other newer Veeam software deployments.

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Social And legal Considerations

Stakeholders

The stakeholders on this project are myself as this would be a way for me to gain

prominence from deploying a helpful resource to a software that is utilized worldwide. The other

set of stakeholders are other Veeam users who may wish to help deploy further documentation

and scripting. The main thing they stand to gain is another resource that can be dependably used

and consistently updated with documentation and new scripts as they are found.

Ethical & Legal Considerations

This project doesn’t seem to have many legal considerations and only a few ethical

considerations. The main legal considerations will be copyright issues and making sure any code

discovered and utilized from other websites is properly referenced and documented within the

library. The next legal consideration will be making sure that any scripting and documentation

doesn’t utilize any inner company knowledge or client references and all are sanitized for public

viewing. Ethical considerations would be to make sure that there are disclaimers within the

documentation that this is not a project backed by Veeam or any particular company. Veeam

support makes it a main component that any referenced tool they give out is not supported by

them unless directly designed and created by their teams.

Project Scope
Timeline & Budget
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Figure 1

Resources Needed

The only resources utilized for this project will be the freely available powershell

documentation provided by Microsoft and Veeam for their respective modules and for creating
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the necessary scripts and documentation. Github will be the current website used to host the

scripts and documentation until in the future I can develop a website to properly handle and

display the information in a clear and concise manner.

Risks and Dependencies

The risks associated with this project mainly lie in the testing portion of getting the

testing done on time and any responses for it back afterwards. This is dependent on the

deployment of the scripts and documentation needed for testing. There isn’t too many risks

associated with the project itself aside from me getting sick since I am the only person working

on this. The main risk will be the testing since getting timely responses from both my peers and

coworkers could run into issues of pushing back on my timeline and ability to fix any found

issues.

Preliminary Usability Test Plan

I plan on testing the product by passing out links to my coworkers. I am the main point of

contact for any deployment, repair, or standardization for my company regarding backups. I will

utilize this library to help them understand how to deploy, repair, and maintain the library so as

to provide them with more knowledge regarding it and to provide secondary contacts in case of

me being unable to work. After that, my second testing group will be some Veeam partners we

worked with to originally set up our product and that I met at a conference and certification

training. I will ask them to test out the scripting for whatever products that they are currently

utilizing and to compare the documentation to the use to make sure it lines up and makes sense.
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Final Deliverables

Final deliverables for this project will be the github repository and all associated

documentation and scripts needed to be placed within it. There will be no need for authorization

from my company since they will be stripped clean of company references and be normalized for

usage across any potential user. I plan on a minimum of 30 scripts divided into setup,

maintenance, and repair scripts.

Approach/Methodology

I plan on utilizing the Agile process since this project will be at least 2 sets of sprints for

this project. The first sprint will be doing the base scripts and improving them for universal

usage and to minimize the need to utilize them more than once per error. The following sprints

will be utilized to develop more scripts based on what areas I find lacking in my library. There is

also a plan to keep updating this past the project deadline which makes utilizing the Agile

methodology the most appropriate.

References

1. Mehrtens, M. (2022, September 9). VeeamHub/powershell: Various veeam products

related PowerShell scripts. VeeamHub Powershell. Retrieved October 23, 2022, from

https://github.com/VeeamHub/powershell

2. VeeamHub. (2022, October 19). A curated list of Veeam Technical Resources. We

recommend you "Watch" this repository so you can be notified of future updates. GitHub.

Retrieved October 23, 2022, from https://github.com/VeeamHub/awesome-veeam

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3. Modern Data Protection. Veeam Software. (n.d.). Retrieved October 23, 2022, from

https://www.veeam.com/

Appendix

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