Veeam 100 Summit 2022 Prague Recap - First day < ProVirtualzone

After the #Veeam100Summit 2022 is finished, it is time for a recap. This blog post, Veeam 100 Summit 2022 Prague Recap – First day, was supposed to be a recap of all days and sessions, but there is so much information and sessions to explain that can’t fit in just one blog post. So I decided to split the recap for each of the three days. So it will be three blog posts about the Veeam 100 Summit 2022 in Prague.

In this blog post, I will add information about the sessions and some extra information about the products, Best Practices, etc., so that you can have all the information not only about the Veeam 100 Summit but also about the products, new features, and Best Practices.

Since this is not my first time in Prague, I didn’t do much walking and visit the city, like in previous years. So in this recap, I will not post any nice pictures of the town as I did in an earlier post about the Veeam Vanguard summit.

The Veeam Vanguard Summit, which happens every year in Prague, was renamed Veeam 100 Summit. Now, in this group, we have Veeam Vanguard, Veeam Legends, and Veeam MVP(Veeam employees); the summit was renamed 100 since it now is 100 people.

As always, this event was fantastic. Great group(and now with the new arrivals) and a great program by Veeam.

Arrival

I arrived in Prague around 9:00 am and went directly to Hotel. Since the room was already available, I went for a good sleep since I had not slept since the day before.

This first day, Monday, was not the official event starting day. It was just a welcome reception around 17:30 to 19:30. It was welcome to everyone to catch up and have some drinks and food.

Wasabi sponsored this first welcome gathering and has supported this group for some time, providing some accounts with 1Tb Storage for every Veeam Vanguard(now extended to the rest of the 100) for testing with Veeam Backups.

After that, we went for dinner, and as always part of the guide, we ended up at the bat, The Dubliner. Some talks and beer and catching up with friends.

Here with my good friend Al Rasheed. It is always a pleasure to be with you, my friend.

and with our book author Chris Childerhose.

#Veeam100Summit First day

First Session

The first session starts with a welcome to everyone and the new arrivals(new Vanguards, Legends, and MVP). In this session, Rick, Madi, and Hennes talk about Vanguard, Legends, and MVP.

A lot of information about what the program is (for the new ones) and what to expect from the Veeam 100 summit.

Some information about each program.

- Veeam Vanguard
  Top influencers in their own external identities and properties.” The Veeam Vanguard Program is Veeam’s top-level influencer community. This group shares points of view, provides feedback, and is committed to mutual success. Experts in the Vanguard program are a combination of many different disciplines, contribution types, and advocacy mechanisms yet are each the best in space regarding technical thought leadership for the technical communities in which Veeam exists.”

How do I become a Veeam Vanguard?
Read HERE in my previous post about the Veeam Vanguard program and how to apple.

- Veeam Legends
  Top engagers on Veeam properties (R&D Forums, Veeam Community Hub, Veeam User Groups).

“Veeam Legends are Veeam users and data protection industry experts passionate about technology and innovation and eager to develop their careers further while sharing their experiences with the community. Avid Veeam users participate in various community projects, drive local Veeam User Groups, and influence Veeam products and solutions.”

How do I become a Veeam Legend?
Join the Veeam Community Resource Hub and participate in Veeam community projects.
Check HERE to learn all about the Veeam Legend Program.

- Veeam MVP
  Top Veeam employees with a customer-facing technical role who are sharing and engaging when it is not part of their job.

This program is only for Veeam employees, so you cant apply.

The session continued with Jim Jones, Geoff Burke, and Rasmus Haslund explaining each program.

As part of the Veeam 100, we always have access to Veeam Beta versions to test and provide feedback.

We were informed that there are new Beta versions for the following Veeam products.

- Veeam Backup & Replication v12
- Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows
- Veeam Agent for Linux
- Veeam Agent for Mac

Second Session – Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage Veeam

In this internal session, Wasabi presents their Veeam Vanguard program. A free account for all the Veeam 100 members etc. Wasabi also did sponsor the initial Veeam 100 welcome.

A quick look at Wasabi:

Wasabi Technologies, Inc. is an object storage service provider based in the United States that sells one product, an object storage service called Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage. In the market since 2015, it launched Cloud Storage in 2017.

Wasabi is designed to be 100% bit compatible with Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3. This means any storage application that uses AWS S3 can also use Wasabi without any code changes to the storage application.

Wasabi is a Veeam Storage integrator. This means that any backup can be stored in the Wasabi S3 Bucket. It can also use as a Veeam Replication site for a secondary backup repository. All this with a 1/5 fraction of the price of AWS.

Check out Wasabi Storage and register for a free account for 30 days.

Third Session – Ransomware & Cybersecurity PoV

This was a session presented by Rick Vanover – Product Strategy, and Edwin Weijdema – Global Technologist at Veeam.

There have been many discussions about Ransomware and what should be the pre Best Practices to protect your Data and Backups, as well as Best Practices on how to act and what to do when attacked by Ransomware.

I think this was one of the top sessions at the summit. Not only because of the subject but also the information provided, the different scenarios of breath, and how to handle using Veeam. Also, the pre and post Ransomware process and Best Practices.

These are the main reasons why Veeam is one of the best Ransnsomware solutions for your backups and to protect your environment against Ransomware.

Use the best option and security rules to store your Backups. These are examples of Media Types to store your backups using the Backup Rule 3-2-1.

Using the Backup Rule 3-2-1, encrypt your backups, and use this type of media to store your backups, you are one step ahead of any Ransomware attack and ready to restore your data safely.

When selecting your backup storage type, you should also:

- Use cloud repositories that offer immutability
- Use on-premises disk repositories with immutability or locking
- Use tape that is air-gapped

We know that Ransomware is a serious problem for companies these days(if you don’t know, you should), and just in the US, there was an attack every 5.6 days(in a total of 2,048 in 2021). But if we look at the following report, we know that this threat is increasing by the day, which is why you need to protect your backup and your data.

76% of the companies reported encountering at least one Ransomware attack on their infrastructure. These are huge numbers.

In the next slide, I would like to point out one of the points, ‘Where?’

You have your backup infrastructure protected: After an attack, you have all your backups safe, and now you need to recover everything, but the question is: where to recover?

You can’t (or you shouldn’t) recover the original infrastructure. Why?

At least three main reasons:

- First, you need to know which systems are impacted and encrypted. Even though there are systems that are not yet impacted, with a reboot of systems/services, they will be.
- You don’t know if the attacker is still in the system without a full audit.
- You will need a complete forensics analysis to provide all the information to your Management and law enforces.

This can be an isolated data center to a Cloud Provider, etc. So it would help if you had a recovery location plan before. And this should be part of your pre Ransomware plan.

The following two slides are essential and valuable information. All the Best Practices to protect your Backup Infrastructure from any Ransomware attack. So that the Backup Infrastructure is ready to start your Disaster Recovery safely.

Information for your Veeam Backup Server and your Veeam Repository Server.

If you need more information about this subject, you can check this White Paper from Veeam, “Why Rapid Recovery is Safer than Paying the Ransom”.

Note: This session had a lot of excellent and helpful information, and is too much to share in this recap. So in one of my next Veeam blog posts, I will write one dedicated to Ransomware and how Veeam can help you protect your data.

Fourth Session – Veeam Backup & Replication v12

This session was about the new Veeam Backup & Replication v12. It was presented by Hannes Kasparick – Senior Analyst, Product Management, and Anton Gostev – Senior Vice President and Product Management at Veeam Software.

Most of the new features presented to us in the session are the Beta 3 updates since October 2021 (when we were presented with this new version and started testing the beta version).

What is new in Veeam Backup & Replication v12 since then?

Honestly, in this session, so much information and features were added to Beta 3 that I can’t explain it in detail. Later on, I will write a blog post about v12, so I will only add here some of the most important features added.

VeeaMover
- Move backups to a different repository
- Migrate REFS to XFS for Hardened Repository
- Re-Balance Scale-Out-Repository
- Scale-Out-Repository extent evacuation
- Migrate NTFS to REFS
- Copy backups to a different repository

This great feature will make life very easy for all backup administrators. It was always a pain to move backups between jobs or locations. With this feature and with just a few clicks, all are moved.
I remember when I needed to move the Backup Repository from NTFS to ReFS was painful and time-consuming. With this new feature, it will be so much easier.

Security Related Features
- Simplified Hardened Repository Wizard
  - Dedicated repository type
  - Single-use credentials required
  - Immutability cannot be “unchecked

Minor Security changes
- No SSH/credentials are needed anymore!
  - no more Manage Linux Without SSH and SUDO
- Veeam Proxy for Repository Immmutabily
  - NBD Proxy On Hardened Repository
- Improved Compatibility With Standards
  - Security standards as DISA STIG, NIST 800-171 etc. require umask 077
  - Manual umask settings not needed anymore
- No Perl Needed For Hardened Repository
- Single-Use Credentials & Backup Servers
  - Backup server authentication via certificates
  - Credentials of backup servers not stored anymore
  - V12 servers only!
Networking changes and improvements in traffic management

Easily Restore Only Changed Files
“Permissions Only” Restore For Files for Windows
Simplify Wasabi Object Storage Usage
There is now a direct integration with Wasabi Object Storage and not using general S3 Object Storage.

It was a great session with much information provided by Gostev and Hannes. Again there were so many things to show here that this blog post about the Veeam 100 Summit is not enough.

Fifth Session – Veeam Backup For Nutanix AHV 4.0

In this session, Hannes Kasparick shows changes in this new version for Nutanix AHV backups.

This is a product that I don’t use, I never used, so I cannot talk much about it. I will only display what is new in this version 4.0

Save Disk Space With Synthetic Full backups on REFS and XFS – backups on REFS and XFS.
Flexible Long-Term Backups With GFS- (grandfather – father – son)
- Weekly, Monthly, Yearly full backups
- “spaceless” full backups if used on object storage, REFS or XFS
Detect Bit Rot / Hardware Errors – with health checks
Restore Multiple VMs In Parallel
Improved User Interface Experience
Simplify With “Daily” Retention – additional to restore points
Instant Recovery From Cloud Connect to Nutanix
- Alternative way for file level restore from Cloud Connect
Multiple Protection Domains Per Job
Public REST-APIs
Centralized Configuration Backup
- Central only – not on proxy!
- Jobs and settings are restored, but no changes to hostname / IP address

In the same session, Hannes presents us with the news about RHV Backups.

Veeam Backup & Replication RHV Proxy 2.0

With the new Veeam Backup & Replication RHV Proxy 2.0 you can now start backup and restore your VMs from and to Red Hat Virtualization.

Since many customers use RHV, this was a product that Veeam needed to put on the market.

In the following images, you can check what is possible to do with this new Veeam Proxy.

Sixth Session – Veeam ONE v12 Update

The session was presented by Jorge De La Cruz – Senior Analyst – Product Management, Roman Kuksov – Jr. Analyst – Product Management, and Kirsten Stoner – Technologist – Product Strategy.

This is a YELLOW session, so I cannot explain much. Until the product is GA, we can’t talk much about it.

But what I can say about Veeam ONE v12 is that it will now support Microsoft 365. If you know Veeam ONE, we can now use the same for Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365.

That means:

Reporting
Backups visibility
Alarms and notifications etc.

We will have more news about this new update in the next few days.

Seventh Session – Veeam Disaster Recovery Orchestrator v6

In this session, Alec King – Vice President Product Management at Veeam Software, and Rick Vanover show us what is new in the new VDRO version 6.

Veeam Disaster Recovery Orchestrator is an essential tool to protect and restore your backup infrastructure against Ransomware attacks and companies’ Disaster Recovery plans.

What is new in this new version?

Cloud DR
- Orchestrated Direct Restore
- Recover backups as Azure VMs
- Works for both Agent and vSphere backups
- Works for both Windows OS and Linux OS

Agent DR
- Orchestrated Direct Restore
- Recover Veeam Agent backups to vSphere
- Recover Veeam Agent backups to Azure
- Works for both Windows OS and Linux OS
- Agent groups and VM groups can be in the same plan

Clean DR
- Orchestrated Secure Restore
- Scan restore points during recovery
- Supports several AV solutions in Windows OS
- Works with both vSphere and Agent backups
- Works for recovery to both vSphere and Azure

Eighth Session

This session was presented by Chris Spence – Senior Director of Product Marketing at Veeam Software, Billy Cashwell – Product Marketing at Veeam, and Matt Crape – Senior Technical Product Marketer at Veeam Software.

This session was about Veeam Enterprise and companies’ Ransomware, but most of the of what discussion was Confidential, so this session was RED. That means cannot be discussed outside of the session.

And we finished the day session with Veeam Vanguard Toast (now Veeam 100 Toast), always organized by Veeam Vanguard Craig Dalrymple, where we toast to the group and also give a welcome to the new arrivals.

Finished the day

We finished this Veeam 100 Summit first day, as we can see in the amount of information shared in this blog post and the number of technical discussions we had during the Veeam 100 Summits.

As always, some of us finished the day with a great dinner and some beers at the Kolkovna Celnice. A great place with excellent food and is very affordable.