Veeam Vanguard Summit – Prague 2021 Recap < ProVirtualzone

After some weeks of this event, it’s time for a Veeam Vanguard Summit – Prague 2021 Recap.

This was my first physical event (and I think one of the first in vCommunity) since 2019 after the world closed because of the covid pandemic. And this was a refresh in our lives, and I miss this, and also I miss those guys. Finally, I will say!

It was a bit awkward because we almost needed to re-learn how to behave with each other and get to know each other. But just in the first moments, afterward was business as usual.

The week in Prague was fantastic, as any Veeam event is. Still, for this particular case, all these Veeam Vanguard nerds get together with Veeam to have some technical discussions about Veeam. What is new, what are some of the challenges that we, as Veeam experts, and customers, have using the Veeam products.

Veeam Vanguard provides some feedback, proposes improvements, and discusses with Veeam better ways to agile the backup process and make life easier to manage our data back up.

But of course, this is a group of nerds that work hard, but also fun hard, very hard 😉

I already have discussed here what is the Veeam Vanguard Program.

My Summit wrap-ups are a mix of the technical stuff and the social and party stuff. So again, this blog post will have a combination of both.

The Veeam Vanguard Summit was last October between the 19th and 22nd of October, and I arrived Sunday the 17th in Prague.

Arriving Prague

I arrived on Sunday around 17:30 and, as always, used a Uber to drive to Hotel. Prague rule, no taxis in Prague. Uber or subway/Bus.

As always, a small nap to be ready for the night 🙂

At night first encountered in the Hotel with some of the early arrivals and went to dinner at Kolkovna Celnice Restaurante. Great restaurant, cheaper and greater food.

Here with Craig, Hannes, Brad, and Steve

We finish the night with some beers 😉

Tuesday is when the summit event really started. But we had a brief welcome kick-off gathering on Monday at the end of the day.

First Day – 19th

Ready to officially start Veeam Vanguard Summit – Prague 2021.

Initially, we had a welcome Vanguard Summit Kickoff presented by the Vanguard Community Manager Nikola Pejková and Rick Vanover, together with Hannes Kasparick Principal Analyst at Veeam Software. In this session was also presented the new program Vanguard MVP for internal Veeam employees.

In this Kickoff, Rick officially presents Nikola to the Veeam Vanguard group and her job management in the Veeam Vanguard Community. Also, this presentation explained which sessions we could talk about publicly and which were the ones that had RED NDA (non-disclosure agreement), and we cannot discuss or share any information publicly.

I cannot share much stuff for this first day since it is all about news/updates that are still in the NDA.

After we started the technical discussions, Hannes and Rick shared some news about RED’s new products (sorry, I can’t talk about it) and new features.

This first day was all about the new v12 and all the new features and options.

Veeam Backup Replication v12– Object Storage, NAS, and Groups for Veeam Backup & Replication.

After a break, we had an awesome session with excellent news for the new products/versions. But sorry is Yellow, so, until official information, we can’t publicly talk about it.

Hannes Kasparick – Principal Analyst at Veeam Software
Dmitry Popov – Product Manager at Veeam Software
Egor Yakovlevwe – Product Analyst at Veeam Software

The rest of the morning of the first Day, Hannes and Dmitry continue to talk about the new products and features that will come very soon. Some features and options and stuff that I personally was waiting for some time now 😉

After a lunch break, a new session.

Veeam Linux and other agents with Pavel and Edwin.

Pavel Tide – Product Manager – Veeam Software
Edwin Weijdema – Global Technologist, (Product Strategy, Office of the CTO) at Veeam Software

Good news on the Veeam agents for new products to be added to the backup portfolio. Again not much information that I could share, sorry.

The next session.

Veeam Orchestrator with Alec King.

Alec King – Vice President Product Management at Veeam Software

Alec showed us the new version and some of the new features and systems included in this new version. But again, still not to share publicly.

As Rick said, and I agreed, Veeam DR Orchestrator is a great tool that our community does not provide much publicity or share. I didn’t talk much about this product and even didn’t thoroughly test all its capacities.

Next was a session with Veeam Vanguard Tobias Gregorius and history about Ransomware.

This type of stories are essential, even for this type of audience. Because not everyone is a security expert or has encountered this type of attack on their systems. So we understand how this type of attack can happen, or their tactic, and how to react after detecting any kind of attack.

The questions and answers after the sessions are always good. All can share their experience in this area or ask their questions where Veeam can be used to defend against these attacks or even restore an infrastructure after.

Great job, Tobias 😉

We finish for the Day and now Dinner and some more Beers 🙂

We went to dinner at another favorite place for this group, Potrefená Husa Hybernská

A walk in Prague and finish the night with some beers with Craig, Paul, Brad, and Stephen. I can’t remember the bar name.

This gathering and the technical talks, with a beer, is something that I always really missed. Feels so good that we can do this again (and hope with the new measures done by the government will not close this again).

Second Day – 20th

The second day started with another session.

Veeam Backup Replication v12 about Storage Integrations, Tape Enhancements, etc., with Dmitry, Hannes, Egor.

Hannes hosted the first session about Storage Integrations. Again, I can’t talk about much.

Then Dmitry provided us with news about Tape Enhancements.

Next, Egor provided us with tweaks about customer questions, ideas, and proposals to improve or change options on Veeam products.

Some examples of customer requests:

Option to have Instant Recover in Enterprise Manager Web GUI (even I requested this, particularly in vCloud Portal).
Option to Restore files to another host.
Option to Export Backup to another location.
Option to convert VM disk to another platform.
Option to check when or which IR sessions are running.
Option to have SureBackups notification as we have in a Backup.
Option to have the last backup per VM display in the VM Backup.
Option to display session/job initiated by.
Option to exclude VM from backup(not job level).
… and more.

We will need to wait for the next version to see if any of these options are included. I am pretty sure not all will be included 😉

Hannes finished this time slot with talks about vCloud Director backups.

After a break, next session.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 with Mike the reseller 😉

Mike Resseler – Senior Director, Product Management, R&D

Mike talked about new features and options in the new version, like Self-Service Restore Portal and Backup copy to low-cost Storage.

In this session, there is some stuff that we can finally talk about, like Self-Service Restore Portal.

Now users can restore their own data, like emails, SharePoint files, etc.

New in this new version is the Backup Copy of your data because of the backup rule 3-2-1. This copy can be to a Storage or a Cloud Provider.

The rest of the session was Yellow and RED.

After a lunch break, Mike is returning with some news about a new Product.

Veeam for Backup Salesforce

Mike Resseler – Senior Director, Product Management, R&D

Since this is a new product, no more details are possible to share. At least at the technical level. But you can have more information about this product in Veeam HERE.

The next session was talking about new options, features that fit in the everyday work for Enterprises with Tom.

Tom Sightler – Vice President, Product Management, Enterprise Solutions at Veeam Software.

In this session, we discussed what customers want and need. Some of the Veeam Vanguards are also customers(like me), so we understand the need that Enterprises companies need for their Backup software and how o use it to make their life easier.

After a break, we for the last session of the Day before the Dinner Evening event. This session was presented by Niels, Alec, and Mike.

Veeam Backup for Clouds

Mike Resseler – Senior Director, Product Management, R&D
Alec King – Vice President Product Management at Veeam Software
Niels Engelen – Principal Analyst, Product Management at Veeam Software

Has the title states, this session was mainly about Backup for Clouds environments, like AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.

Some new that I share.

Veeam Backup for AWS v4

Veeam Backup for Azure v3

Veeam Backup for Google Cloud Platform(GCP) v2

After discussing new versions for the above tools and the new features and systems that will be added to Veeam, those are RED information.

And we are finished for the Day, and it is time for the Veeam Vanguard dinner event.

Veeam Vanguard diner event

Every summit, we always have a diner event. It is always a lot of fun, and every year they surprise us. This year was in the Restaurant Občanská Plovárna.

It was a nice place with a view and balconies to the Vltava River.

This time, unfortunately, I did not take many pictures.

Here, me and part of the German-speaking Veeam Vanguard team, Tobias Gregorius, Falko Banaszak, and Florian Raack. Also in the photo in the middle is Benedikt Däumling Enterprise Technical Advisor at Veeam.

Was not a long night for me, since I was tired. So I didn’t go for an afterward “technical discussions beers”.

Third Day – 21st

Last day of the Prague Veeam Vanguard 2021.

The first session of the day(too early for many) with John and Joe.

Best worst practices and how to correct them

Joe Gremillion – Sr. Solution Architect at Veeam Software
John Nicholson – Staff Technical Marketing Architect at VMware

Since this session is Best Practices is something that we can talk about it and share some slides.

Is about VMware, vSAN, Backups, snapshots, security, etc.

Next, for the final technical session, we have Mr. Michael and Tom Sightler talking about the new Backup Tool for Kubernetes backups.

Michael Cade – Senior Global Technologist at Veeam Software
Tom Sightler – Vice President, Product Management, Enterprise Solutions

Kasten K10 by Veeam Update

Most of this session is about Kasten and also how we can deploy some K8s demos using Michael GitHub Project.

To learn more about this, Labs, and about K8s, you can go to Learning Kasten.

Vanguard MVP Exclusive Ask Me Anything

All Product Management
Danny Allan – Chief Technology Officer at Veeam Software
Gil Vega – Chief Information Security Officer at Veeam Software

In this last session and closing Prague Veeam Vanguard 2021, we had questions and answers with Veeam MVP to discuss everything we think is worth discussing. This can be doughts, new features,

And of course, these are confidential discussions but very productive brainstorming.

The final session and we close this session and the summit.

But we officially close the summit without the Prague Veeam Vanguard 2021 official group photo.

Thank you all for the great Prague Veeam Vanguard 2021.

After officially finishing the Prague Veeam Vanguard 2021, I continue in Prague for a couple of Days. Since I only had a flight to Brussels on Sunday.

That night went to dinner with my good friend Craig, and of course, I needed to have the Pork knee. You can’t go to Prague and don’t heat this.

Again we went to Kolkovna Celnice Restaurante. Great restaurant, cheaper and greater food.

After Craig and I went for a walk in the city. As I said before, Prague is a beautiful city and if you have not visited yet, you should.

Saturday last night in Prague, and went to dinner in this fantastic Medieval Tavern – U krále Brabantského with Pavel, Egor, Brad, and Joe.

We went down to the donjon and had a great dinner. With medieval weapons, dance, and fire show. A great night and outstanding performance this one.

And this was the last night, and then next day drive to airport and flight back home.

I will finish my Veeam Vanguard Summit – Prague 2021 Recap with a big thanks to all the people that made possible this Prague Veeam Vanguard 2021. Particularly to Rick Vanover, Nikola Pejková, and Kathie OBrien. Not only for this event but in all events that make this Veeam Vanguard program a fantastic program and one of the best in the vCommunity.

I have discussed this program HERE and HERE. Take a look and know how to candidate to be a Veeam Vanguard and learn all about this program.

I hope you did like this detailed recap of this Prague Veeam Vanguard 2021.

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