After a few days resting and healing (I will go there next) is time to do VeeamON 2019 my recap.

Before I start my blog post, I would like to thank you to my “mother” company ELITS for supporting my trip to this awesome VeeamON in Miami.

ELITS is a Swedish consulting company that provides only Elite consulting services by Elite people.

“ELITS is a global provider of IT operations and infrastructure solutions. Since the start in 2006 we have grown in a steady pace, together with our customers. We provide 24/7 service through our locations in Europe, North America and Asia.

But we are pretty far from your average, IT corporation stereotype. We are the anti-thesis to corporate hierarchies, strictly contract-driven business and short-term revenue focus.
We are something different. We are – and provide – Another kind of IT.”

This was my second VeeamON, and again Veeam did exceed my expectations, not only in the event with the technical session(smaller and with better technical content and less marketing), but also VeeamON 2019 party.

Again, it was great to meat all VeeamVanguards and the rest of the #vCommunity — great talks, great technical discussions, and also excellent after parties meetings.

Week detailed

Arrived at Miami a one day earlier and had some walks trough Miami South Beach. Particularly mornings in beach boardwalk.

Miami is a nice place, with great night life, and beautiful places, but honestly, the beach’s did not impress me, on the contrary. Beach’s in my home town are far, far better.

One day before the start was just to register and pick our badges at the reception. After was meeting the guys and have some beers and starting to get ready for the next 2 days.

On the day before starting VeeamON 2019, we also had a Veeam Vanguard pre-event session presented by Rick Vanover and some of the Veeam Evangelists team(Michael, Niels, Anthony and also Kiersten).

Where we discussed VeeamOn 2019, what was the news that would be presented in the General Sessions, etc. Was a kind of first-hand knowledge about what was coming in the next days and announcements.

VeeamON Schedule:

• VeeamON Day #1

First General Session.

After the initial welcome to all visitors and attendees, was time for the General Session with Co-Founder and Veeam Executive Vice President Ratmir Timashev.

In this General Session, there was discussed a lot of new things and some announcements for the Veeam future. However, I would like to highlight three announcements:

First, that Veeam became a 1 billion dollar company and is one of the 34 software companies to achieve this number, plus 350,000 customers.

These are great numbers for a “Backup Company” like someone one time told me. But of course, we all know that Veeam is more than just a Backup company. Is way more than that, as we can see in the next images.

Second, finally was announced that Veeam Backup & Replication v10 is going to be a reality this year. Finally, we will see version 10 of Veeam Backup & Replication.

We know that we have seen a lot of features and improvements in 2018/2019 (as you can see in the next image), particular with the new update 4. But we were all waiting for this announcement 🙂

“Veeam created the VMware backup market and has dominated it as the leader for the last decade. This was Veeam’s Act I and I am delighted that we have surpassed the $1 billion mark; in 2013 I predicted we’d achieve this in less than six years and we have,” said Ratmir Timashev, Co-Founder and EVP Sales & Marketing at Veeam.

“However, the market is now changing. Backup is still critical, but customers are now building hybrid clouds with AWS, Azure, IBM and Google, and they need more than just backup. To succeed in this changing environment, Veeam has had to adapt. Veeam, with its 60,000+ channel and service provider partners and the broadest ecosystem of technology partners, including Cisco, HPE, NetApp, Nutanix and Pure Storage, is best positioned to dominate the new Cloud Data Management in our Act II. Our vision and strategy for the hybrid cloud will see us deliver the kind of success others can only dream of.  Ratmir Timashev”

To watch the General Session, watch the following video.

Third, is the new Veeam Availability Orchestrator v2. 

New features like: Restore plans, Recovery locations, RTO and RPO for orchestration plans, Testing plans in different modes, Failback to a specified location and must more.

Some are new features, others some improvements or changes in the way VAO DR works. Check all about the new Veeam Availability Orchestrator v2 in the Release Notes.

Second General Session.

Next video and afternoon Technology General Session, we can see some great explanations and demos by Veeam Evangelists.

In the next video you can watch:

• • Rick Vanover presenting the new Veeam Availability Orchestrator v2 and an impressive live demo how to restore a Windows workstation (in this case is a laptop that was literally drop in a container of water).
  • Anthony Spiteri was presenting what is new in Veeam for Cloud environments particularly for Veeam Cloud & Service Provider Programm (VCSP) with Veeam Availability Console v3 and some cool live restore demo from the cloud.
  • Niels Engelen, a demo for Veeam Backup for Office 365 v3 where Niels show what is new in the Veeam Backup for Office 365 v3.
  • Anton Gostev, talking and explaining new features about what is new in the most waited version from Veeam, Veeam Availability Suite v10.
  • Michael Cade, finally my good friend talking about the Veeam Availability Suite v10 features like NAS Backup/Restore with some live demos lab.

Note: The impressive demos from this session was all live demo lab. That work flawlessly and no issues. How awesome is that for a product and for the technicians presenting these demos.

Besides the General Session, there was also a lot of Breakout technical session during the day. When all the recorded sessions are all available, they should be here VeeamON 2019 Breakout sessions. 

There were great technical sessions; the only problem is some were at the same time, no time to watch all. But we have the videos of the recorded session to watch later on. At least the ones that were not possible to attend.

You can watch already some of the recorded session here on the main page for VeeamON.

Would like to highlight a couple of those sessions on the first day:

– Unfortunately, I don’t know why some of the photos that I took from these sessions were corrupted. So cannot show some of the useful tips and examples that were shown in some of the sessions.

• • Veeam Storage Integration Deep Dive

This was a session presented by Shawn Lieu and Adam Bergh
This session was about how Veeam Storage integration, like Storage Snapshots, On-Demand Sandbox for Storage Snapshots. Was a great session with good content.

• • Lets Manage Agents

This was a session presented by Dimitri Popov. 
In this session, Dimitri shows us how the best practices how to manage and some hidden tips for Veeam Windows/Linux agents to backup physical servers or workstations.

You can watch the full recorded session in the next video.

There was another session that I attended “NetApp and Veeam Integrated Solution Delivering Protection Everywhere with the Data Fabric”, but honestly was not what I was thinking. Not technical, more marketing content. Do not like to walk out a session before its finish.

PS: Sorry Keith and Joseph from NetApp, don’t like to walk out from a session (I think is not fair for a speaker), but was not the content that I was thinking and with so many breakout sessions at the same time, don’t want to spend time in one that is not technical.

At the end of the first-day event there as a Happy Hour in Expo Lounge where we had some food and some drinks with the guys.

Here with some Veeam Vanguards (Fred, Florian, and Al).

The day was not over yet 🙂

Later at night finish the day with an after-party with Veeam LATAM group. My Brazilian friend Valdecir Carvalho and I went to the party for some food and drinks and finish for the day.

• VeeamON Day #2
  There was a General Session that I have already added the video at the beginning of this blog post.

Second and last day was more breakout sessions and the famous VeeamON party.

• • Active Your Data with Veeam Datalabs

Starting the day with session good session from my friend and Veeam Senior Global Technologist Senior Michael Cade.

This session presented by Michael was about Datalabs. Was a great technical session and with good examples/demos.

With Datalabs customer can create On-Demand Sandbox that are isolated environments outside your production environment using your Veeam Backups or Replicas and now is also possible to use Storage snapshot as a source. Using Storage snapshot integration Datalabs will reduce the use of your Virtual Environment.

In this On-Demand Sandbox isolated environments, we can test patches, systems changes, check backups consistence, manipulate back up data and check if we have backups\replicas free of virus and most important Ransomware by using DataLabs Secure Restore.

There is a lot of possibilities when using Datalabs that includes the following features:

• • • Virtual Lab
    • Application Group
    • SureBackup job

Michael shows us in this session how to implement and to provision Datalabs and how to access it with different networks(internal isolated and external).

Check here more about Veeam Datalabs.

• • Secrets to Design an Availability Infrastructure for 25.000 VMs

This was a session presented by Edwin Weijdema.

In this session, Edwin shows us how to build a Veeam Backup Infrastructure for 25.000 VMs and also create a High Availability environment.

Building a backup environment for 25,000 VMs, providing failover and High Availability all the time is not very easy to implement. It needs some Architecture work to achieve the best solution.

Some examples of the design for this solution:

One of the options to implement this solution is to segment the number of VMs by Veeam Backup Server. In this example, it was divided by 5,000 VMs each section.

Some examples of the High Availability and failover design and the segmentation of the Backup Infrastructure (with a case of a DMZ).

Note: These designs and examples are all in the Veeam Backup & Replication Best Practices document.

• • Top 7 Worst Practices when Using Veeam Backup & Replication

Also, an excellent session from Edwin (I did not assist), but there is the recorded session already, and you should take a look. Good content.

Check here the video.

For the last, I leave the Breakout that had some Veeam Vanguards as speakers. Another great session with great content.

• • Ransomware Resiliency Tips from Veeam and the Veeam Vanguards.

This was a session presented by Rick Vanover and Veeam Vanguards Shane Williford, Al Rasheed, and Kevin Allan.

This session was about ransomware and practical tips on how to defend and recover after a ransomware attack.

Check the next video to watch the full session.

There were a lot of good sessions on the second day but could attend all. Again, check the Breakout session recorded where they are available.

After the day is finished, we had, of course, the famous VeeamON party. This year the performer guest was the rapper and hip hop singer Flo Rida.

Was a great, great party. A lot of good food, lots of drinks and of course, a lot of fun and party.

It did start raining a lot during Flo Rida performance, but no one left the party 🙂

Last day was to recover from the party and have some beach time. Here is where it was my disgrace.

While we were at the beach just chilling, talking and drinking some water and cola(yes was the day to clean the body) the sun was really strong. We had a beach umbrella, but while the sun moved, I didn’t. So I was in the sun around 1h or so. Later that day, I had a huge sunburn and with high fevers.

Note:  A huge thanks to my friend Valdecir Carvalho that went to Walgreens and buy me some medicine and some creams for my back. Without that (particularly the medicine) I am pretty sure that I was in a really trouble during that night. Again, THANKS FRIEND my suit Brazilian nurse :).

Was not a good night for me and was also not very good to return the next day with a 10h flight without being able to sit down properly with my back to the airplane seat. Not good, not good at all.

After 2/3 days at home, I was better (not good yet), and I was able to start to write this VeeamON 2019 my recap.

Final notes:

Once again, VeeamON was a great event. A lot of great technical Breakout session and also some partner expositors were we could check what the news about their products and how they integrate with Veeam products.

A lot of good news in the VeeamON about Veeam products. Like finally we will have a Veeam Availability Suite v10, the new Veeam Orchestrator v2 and also Veeam Availability Console v3. Just to mention a few.

Besides the finish line, I personally had a great time lot of good networking, a lot of good technical content to use in my daily work and finally is always a pleasure to meet all the guys in the vCommunity, particularly the Veeam Vanguards. Meet old guys and meet in person others that I only knew virtually.

Next year VeeamON2020 is in Las Vegas, and I plan to be there again. Hope I can make it.

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