Media Breakfast and Nondisclosure Agreement (NDA) Session

The morning of day 2 started off a little different for myself. Some of the media and Veeam Vanguards attended a media and session where they disclosed some information about Veeam and some of the new products.

Keynote Speech

What a conference hall to walk into. Veeam really wanted to make sure that you saw and heard the messages they were delivering. Crisp clear sound that was back by huge screen. I forget the tech specs, but just look at the screen in the pictue!

Before the keynote, the screen was playing case scenario videos of several companies and how they’re leveraging Veeam to protect their IT systems 24×7 365. Regardless of data size, it saves money and it just works.

    

A few Statistics

  • Estimate of 3000 people attended the keynote
  • Roughly 3000 other people were actively streaming
  • 1 + 1 = 3 (You need to have innovation, and color outside the box)
  • 245,000 customers across 42 countries
  • 4000 per month added

Take a way – You don’t need to or should worry backups on game day, just focus on the game as your data will always available

Announcements of Veeam 10

  • Veeam Agent for Windows and NAS
  • New Cloud Providers (AWS)
  • Deepen partnerships with Microsoft
  • Partnership with N2WS
  • Building upon partnership HPE, Cisco, IBM, VMware
  • Agility – In v10. Universal Storage Agent API (Coming in v10 IBM, Lenovo, Infinidat)
  • Disaster Recovery Orchestration (VAO)
  • Veeam Availability for AWS (Agentless)

Calling the Tech Team To the Stage

Keynotes are great, but if you’re a technical person, you want to see the tech in action. Bring out the tech team!

Veeam Tech Presenters:

  • @ClintWyckoff
  • @mwVme (Michael White)
  • @RickVanover
  • @MichaelCade1

Clint Wyckoff – Windows Agents Demo

People have been wanting to backup physical servers, Veeams answer in the past was, sorry we can’t do it. But, now with the release of Version 10, there will also be Windows Agents! Your physical world can now be backed up!

Rick Vanover – NAS Backup Demo

Having Linux and Windows agents is nice. We can now backup our physical and virtual systems, but what about those storage systems that don’t have a traditional Operating System? We saw how Rick does it, he uses Veeam Backup and Recovery version 10!

Michael White – Business Continuity (CDP)

Recovery service level object = seconds. Can already use it like VBR. Just a new Screen (Schedule screen, see screenshot). Snapshots are not used.

Michael Cade – Native Object Storage support

Move your archive data to cheaper storage. 30 days, 1 year, 7 years? How much storage and cost would you save? Can use disk or tape repositories. Policy driven and wizard driven.

Michael White (Demo 2) VM Log Insight and Veeam Integration

 

Datagravity for finding PII and find insight into the data, or find malware. Compliant against data governance need. (Coming)

StarWind (Rick V). Backup to VTL (TO disk and Amazon S3)

 

Guest Speakers

VMware COO Sanjay Poonen

Talked about how everyone needs the cloud, in some shape or form. Here are 5 guidelines that Sanjay talked about:

  1. HYBRID cloud computing is here to stay
  2. Start with a SaaS strategy, then IaaS, then PaaS, ideally in PARALLEL
  3. Network & Data Security are key, build SECURITY into the architecture (Like vitamins)
  4. Waterfall models are dead, Bi-modal IT is dead – world is increasingly moving to AGILE
  5. It is better to FAIL-FORWARD than to stagnate and not move at all

Cisco – Frank Palumbo – Datacenter transformation

Franks message was about how the IT models need to transform. IT needs to consider the current assets and keep moving forward. For the IT managers out there, they need to understand the value of the network in a digital transformation and how and where to set policies. This can be done even at the network level. Think about the 500 billion connected devices. That’s just a little bit of stress on the network infrastructure!

Even just thinking about 500 billion connected devices, it’s time to change the way we do things.

  1. What type of app, server, serverless
  2. Workload – Colo in cloud, data in cloud, or on prem
  3. Management – Machines have to manage machines. Automation
  4. Continue to leverage current proprietary tools, and open source. Which cloud style? How to move workloads?

After thinking about some of the questions above, how do we get there? Customer UI and tools. Use a policy models (whitelist, DR with Veeam)? Push it out via network; Edge, Datacenter, Cloud. Security needs to exist throughout the entire infrastructure, it always has.

Cisco is building ASAP Datacenters. Analyze, Simplify, Automate, Protect

Breakout Session – Dark side of Synthetic Backups

Training sessions can be great. A lot of the time it is quite structured and puts you on the path to passing an exam. Well at Veeam on there were so many breakout sessions that were presented by industry experts. It was actually hard to choose. The one that I really wanted to attend was the Dark side of Synthetic backups. How does Veeam technical support debug issues when you create a case?

VeeamTransportSvc.exe (x86 and x64).. Running on dispatch port :2500

Run dir: d:\backups\backups1\testbackup\mybackup.vbk

Run: dumpstg d:\backups\backups1\testbackup\mybackup.vbk C:\temp\dumpStg.txt – Shows standard block size (in bytes)

Learned how the backend system does Merge Operations

  1. For troubleshooting, we need to look at Performance Logs (Enabled when datamover seems to be slow and a problem with Veeam)
  2. To enable perf logs (No need to restart services)

  1. Created in C:\ProgramData\Veeam\Backup\PerfData
  2. To Parse the data to human text, use ParsePerfLog.exe

  3. Logs are written once before the event, then directly after. Logs times are in CPU ticks

  4. Sync_enter and Sync_Exit events are one event
  5. Check the log file to see where the time is spent

What’s New in Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 (VAS)

It’s been out for a while, but like most people in tech, it’s hard to get their attention. If you haven’t looked at VAS yet, I recommend that you do.

https://www.veeam.com/blog/new-veeam-availability-suite-9-5-is-available-today.html

  • Data Move commands received new names
  • Moved from functions into the Transform. Class
  • Parallel synthetic operations
  • Merge points
  • Fast clone with ReFS
  • Fully managed by ReFS
  • Veeam Agent for Linux started to support perf logging

Onto Day 3 of VeeamON! So much information! So many conversations! Loving it! If you didn’t get a chance to attend this year, make sure you do next year!

-Allan