VeeamOn 2015 – Veeam User Group Session 1: What a user group should be

October 27, 2015 User Community, Veeam, VeeamON 2015

VeeamOn 2015 kicked off yesterday with a “Pre-conference Education Day” of breakout sessions, Veeam partner sessions, and Veeam Certified Engineer (VMCE) training workshops. I was fortunate enough to attend the Veeam User Group session hosted by:

  • Emcee – Sterling Wilson, Senior Engineer, Veeam Partner Channel – @Sterling_122
  • Panelist – Ari Saperstein, Senior Engineer New York Region, Veeam – @arisaperstein
  • Panelist – Rick Byrne, Senior Engineer Canada Region, Veeam – @rickrbyrne
  • Panelist – Gaylord Friend, Solutions Architect Northeast Region, Veeam  – @mrgfriend
  • Panelist – Joe Gremillion, Solutions Architect South Central Region, Veeam  – @jpgremillion

 

The Veeam user group (VUG) currently hosts regional meetings on a regular basis that rotates through a variety of North American cities.  Like most vendor sponsored/lead user groups the topics presented for discussion were focused on a specific technology.  However unlike user groups that are vendor lead/sponsored, this VUG meeting was really driven by the users.  This is a refreshing change from the norm of, vendor presentation, free food, no user feed back, meeting over.  We at vBrisket really believe that user groups need to be about on thing… user participation and Veeam did a terrific job of moderating topics and encouraging user participation. Including some minor bribery from Sterling, straight cash for participation 🙂

Here’s a brief recap of what was presented/discussed:

  • What’s new in Veeam V9
    • Scale Out Repository
    • Veeam File Explorer enhancements
    • Veeam Remote Console
    • Per-VM backup file chain
    • Managed Services
    • GFS for Tape
    • Cloud Connect replication

 

For the full list of v9 features please see Jaison’s post: http://www.vbrisket.com/veeam-v9-new-features

From there the discussion morphed into:

  • Enterprise storage design theory
    • I/O and VMFS design
    • Old paradigm storage design and how to evaluate/change your storage design to meet new demands
  • Are MS SQL clusters relevant in the virtual era?
  • Using business and technical justification to create a solution that meets business requirements
  • “Always On” availability
  • Troubleshooting Veeam snapshot performance for VMs with multiple VMDKs
  • Veeam product update requests

 

The discussion had a healthy combination of product demonstration, white boarding and user participation.  If you are at VeeamON this week and were not able to attend, fret not, there’s a second VUG session scheduled for Wednesday, Oct 28th 1:30 PM (Pacific).

I know I will be there…  If you can make it, please do.

VUG Link: http://go.veeam.com/user-groups.html

By John Brescia