Sure the Veeam Vanguard program comes complete with tons of great swag and free trips to VeeamON and whatnot – but in all honesty the biggest benefit of the program in my opinion is the access that Veeam provides – access with fellow Vanguards and access with key people within Veeam, across the whole company from executives to SEs. Here at VeeamON 2017 we get a special day jam packed full of access – and below is a bit of a lowdown on what happened (or as much as we can tell you about anyways).
Veeam Availability Orchestrator – Michael White
The day started off with a couple of hours with Michael White (@mwVme) giving the low down on Veeam Availability Orchestrator – One of Veeams newest products which helps orchestrate and automate disaster recovery fail over. Before actually getting into any product specifics, Michael actually went through a brief discussion about what Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity actually is, and how we can best prepare for any situation that may occur. Michael is a perfect fit to evangelize this product as he had a lot of examples with other companies he as worked for over the years, outlining how he was prepared, or at sometimes, un prepared for disasters that hit. In all honesty it was a great way to start the day, getting a little bit of education rather than just immediately diving into product specifics!
Veeam Availability Console – Clint Wyckoff
Directly after Michael we had Veeam evangelist Clint Wyckoff come and in and give us a breakdown on the new release candidate of Veeam Availability Console. I’ve seen the product before, but like anything Veeam there is always a number of changes in a short time – and it was nice to see the product as moves into tech preview. For those that don’t know, VAC is Veeams answer to a centralized management solution for those large, dispursed enterprises as well as Veeam Service Providers to manage, deploy, and configure both their Veeam Backup & Replication servers as well as the newly minted Veeam Agents for Microsoft and LInux.
Vanguard support from the top down
One great thing that I like about the Veeam Vanguard program is that it’s not just a “pet project” for the company. During Vangaurd day we were introduced to Danny Allan, VP of Cloud and Alliance Strategy at Veeam. Danny is our new executive sponsor at Veeam – meaning we have support at the highest levels of the company. It’s really nice to see a company sink so much support and resources from all roles into a recognition program – one of the many reasons why I feel the Vanguard program is so successful.
Nimble
After lunch we had Nimble come in and brief us on their Secondary Flash Array and the interesting performance enhancements it has when being used with Veeam. Last year during our Vanguard day we didn’t have another vendor other than Veeam present. It’s nice to see some of Veeams partners and ecosystem vendors reaching to find some availability to talk with us. Nimble certainly has a great product – and due to the fact that I’m not sure what all was covered under NDA I’ll simply leave this at that!
AMA with Veeam R&D
Earlier when I mentioned one of the biggest benefits of the Vanguard program was access this is basically what I was referring too. For the rest of the afternoon we basically had a no holds barred, ask me anything session with Anton Gostev, Mike Resseler, Alexy Vasilev, Alec King, Vladimir Eremin, Dmitry Popov, and Andreas Newfert – all Veeam employees who manage, or work very closely with R&D deciding what features are implemented, when they get implemented, and basically define a road map for when these features get inserted into products. Now this session was definitely NDA as a lot was talked about – but just let me say this was the best and most interesting portion of the whole day!
With so much being under NDA and embargo there isn’t a lot I can tell you about the content – but for those wondering this is just a brief description of how much access you get into Veeam being under the Vanguard label. Certainly if you wish, I encourage you to apply for the program – you won’t regret it!
