VeeamON 2017 – General Session Wednesday – a review

17. May 2017 by Karl Widmer

Thanks to the live stream there wasn’t an NDA on the announcements today made at the General Session. People announced stuff and did live demos of new features awaiting us in the next version of Veeam, the Veeam Availability Suite v10. Let’s now dive into it.

Kicking off the General Session

Peter McKay, COO and President, was on the stage. He’s greeted all attending people, even those who were streaming the general session event to their computers at home or at the office.

Peter McKay introduced himself and showed us about his career. He showed us the example of his children, they’re living a real digital life already. And we all are doing so. It’s all about digital transformation. It’s our digital future.

VeeamON 2017 – VMCE-A Training on Monday and Tuesday

17. May 2017 by Karl Widmer

The VeeamON week started early for me. When i did all the booking for VeeamON, i signed up for the VMCE-A course. This is the course required for the VMCE Advanced certification. If you’re already VMCE (Veeam Certified Engineer) you can go a little further, do the course, learn a little more and then get certified again. Engineers who complete both VMCE and VMCE-Advanced: Design & Optimization programs (courses + exams) will be granted with the “Veeam Certified Architect” (VMCA) title by Veeam.

Monday, 15th of May – First day of VMCE-A training

I got up early, heading for a breakfast and then walking to another hotel just around the corner, where all the courses were located. I registered there for VeeamON to receive my event badge, and then i registered for the classroom.

We were about 20 people in the class. Some very experienced people, from all kinds of IT, like storage professionals, server specialists and so on. Our teacher did very good. He knows the stuff, and he is anything but boring. We had some good laugh and very good discussions. People are sharing examples of their experiences, from the real world and real customers. During the morning we went through some theoretical things, numbers and calculations. And these numbers are another sign that SMB (Small and Medium-sized businesses) are in different size in different countries…

During the afternoon we had a case study. Some fictional company (no, not Contoso…) had its infrastructure and some requirements regarding RPO / RTO, backup, failover and all those things. Our task was to analyze the infrastructure, plan some optimizations and create a concept of how we could fulfill the customers requirements. That task was a group work.

Tuesday, 16th of May – Second day of VMCE-A training

Today i was up on time and heading directly to the class rooms. It’s great to have a Starbucks coffee right in the reception area of the hotel where the trainings and class rooms are located. I grabed a iced cold brew, something with coconut in it. Waiting there for my coffee a guy showed up and greeted me, and made compliments about my blog. The coffee tasted great and meeting this guy was a great start in the day 🙂

The morning began also with some theoretical things, numbers and a little math. We talked a lot about personal experiences and shared real life stories. Shortly before lunch we received the task to build groups again and check our design from Monday. The fictional company for which we planned our design on Monday was now operating for a year. We had again to analyze the actual situation and create a new concept how to backup, replicate and keep the data available.

For me those two days were really interesting and educational. I did not many design-things in my actual IT career. We had a great class, good discussions and a great teacher. Many thanks to Bart Pellegrino, you did a great job!

Follow up:

VeeamON 2017 – Travel and first days in New Orleans

16. May 2017 by Karl Widmer

I knew that this trip would not be easy. It’s a long distance from Switzerland to New Orleans, and there were no direct flights. So i’ll have to change the plane at least once. But let’s start at the beginning of my journey to VeeamON 2017.

Saturday, 13th of May – Flight to New Orleans

Last Saturday the 13th of May it all started. I woke up early in the morning to get the rest of my stuff packed, and checked if there is anything missing. Fortunately there wasn’t. I got my clothes, my laptop, all the necessary cables and chargers and travel documents. I’m good to go. I went to the train station to catch the train to Zurich Airport. The nice thing is that directly under the airport there is a train station. So i went from the train directly to the baggage check-in and then straight through security to the gate.

The flight from Zurich to London, where my connection flight was scheduled, was not so nice. The flight itself was smooth and without turbulences. But there was a small child, crying the whole flight. I was hoping that this won’t happen on the plane to New Orleans…

In London i met a bunch of cool people. Some guys from the UK, all Veeam addicted assembled there, and we all together took the “Veeam Plane” to NOLA. We were about ten or so people, Scottish, Englisch, Spanisch and Swiss. We had good fun on the plane to New Orleans. I thought I could get some sleep on the plane, but there wasn’t any chance. It’s not easy to catch some sleep if you’re not tired and when it’s noisy. I ready some pages and watched three movies. Finally, with the last movie, i found also my headphones.

At around 7pm in the evening we landed a little before schedule on Louis Armstrong International outside of New Orleans. After border control and baggage claim we were picked up by bus drivers and were driven to the hotel. At the hotel we checked in and met a little later at the reception to go out and find some good food. We were all hungry after such a flight. And thirsty too…

We enjoyed a nice evening on Saturday, but good chats, good burgers and beer. Some went back to the hotel, some others went out for other bars. At this time i was tired. After roughly 24 hours being awake i needed some sleep really bad.

Sunday, 14th of May – Just a day off

I woke up earlier than expected on Sunday. I thought i would be dead tired and sleep until lunch. But i was fine and felt good rested. We met at the hotel reception and went out to get a good breakfast. There was a restaurant some minutes from the hotel. They served real good stuff. From traditional pancakes, to waffles and toast, omelets, there was anything available. You could also order a T-Bone steak if you’d like to.

After that great meal we had enough energy for the rest of the day. We were heading for the National World War II Museum, just some minutes in walking distance. If you’re in New Orleans, then this is definitely a place to go. It’s huge and very interesting. And it’s a national museum, the real thing, not some small backyard playground.

Wondering what will happen on Monday and Tuesday? Stay tuned 😉