Transcript
I'm Rick Vanover, the Ricketron, at my base in Central Ohio, and I'm joined by Maddy, back from World Travels. Maddy, how are you doing? Good day, Rick. Good day, community. Yeah, it's been such a long time since we had like a normal circumstance episode, but for all good reasons, right? Because you were on vacation or sort of vacation. Close. Yeah. I don't know. You tell us. But yeah, I know for sure I was in South Africa for some Veeam user groups that were really good, and we're going to talk about it a bit later, and the Women in Technology event. I had a fantastic trip in South Africa. And yeah, as I said, we're going to talk later on on that, but happy to be in normal circumstances. Yeah, indeed. And Maddy, we are going to talk more about the trip. You've got some incredible takeaways that we're going to share with the team here today with the viewers. But, you know, when you did that proposal, it's like, hey, Rick, I want to go to South Africa. I'm going to go do this and this and this. And I'm like, wow, she's really thought it through. Just wait till you see what she's done. She's done incredible stuff on that trip. So great job, Maddy. But we've got a lot to get into. So you ready to jump into it? Let's do it. I love the content today. Indeed. And we have a new tool, so I'm probably going to mess this up. I guarantee you I'm going to mess this up, but we are using a new tool for the capture. But let's see if I did it. There we go. We're looking at our shared content and first up is Stabs. And he is talking about the blind spot in your continuity plan. What if your team disappeared tomorrow? Fantastic point of view. What caught your eye on this one, Maddy? Well, I first have to make a joke before I go through this, because just before, you know, before we started with this tool, I was just like looking at my face and I was like, no, I cannot have any spot on my face. I have to really cover it because this new tool is going to see it all. So just because I saw the spot in there and I had to do it. I'll make it real small like this. How's that? Yeah, no, that's good. That's good. But it's fine. It's just like I think the quality of this camera is really good. Quality of the Restream because we are using Restream now. I don't want to promote it, but yeah, anyways, it's really good quality. So going back to Filip's blogging here, I think that was really, really good content. He talks on, you know, how quickly normal IT setups can become fragile when everything depends on, you know, just a couple of key people. And, you know, he says, like, we are always very strong on tools and technology. But this is a clear reminder, this article of his, that human continuity is just as critical as, you know, for the business continuity. So often maybe this is the most overlooked risk that we take. So I don't think really we talk enough about this. And I like the fact that he brought it up. And this is an example, actually, from his field experience of the client that suddenly finds itself completely paralyzed. And why? Just because the only two IT people in the organization were both on long term sick leave at the same time. I call this bad luck. But honestly, I think it can happen to anyone. So the real shock is that, you know, nobody is actually able to answer a simple question. If a cybersecurity incident happens right now, what do we do? And the answer is, we don't know. Not because systems are down, but because no one is left who knows how to operate them. So I think this is very valuable. Thank you, Filip, for putting it, you know, in an article. And what is your takeaway on this one, Rick? Well, I was going to guess it right here, and he summarized it, that this is inspired by factual events, right? I believe that this is actually incredibly overlooked people side of it. I'll share one example. And Filip, a la Stabs, goes into it. Let's see here. He mentioned it one time here. He put it in red because it's a big deal. I'll circle it in red. He says, if your system admin is the only person who knows a decryption password for your backup, the backups don't belong to you. They belong to them. Fair. I will supplement that and say, look, when I talk to clients that have gone through ransomware scenarios, so many times the ransomware actors will strike when the subject matter expert or experts, plural, are out on extended leave. Like they know that they're hiking in the mountains and can't respond. And so that puts pressure. So it's almost like a different type of attack surface. And I think that the people side of it is massively important because what happens is if somebody walks in and tries to figure everything out in an emergency, and there's no people with that institutional knowledge, it's just going to take more time and puts accuracy at risk. This is absolutely a finer point of life piece of advice here, Stabs. So thank you so much for sharing this one. This is fantastic. All right. Next up, OG, Joji, back on the show talking about Hyper-V. And I love it because I'm like literally the biggest cheerleader for Hyper-V here at Veeam. But I got a number of things to say about this one, Maddy. But what caught your eye about Joe's post? Well, first of all, great to see Joe back at it because we haven't really mentioned Joe's name in a very long time. So great to see he's again active. I think he just took a long vacation to China from what I saw. But anyway, yeah, Joe looks at how Hyper-V backups work in Veeam, focusing on the choice between on-host and off-host proxies. And he talks about on-host proxies that run directly on each Hyper-V host and how they are deployed automatically and keep things simple and reliable. But on the other side, off-host proxies use storage-based VSS snapshots. But they come with a lot more complexity, strict requirements and dependencies on storage vendors. And most probably what's the takeaway from Joe here is that it's really one of those cases where simplicity usually wins. Off-host sounds more advanced on paper, he says, but in most real environments, it actually adds some friction. And then on-host, it's just easier to operate and far more predictable day to day. So I think you know more than I do about this topic. So why don't you just make some light on it? Well, first of all, your summary is spot on, Maddy. And I think there is some benefit of the convenience of on-host. And off-host is kind of trying to, and I'll zoom into it right here, because it's kind of a mindset of what we used to do here with the traditional backup proxy and the other hypervisor. And it's not the same. It is different. I mean, it's similar in that it's a dedicated connectivity and compute resource to act on behalf of the backups. But for most scenarios, on-host is the way to go. And the one thing I'll say in favor of on-host, and you can actually see it right here, is that you still have the configuration of the throughput. So in this example, Joe's got four task limits. And so that's really that shaping that you really want above all. And for those of you, this is especially important nowadays when people are thinking about new hypervisor platforms. Hyper-V has a resilient change tracking, has replication, has instant recovery, has so many of the other things, sure backup, that we have come to know and love from Veeam. So I am your biggest Hyper-V fan, Joe. I will always cover Hyper-V on this show. I think I know another Hyper-V fan, and that's going to be DDA. Yeah, yeah, DDA for sure. Working hard IT is always a fan. But Joe, I'm with you. On-host is the way to go for most environments. And the other kind of scenario, if organizations have built a cluster so big that they have a dedicated off-host proxy, then that cluster being so big, I think they're going to have new problems, just by scale and management. So I'm on team on-host, and thank you so much for giving Hyper-V some love. And just while we're at it, if you didn't know, OG Joji writes these security blueprints. And his team, I shouldn't say he does them all, but the security blueprints are a fantastic resource for proven Veeam designs at scale. So Joe and his colleagues implement these in the field and then validate designs with product management. So an absolute secret weapon when it comes to Veeam architecture. So thank you, Joe. Thank you, Joe's team. Before we go, I want to challenge DDA to tell us off-host versus on-host, what he prefers. And I'm going to tag him in the comments. That's a good shout, because DDA has been there. And yeah, I'd be really curious to DDA's perspective. And it's one of those things, I'm just going to call it. But I suspect he's going to pick something that has like a single-digit performance benefit, but it might have like a little bit more overhead. And he thinks that the performance benefit is working for him. We'll see. We'll see. But let us know what you think. He's challenged. Thank you, Joe. All right, now we have a whole section called special department, but this one's special within our featured content. So we're going to talk a little bit about our certification process and some milestones there. And Federica has a really good write-up of some stories behind the certification stuff. And Madalina, I know you've been working with FEDA on this. Tell us what's going on. So this is going to be the first time when we are – I mean, they haven't announced the winners of the community certification challenge. This is the first time when we are announcing them anywhere. Federica didn't put the names in this blog, so it's only going to come out from the recap. So this is the big reveal? This is the big reveal, exactly. This is the big reveal. So everyone is going to be aware that they won a prize on Friday. So that's great. I'm going to show it in a minute, but let's just go over the blog a little bit. This started initially, you know, just as a training push and quickly turned into a stream of very hands-on community stories because what they did with this community certification challenge, basically they invited some members of the community to give feedback on the new VMC+. You know, they were involved with the beta program, and they also had some challenges to write feedback on it, to post some blogs, to share it on their social media. So they had some rules around that that I really can't remember exactly the rules, so I'd rather not complicate myself with that. But yeah, they had to share, and I think the most voted one were basically the winners that we are going to announce today. So I think out of this, you know, out of this challenge, you know, everyone got, you know, something. The certification team got some, you know, some great feedback, people that were sharing real experiences, takeaways from the field, and then what happened is Federica and Nicola reviewed all the contributions, and then the quality of those made this a really difficult decision. But I think we can reveal the four winners of the community certification challenge. Let's do it. Yes, this is fantastic. So I love this part. We were not expecting this level of engagement, so we had to pick four winners. Hey, let me tell you, the Veeam community will never disappoint you. That's for sure. So all right, let me see if I can do this seamlessly on the transition. So are you ready? Three, two, one. Let's do it. Congratulations to Michael Melter, Mateus Wolf, Mark Boothman, and Muhammad Ali. Everyone starts with M. That's your way to become. I didn't even realize that. Yeah, it's basically not triple, but quadruple? Quadruple M's. Yes, there you have it. Fantastic. Congratulations, all of you. Federica is going to add it to the blog as well, and she's going to let you know exactly what you want out of this. But thank you very much, Fede, for putting this blog together. Thank you for supporting the community as you do. She's involved as well in the Women and Allies in Tech group very much. She's always trying to collaborate with us and supporting our community, getting some free vouchers, free certification for VMC for our community members. So thank you, Fede, for all of that, and thank you for helping Nicola to put all this challenge together. Yeah, a definite friend of the community, Federica. So thank you so much. All right. Next up, we're going to go to the Vanguard Blog Spotlight. Now, I apologize. I didn't miss it. I didn't do it last week, but what I'm doing this week is really cool because Maddie has picked a new name, and we're happy to call out Zaman, or is it Zaman? I apologize. Zaman Ali's blog on why you should use tags, and I am on team tags, so I love this topic. But what caught your eye with this one, Maddie? I know this is not really the first time we are talking about tags, but I thought it's a great article, and it's a great topic, and it's a great opportunity to welcome Zaman, I think, to this show because this is the first time, as you said, the first time that we are calling his name because he's a new member of our Vanguard program this year. So fantastic to have you, and definitely we would like to call you your name more often in the show, but as I said, this is a good, really good, long, German-style article in here, and Zaman explains how VMware vSphere tags can be used in Veeam to move away from manual VM by VM backup configuration and toward a more automated policy-driven model. And instead of selecting individual machines, you assign tags like tier one, SQL, production, and then Veeam automatically includes the right workloads in the correct backup job, and the key of all this is shifting from managing infrastructure to managing intent. So protection follows the workload automatically, and the new VMs are covered as soon as they're properly tagged, and of course, this is going to make your backup policy more consistent, much easier to scale in large environment, and what it really does is put you in control, especially when you are at scale. So once your environment grows, the manual job management, it kind of becomes a little bit inconsistent because, you know, it's just too much to, you know, to cover and to stay in control. But the tag-based backup is one of those approaches that actually fixes that by making policies stick to the workload and not the other way around. So as I said, yeah, we talked tags before, but I think this is a really great article, and he covered it all very well. Yeah, fantastic content, Zaman, and, you know, a big shout out to another friend of the show, Veeamist33. We still talk to her every now and then. She's a friend of the show as well. But one thing I'll highlight here is if you're thinking about getting started with tagging in your environment, so I have two pieces of advice. One, get your tagging infrastructure and configuration and category, set that up first, and then think about building the Veeam policies around it. And then the third kind of new twist to it is use AI in the sense of you can write PowerShell scripts that'll tell you in your VMware environment what does and does not have a tag, and you can quickly kind of take a look at the environment and get it clean. And then also Veeam One, for example, will tell you what is not backed up. So as you move to tagging, you know, you might not have everything backed up. So make sure you use the VMs with no backup report to then close the loop on what is or is not protected, tags or not. And then one step further, you can use the remediation actions to take what isn't backed up to a catch-all backup job. So good, good stuff. Welcome, Zaman. Hope to call your name more often. All right, so next week is a big, interesting week. We'll talk a little bit about that on the next tab. But on Monday the 11th, the day before something that we'll talk about here, a user group in New York. And that, let's see if we have an agenda, that looks like it will be sponsored by Scality. I did talk to Candy about that, but really excited to have this kind of pre-VeeamOn user group meeting. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that was a really good call from Stephen. You know, he was like, okay, why don't we just have, you know, the way we used to organize some pre, you know, like some cocktail events before the VeeamOn in the previous format. I think that was the idea of having a Veeam user group this time. So good call on that, Stephen. So if you are in, you know, in New York for the VeeamOn or you just live in New York and you are interested in some, you know, good sessions, good networking with the community, you know, you have a couple hours free in the evening, I definitely recommend you to go to this. It doesn't have an agenda, but I think it's going to be more like, you know, free conversation. Well, if Stephen's talking about it, there you go. It's a BCGF. Yeah. So it's more like, let's just have a conversation around this topic. It's not really, I don't think it's really a session. Well, we'll cover key sessions, but I don't think it's going to be like a session. I think it's going to be more like discussions around the topic. So I think this is a good thing to have. And, you know, if you arrive anyway, most people are going to arrive on the 11th, right, to New York for VeeamOn that we're going to discuss in a minute. So why not having, you know, three hours of networking, cocktails, good discussions around BCDR with Stephen and the Veeam community. Yeah, it's a casual setting, I think is the best way to sum it up. Yeah. Looking good. Thank you, Stephen. I think, I know Candida, she mentioned if I could come by and I cannot. She's local to New York and I see that with her as a sponsor there, or Scality as a sponsor. Yeah. And so where are they going to be? American Whiskey. Sounds like a good, interesting thing. Let's see. So the VeeamOn is actually going to be right around here. So it's right, it's in basically the same area. So if you're coming to both, rock on. That's great. All right. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you, NYC Market. We will see you in New York. And speaking of which, Sophia wrote up a nice post on registering for the virtual experience. I can tell you that the virtual experience will bring a keynote. So that'll be important. You'll hear from Anand and Rehan. Converge is a theme and that'll make a lot of sense. Can't steal their thunder for this. And there are, I think, four or five sessions on the virtual experience. In fact, I even recorded some customer testimonials, including Nico Stein, one of the vanguards. He got a chance to record with me. So that was great. Thank you, Nico. And we also spoke to a customer of Security AI. I got to interview them as well to talk about how they use some of the data security posture management capabilities. But I think the online experience, you still can register. And I think it's just the right amount. It'll be the keynote and then these four breakouts. I'm excited for it. Yeah, totally. I'm super excited as well. Can you still register for the in-person event or that's already closed? I know it's not full, but this is the biggest thing that we have had to explain is that the registrations for that are approved. And I think at any moment now, probably this Friday, it will close. And the thought is that people have asked us on the previous recap, why the new format? And I guess that'll lead me to explaining it. I think Shane asked that question. It's really about having the right size of an event with the right investment in it from a production quality standpoint to then lead to the right amount of pipeline. And to put that in other terms, what we've done around the world with Veeam on Tour is that is the recipe and that works and that scales and it's repeatable. So that's what we're doing. We're just making it consistent. Now, the difference with London, New York and Sydney is that they'll be bringing unique news to each of these events. So that's the only difference and a little bit more, quote unquote, executive support. So that's the only difference to it. Now, all that being said, we are not full, but we're surely going to be. So if you want to register, if you can, go for it now. And then while I am on it, let's go to that page real quick. And if we go to this, I want to highlight, especially in the U.S., there's going to be Chicago, there's going to be Southern California, there's going to be Washington, D.C., like public sector, federal focused, there's going to be Toronto, Canada focused. So the thought here is if you can't make the New York event, you've got, well, you've got other options around the world. And then if I, you know, definitely we've come to know and love Veeam on Tour. So I know that I'm going to be at Ecuador and Mexico City ones. And then I think, Maddie, are you going to South America again? Yes, I'm going to be at Chile, Argentina, and we are going to organize some Veeam user groups around those as well. So, yeah, that's going to be cool. Another two or three weeks in Latin America. Uh-huh. Well, I think you'll like it. I'm not going to lie. I do. I love the people in there. I speak their language. So why not? I can't even get it in there close enough, but I'm going to be there. I'm going to be at Munich. I'll be at the Munich one as well. So looking forward to that. Definitely time to still register for that. Thank you, Sofia, for getting that post out. And again, thank you, Sofia. Happy to report that the Veeam 100 pages are now updated for the 2026 classes thus far. Yeah. Thank you, Sofia, for that. And yeah, now we have some new names. Go check it out. We have some new Vanguards, new Legends, new MVPs. So go check it out. There's Zaman right there. Yeah, Zaman that we just mentioned. And I think probably another eight or so. Zaman is the first member not named Ben from New Zealand. How about that? Awesome. Yeah, that's true. That's a good takeaway from this. Yeah, exactly. All right. Let's kind of finish where we started. And you mentioned your trip to South Africa. And Maddy, just truly some incredible stuff. Walk us through that Women and Allies in Tech event. Yeah, in a moment. I also wanted, I don't know if you put it on this, but I wanted to say congratulations once again, Michael Melter, for also winning Blog of the Month this month. I didn't have it in there. Yeah, we missed on that. But anyway, congratulations. Double congratulations this month. So yeah. But yeah, a few thoughts on my two weeks in South Africa. That was a really amazing experience. First of all, it was fantastic to see how, you know, people are so hospitable there, so welcoming, very curious to talk to you, to, you know, to know you and really like in a very honest way. So I really enjoyed that. I was, we did two user groups, one in Johannesburg, the other one, it was in Cape Town. And we actually prepared a, you know, you are going through my Women in Technology blog that I'm going to talk about in a minute. But I wanted, because this was like the timeline of it, it was first. This happened first, yeah. Yeah, exactly. It happened first, the Vim user groups. And I want to actually thank Jonathan, our leader, that did a fantastic job organizing these two events. This was his first time doing that. You know, and he had some really good attendance, really good sessions, good engagement. Everything was really, you know, like top. We had Ian as well that talked about security AI and he talked about V13. And we also had the sort of AMA that was really good. And people were very curious, actually. This is a reel that we created. I did a bunch of videos and we did an interview with Pomuzo, who is one of the users, and he was happy that he had everything clarified about security AI. Oh, I love that. Real people, real Vim, real talk. That's like a mission statement, if I've ever seen one. That's awesome. I know. That was all, you know, Jonathan. So, again, really great leader, really liked it. And then, yeah, it was really good. We really enjoyed it. I think everyone enjoyed it. We had good feedback. This is from Cape Town in here. And we got someone, you know, that works for military. And he came to us and he said, like, listen, I think what you're doing with this is fantastic, because this is the component that we were missing in here. We don't get that many, you know, events that are technical related, you know, where you actually talk technology, not just marketing and business and stuff like that. So, he was like, you guys have something really good. And we were very happy to receive that feedback. And, yes, this is what you are showing. It's real. So, what we are starting now with the Vim user group, because we want to create a little bit more awareness and we are working with our leaders and with the Vim team to do videos, you know, and interviews at the Vim user groups and have this type of real. Off reels, promo reels, that's how I call them. So, happy that we managed to get this. Jonathan is exciting. We're going to get even more of the events. He promised he's going to do more this year. So, let's see. But then, on top of that, you were going over my blog, because I did, on top of the Vim user groups that I attended, I also attended the Women in Technology event. And this was, as I was mentioning earlier, probably one of the most diverse in terms of, like, content. And people from different backgrounds. They had speakers from France government, South Africa government. They had, like, IT people. They had singers. They had swimmers. They had artists. They had students. Basically, and the topics were so diverse as well. You know, they had, like, some motivational and very inspirational sessions with really good public speakers. And then they had these kind of sort of debates and panels. And there are a lot of great sessions in there. And I actually picked, I don't know, my five favorite ones that I thought had the most impact on me and, you know, what I want to do with my career, what I want to do with my life. But, yeah, the great takeaway is actually what I put, if you go at the bottom, is actually the conclusion of all this. And my takeaway from this event, I really loved it. And, you know, it's just not the picture, but my conclusion of the final question that actually, you know, brings everything together. And that is how do we contribute to the common good and how do we use technology in that sense, you know, to shape the common good. So, yeah, I loved it. I think these type of events should be attended by, you know, all women working in technology and not only in technology, because it's a great opportunity, you know, to develop yourself, to maybe think about stuff that you don't think normally. So I really enjoyed it. And I want to thank you, Rick, for, you know, offering us the opportunity, the ladies in your team, and not only to attend these sort of events. Yeah, I think this type of stuff is super important in the sense of, you know, there's a need. So as a lot of you know, I manage a team. And our team is, a lot of people think they're special and unique and whatever, but my team has a unique mission in the company. And we have five different top level priorities, one of them being community that, you know, on this show, we talk a lot about. But I feel that it's super important to invest in the people that we have. So I've made it super clear to everybody that we can have training, like, go learn XYZ products, right? I'll invest in that. But I also will invest in what I call professional development. Like, Women in Tech doesn't teach you how to write Python. But Women in Tech is guiding Maddie, is guiding you as a corporate citizen. And an Earth citizen, really, at this point, it's sometimes even bigger than that. So I've encouraged our team every year to invest in those two angles. So it's great to see you took us up on the offer. And it looks like you picked a winner. This one looks absolutely fantastic. Yeah, absolutely. So glad I attended, had some fantastic time in South Africa. And yeah, had some good conversations with the Veeam team in there. And hopefully we are able to grow our presence, the community presence in Africa, in the continent, you know, because I think there is opportunity from my conversations with people. Absolutely. And you know, our team owns the User Group franchise, lack of a better word. And when we get a user that gets it, and you get an audience that loves it, that's the perfect combination. So great work. And thank you to the leaders and the members that attended and participated. I think we're doing something good there. That's for sure. All right, last up from the desk of Sophia coolest. We skipped a few weeks. So she just looked at I think the last two. But we're going to go with plus 237 and some coolest usernames King Steven, all hail. And then oh, I'm blocking the block in that one. Let me undo it there. Veeam Tester 2026. What were you doing in 2025? I need to know. Jeremy Fluxit. I think I said that right. Kenneth Champs and Alfred's pick is the Neon Frog Ribbit. Love it. Some funny stuff in there. That's a cool one. Yeah, yeah. Alfred's Nokia stuff. I think so. All right. Now, you know, what's funny is we're using this new tool. But I don't know how to, I forgot how to stop the share. So I don't know how to bring it home, Manny. No, that's not it. There should be an end recording. Well, I know that. But I want to stop the share and then be back with just you and me. So yeah, we might just have to end it right here. So Send it this way. It's fine. It's three tiles. We'll learn it all by next time. We promise. Possibly. All right, everyone. Speaking of next time, we have Veeam on next week. Manny, we'll talk later about how we do it. I personally won't be able to do it. But thanks for watching and we will see you all on 261.
