Posts

Just a short (but exciting, for me anyways) post today. I’ve been having some pretty good Friday’s as of late - that being said, Monday couldn’t come fast enough for me this week. Why would I say something crazy? Let me paint picture: October 18th, 2016 - it was a simpler time: the Blue Jays were still a contender for the World Series, the third US Presidential debate still hadn’t taken place, and Anthony Spiteri was still a Veeam Vanguard (massive congrats to him!). Meanwhile, I happened to catch the latest Tech Field Day Extra, which was great because I didn’t even know that it was going on. The stars must have been aligned because Paessler (the makers of PRTG) were presenting. The timing couldn’t have been better as I am currently evaluating their solution (which I quite like so far). Something cool happened shortly after the event ended - I had a new Twitter follower: Stephen Foskett (cool!). ...

Earlier this year I wrote a few posts ( here, here, and here) where I collected a bunch Veeam Repository Best Practices; the purpose of those posts were somewhat two-fold at the time: a) I needed something to present at my first SWOVUG meeting, and b) I desperately needed a new repository at work. Despite being several months later, I still seem to be getting questions about what repository I went with and how I like. I figure if I at least blog about it I can point future questions here. ...

If you look *really* hard, can you find me? Probably not … I wasn’t there. I looked at my calendar recently while trying to book an appointment, and I quickly realized that I have a lot of vCommunity stuff going on for the next little bit (assuming my plans don’t get altered). In the off chance you are reading this and will be attending one of the events below, please feel free to reach out, even if for no other reason than to say ‘Hi’. ...

Hands-down, one of the new features I was most excited about with Veeam’s Next Big Thing announcement was the Office 365 integration. I know I’m not alone in this one either, as doing a quick Google for terms like ‘Veeam Office 365’ shows that this has been a demand from customers for a while now. To be specific, Veeam is introducing a backup product that will protect your hosted Exchange Online email. ...

Veeam’s ‘Next Big Thing’ announcement did take some flack as far as how ‘corporate’ it was to start things off. To their credit, I did receive a survey within a couple of days asking me to review the event, and there were a lot of questions focusing on the content. I think that their overall vision may have been lost due to the fact that folks got bored with the ‘business stuff’ and just took the product announcements at face value. ...

VMWorld 2016 is in the books and now it’s time to decompress. This was my second VMWorld and my first one in Las Vegas, as well as my first time being in Las Vegas. Pros and Cons to SFO vs LAS, but at the end of the day I think I prefer Vegas. It is better suited for large conferences and rooms can be quite cheap, unlike SFO which only has Moscone Center and expensive hotels. Either way, VMWorld 2017 will be back at Mandalay Bay. The downside is that it is ridiculously hot. ...

Today Veeam held their ‘Next Big Thing’ event, and it was chock full of information. There was a lot of background and business info to get things going (not uncommon), but the product announcements did start flowing. So, what was actually announced? Veeam Availability Platform for the Hybrid Cloud One of the big points covered was more of a road map as to where Veeam is going. Looking at the image presented, it is clear that Veeam has big plans that span across both on and off premises. The plans include both private partners, in the form of service providers, as well as public partners, such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. ...

After some delays on my end (primarily due to a trip to the UK … not that I am complaining), the second SouthWest Ontario Veeam Users Group is in the books. By all accounts, it was a great success. Attendance was somewhere around 50 folks, the feedback was great, and the company was fantastic. As a bit of background, we ended up having about twice as many folks as we originally anticipated from when I started planning this in June. It got to the point where we had to close registration - an interesting problem to have! Given that, the venue that we chose wasn’t quite sized as well as we would have liked. The main issue at hand was some audio problems, but we didn’t let that get in the way. ...

I recently spun up a new homelab using an Intel NUC, which I love. The foot print is small, you can jam a bunch of RAM and a decent CPU in there, and the power draw is minimal. One of the things I wanted to accomplish with my NUC is the ability to bring it places, whether it be for demos, or just for toying with while I am out of the house. ...

2015 was my first VMworld and it ended up leaving quite an impression on me. Prior to arriving, I read a lot of tips and advice for newbies such as myself. One of the big tips was a comfy pair of shoes … and I have to say that was good advice. After the week was done I looked at my Fitbit stats and found that I did something like 80KM of walking! ...