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A big thank you to the 50+ attendees who made it out to the Q3 SouthWest Ontario Veeam User Group (SWOVUG) yesterday. As always, it is great to see returning faces, as well as new folks. The one downside I find personally as the group grows is it is hard to chat with everyone. Not a bad problem to have though! We were also fortunate enough to have Paula Melvin from Veeam’s Ohio office come up for the event. In addition to that, the Guest of Honour was Vanny Vanguard - the “unofficial, official mascot of the Veeam Vanguard” (pictured above). ...

Things have definitely been busy as of late, between VMworld, studying, and yeah … work. September is not shaping up to be any different either.. Whenever I have a few “events” all close together, I like to toss together a quick post to let folks know where I will be. The point is so that if anyone reading this is there, that hopefully they’ll let me know and we can get together for a quick “hi"if nothing else. ...

While at VMworld 2017, I received an invite to attend a HPE Blogger Briefing hosted by Calvin Zito. The idea was to layout some of the current, and upcoming, goings on that HPE has coming down the pipe. The areas that we covered were primarily storage-focused, which I’ll cover in more depth below. First, however, I wanted to give a quick shout out to the HPE team for not dancing around the question of how their relationship with VMware has changed since the Dell EMC acquisition. The short version is that Dell fully recognizes that competition is natural in the market; along with that, it is also clear that VMware has a neutrality that it needs to keep in regards to partners and solutions. My take away was that Dell EMC and HPE are competitors, whereas VMware and HPE are still partners. ...

It is my pleasure to announce that the next SouthWest Ontario Veeam User Group (SWOVUG) will be on Tuesday, September 12, 2017. This time around we’ll be meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn Toronto (Airport West). Given that summer is a popular time for vacation, we opted to skip anything sooner. Timing wise, we’ll also be very soon after VMworld where we might be able to hear some new details on Veeam Backup & Recovery V10. ...

Over the past three months or so, I have found myself wandering into the same conversation over and over again: what makes a user group good? We all too often hear about what is wrong with a user group. It might be locations, sponsors, food, etc.. But I feel like we often overlook what is good, or great, about specific user groups. First off, we have to define what “good” is. Good for the leader can be very different than good to the attendees. Are there sponsors? If so, what does “good” look like to them? If we don’t know what “good” is, then chances are you’ll eventually end up with an empty room. ...

As many readers of my blog know, I run the SouthWest Ontario Veeam User Group (SWOVUG), so it was very welcomed when Rick Vanover reached out to me earlier this year regarding a new initiative. Although there are Veeam User Groups located all over the world, they can sometimes be hard to come by. Issues like scheduling or transportation might get in the way and stop you from attending. With that in mind, Veeam is putting together their first online Veeam User Group, and I am honoured to have a presenting spot. ...

SWOVUG Q2 2017 - Nimble Storage This past Thursday (April 20th, 2017) was the first SouthWest Ontario Veeam User Group (SWOVUG) meeting of the year. Considering the weather, attendance was pretty good and with that, we had some lively conversations and presentations, which is the whole point of a user group. There were lots of new faces, and many familiar ones, which is always a great mix. ...

As readers of this blog may know, I was invited to participate in Tech Field 12 last November. For those who are not familiar with TFD, it is an event where a panel of delegates (consisting of bloggers, analysts, industry folks, etc.) get to sit down with vendors of all sizes. The delegates get to pick the brains of the vendors, and the whole event is recorded and streamed live. ...

Today was that magical day of the year known as the Toronto VMUG UserCon, and it t’was a good day. I was fortunate enough to make it down early for opening (which involved me leaving the house at about 05:30), which was great because I wanted to make sure to catch the keynote by Frank Denneman ( @FrankDenneman on Twitter). It was also nice to get there in time to pound back a couple of cups of coffee. ...

A New Year is upon us and it is time to get the SouthWest Ontario Veeam User Group back into action! Our last event was in November, and due to some scheduling conflicts I wasn’t able to pull something together for Q1 2017. However, I am excited to announce that our Q2 2017 meeting will be held Thursday, April 20th at: Corporate Event Center Centre for Health & Safety Innovation Conference West Room 5110 Creekbank Road Mississauga, ON ...