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Hidden Gems of Veeam v13 – Universal CDP (plus fix for Operation is not allowed in the current state)

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I’ve been running Veeam v13 in the Home Lab for a few months now. It’s working flawlessly, backup my servers locally and Wasabi immutable storage in the cloud, running replications, and using Sure Backup to verify my backups are actually working.

With Version 13 Veeam improved Universal Continuous Data Protection(U-CDP). If you are wondering what even is this, let me quote Veeam here, as it is a pretty good explainer.

“Universal continuous data protection (CDP) is a technology that helps you protect mission-critical workloads when data loss for seconds or minutes is unacceptable. Workloads of various types, such as virtual, physical or cloud machines can be replicated to VMware vSphere cluster or host. CDP provides minimum recovery time objective (RTO) in case a disaster strikes because CDP replicas are in a ready-to-start state.”

In this post I’m going to walk through setting this up and running CDP. There were some gotchas I ran into my home lab, but at the end if was a pretty smooth process.

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Veeam 100 Summit in Prague 2025 – Of Dungeons and AI

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So it’s been a few weeks after my return from yet another excellent Veeam100 Summit in Prague. This marks my 3rd visit to Prague, and I’m not getting tired of the city at all. On the contrary, I keep discovering new things to do and visit new places. This was no different this year.

First of all I must thank Rick Vanover, Madalina Cristil, Nikola Pejková, Safiya Mohamed, and everyone at Veeam for creating such a unique event. Nowhere else in the Industry do you have such access to Product Management and can ask questions and provide feedback. I have seen Veeam grow from somewhat of an underdog over 10 years ago to the market leader it is today, and this is still true today.

This summit was definitely focused on the release of version 13 (I think the biggest release yet, the amount of features is mindboggling) and Veeam’s acquisition of Securiti AI. There is not much I can share on this, as it was made public very recent, and the purchase is ongoing.

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VeeamON 2025 in San Diego

VeeamON 2025
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A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to travel to San Diego for Veeam’s annual VeeamON Conference. Always a highlight, and this one did not disappoint!

First off, I love San Diego, it’s one of my favorite cities in the States. I’ve been there a few times in the past, usually for Cisco Live or VMware Explore. Just the perfect climate, by the water front and all the ships!

I got to San Diego on Monday, late afternoon. Checked into the hotel, dropped my luggage , and off I went to the first event, Veeam100 Underground. This was not open to the public, but a community event where Veeam Legends and Vanguards would present on various topics. Really nice, and it was awesome to see fellow Veeam100 again. This was followed by a reception, so off to a good start.

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Veeam Vanguard 2025!

Vanguard
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It’s this time of the year when I’m eagerly waiting on one particular email….I mean, there as several important emails throughout the day, but this one is special. I’m honored to have made it for another year as a Veeam Vanguard. This will be my fifth year! Very hard to believe how quick time flies when you are having fun!

And of course, a big shout-out to the people who make this all possible! Special thanks to Rick Vanover, Nikola Pejková, Madalina Cristil, Safiya Mohamed who are working very hard on the Vanguard and the entire Veeam 100 program.

I would be amiss for not mentioning some of the highlight of being part of the Veeam100:

  • Access to test/beta version of software to run in the home-lab. I get to play with features that are yet to be released to the public, like version 12.3 before it came out.
  • NFR licenses for all Veeam products, like Veeam B&R, VeeamOne.
  • Friday Vanguard calls, where a bunch of us join a meeting and talk about whatever comes to mind. Might be work, current news, weather, Internet in West Virginia, or family.
  • Veeam Summit; I was able to attend two summits in Prague and one in Berlin, and it was one of the best experiences! There is a good combination of top-notch sessions and fun activities as well.
  • I was also able to attend VeeamON in Florida in 2024. Very good session, with lots of input from people who are actually running Veeam in their environments and are able to give first-hand experiences. 
  • Not gonna’ lie, the swag is top-notch!
  • Slack channel for Vanguards, which is a great resource for laughter and to tip into the “Hive Mind”

If you are curious about the current list of Vanguards, it can be found here.

I will also be attending VeeamON 2025 in sunny San Diego. You can find more information about it here. I’ll be at the community booth and around, come and say hi.

Lastly, here are some post from fellow Vanguards about the 2025 program.

Al Rasheed – 2025 Veeam Vanguard

Chris Childerhose – Veeam Vanguard 2025 – Year 8!

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Synology NAS with an affordable Air-Gapped Backup solution to protect against ransomware

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I have been using Synolgoy Nas’es for several years now. Currently, there are two in the home lab a DS1621+ and a DS923+. Both are used for various tasks, like regular file shares, iSCSI for VMware, Podman, and so on. In this post I’m focusing on the DS923+ and how to back up data to an external backup that is only on when needed.

Thanks again to Synology, who have provided me with both systems!

The idea is simple; if the system gets affected, an untouched backup medium is needed to restore the data. If it is live replicated, there is a chance the secondary system will get infected as well. See the 3-2-1 rule.

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Veeam 100 Summit and Hardened Repository with immutability

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It’s been a few weeks since I returned from the most excellent Veeam 100 summit, this time in Berlin! I’m lucky enough to have been a Veeam Vanguard since 2021, and this was the first time the summit happened in Berlin. The last time I was in Berlin was at least 15 years ago.

In this post I am not going to sum up the summit directly; There are some blog post from fellow Veeam Vanguards and Legends I link at the end of the post. Instead, I want to focus on the new version of Veeam Hardened Repository (VHR), that was introduced during the summit.

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Exciting Announcements at VeeamON 2024: New Hypervisors and Workloads

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It’s been almost 2 weeks since VeeamON ended and I thought it was time to reflect on some of the (big) changes that are coming. First off, thanks again to Veeam for sponsoring the conference and hotel. The Diplomat in Fort Lauderdale was amazing; the conference was at the hotel and one did not have to walk a mile to go between sessions, vendors and hotel room. Much appreciated!

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Object First (OOTBI) and Veeam with Object Storage – Worth it?

ObjectFirst
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A little while back I was honored to be part of the first, inaugural class by Object First, called Aces. I first learned a about Object First during a VeeamON conference and was intrigued by the concept of having object storage in the Datacenter vs cloud.

Geoff from Object First reached out to me and offered to “test-drive” a box in my home-lab. Of course I wouldn’t say no , I mean who would? So this will be the first of a blog series talking Object First and Veeam. Many thanks again for letting me “play” with the box.

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VeeamON 2024 in Ft. Lauderdale – You should go!

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It this time of the year again for VeeamON, and I’m happy to say I’m once again attending this year. Many thanks to Veeam for sponsoring the pass and hotel as part of being a member of the #Veeam100. Speaking of hotel, last year’s FountainBleau Hotel in Miami is hard to beat; but I think this years’ Diplomat in Ft. Lauderdale is up for the challenge. I’m very much looking forward to this stay.

For those who are unfamiliar with VeeamON, it is Veeam’s prime annual conference. This will be my 3rd time attending. It is a great conference to learn, get certified, win prized and meet vendors. To give you an overview, below is the agenda for this year:

For anyone looking to get VMCE certified, there are still some seats open to book the prep session on Sunday. This might run out soon, so better hurry. If you are interested in attending please use this link and use the code COMMUNITY10 to receive get 10% off.

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Veeam Vanguard 2024!

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This will be my fourth! year as a Vanguard and I was extremely happy when I received the email last week. Special thanks to Rick Vanover, Nikola Pejková, Madalina Cristil, Safiya Mohamed who are working very hard on the Vanguard and the entire Veeam 100 program.

Some of the highlights:

  • Access to test/beta version of software to run in the home-lab. I get to play with features that are yet to be released to the public, like version 12.1 before it came out.
  • NFR licenses for all Veeam products, like Veeam B&R, VeeamONE.
  • Friday Vanguard calls, where a bunch of us join a meeting and talk about whatever comes to mind. Might be work, current news, weather, Internet in West Virginia, or family.
  • Veeam Summit; I was able to attend two summits in Prague and it was one of the best experiences! There is a good combination of top notch sessions and fun activities as well. Go Karts anyone?
  • I was also able to attend VeeamON in Miami in 2023 and did some Tech Talks there. Again, very good session, with lots of input from people who are actually running Veeam in their environments and are able to give first hand experiences. 
  • Not gonna’ lie, the swag is top notch!
  • Slack channel for Vanguards, which is a great resource for laughter and to tip into the “Hive Mind”

If you are curious about the current list of Vanguards, it can be found here.

If you are interested in Veeam Legends Program, which is part of the Veeam 100, please check it out here.

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