Speaking at Northeast Regional VMUG Virtual UserCon

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I’ll be speaking at the Northeast Regional VMUG Virtual UserCon at noon about Small IT Shop challenges – Bad things don’t care about size on 4/22/2021. There are many great sessions to choose from. The link is here.

If you are interested in the deck used at the presentation, I made it available below. For any questions, please reach out to me. Thanks.

Veeam Vanguard!

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Veeam Vanguard

While 2021 was a bit challenging so far, I learned the great news last week that I was select to be part of the 2021 Veeam Vanguard class!

For those not familiar with Veeam Vanguard (or Veeam), check out their site about Veeam Vanguards.

Veeam Vanguards are considered experts in their respected fields and believe in the power of the community. Now, I by no means consider myself an expert, there is always so much to learn, but I definitely believe in community and giving back what you can. I don’t know the countless times someone’s blog really helped me solve a problem I was having or a post on Twitter.

One of the greatest benefits of programs like Veeam Vanguard is being able to network with others in the industry. You might run into an issue and just ask in the Slack channel. Chances are someone else has seen this before and knows how to fix it. Plus, there are betas for testing on your home lap, licenses (Veeam already has great community editions), exclusive access to VeeamOn, and just awesomeness all around.

Speaking of, seeing all those names who are part of this program the imposter syndrome is definitely lurking and wanting to take hold!

Many thanks again to all who make this possible! Including Rick Vanover, Danny Allan, Niels Engelen, Anthony Spiteri, Michael Cade, Andrew Zhelezko, Anton Gostev, Rin Bessette, Melissa Palmer, and Nikola Pejková. (I’m sure I might have forgotten some, apologies)

Also special shout-out to Joe Hughes, Jim Jones and Al Rasheed!

ESXi on Arm, Ubuntu, WireGuard and some Veeam

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Like many others in the community I was very excited when I heard that ESXi on Arm is now general available. I heard about it first a few years back at VMworld, where a demo was shown. So, like many others I jumped to Amazon to get myself a Raspberry Pi 4 Kit. I opted to get the 8GB version, just in case.

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ITR aka IT Reality Podcast

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I talked to ITR aka IT Reality about the challenges of a small IT shop in the IT-Space. We touched on security, backups and building a team among other topics.

Vince does a great job moderating and talking to Jim is always a highlight. Check you the podcast here

VMUG Leader Summit 2020

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It’s been a few days since my return from VMUG Leader Summit 2020 in Palo Alto, CA and I’m still processing all the information and impressions. So, why not write a blog post about it, right? This was my first Summit to attend, and I can honestly say what a packed 72 hours it’s been. It started with an 8:15 am flight leaving Washington Dulles (lucky me the middle seat was empty) and landed in San Francisco around 11:20 am local time.

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Using Tags with Veeam

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Here at our little shop, I have been using Veeam for more than 5 years. It was already implemented when I got here, but I quickly decided to completely rebuild it from scratch and have been pretty happy with it. Of course, the build-out changes over time, as new features become available and/or requirements change.

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Google Chrome breaks Unifi Controller Guest Portal

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The other day after I updated my Google Pixel to Android 10 I noticed a weird error message when using our UniFi guest portal at work. After going to the portal, Chrome was complaining about an insecure certificate. We had updated our DigiCert certificate about 3 weeks ago, so this was going to be interesting to troubleshoot…

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Guest Blog Post on Wifi 6 and Cisco at Gestalt IT

Wifi 6
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After Cisco Live in San Diego and attending TechFieldDay Extra, I wrote a guest blog post for Gestalt IT covering Wifi 6 and Cisco Access Points.

Check it out here: https://gestaltit.com/author/nicostein/

I will be attending VMworld next week and am lucky to be on the panel for TechFieldDay again. The agenda is here, tune in to learn more.

Cisco Live 2019 and TechField Day in review

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Cisco Live 2019 now seems like a long time ago, but I thought it would be appropriate to write a little recap of my experience of this very special one.

Being my 7th Live, this was going to be a different one for me. The first time being a Cisco Champion and a Tech Field Delegate I knew this one was special. And special it was…

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TechField Day Delegate at Cisco Live TFDx

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Tech Field Day @ Cisco Live

So we are a few days out before Cisco Live 2019 in San Diego begins and needless to say I’m very excited. To add to my regular excitement is the fact that a) is my first time at Live as a Cisco Champion and b) I’m also a first time Tech Field Delegate for TDFx on Tuesday!

Tom Hollingsworth from GestaltIT reached out to me and asked if I would be willing to be a delegate. I had learned about the delegate program last year at VMworld and thought it was a very cool way to get community members and companies together to talk product and shop. It’s really a win-win for everybody, delegates get to learn about the latest tech and companies get a feeling if their product/tech makes sense in the industry.

I’m very stoked to meet the other delegates, some I have been following on twitter for a while and I can be sure there is going to be a lot of smart people in the room!

If you want to learn more about the delegate program click here.

Meet the delegate: Me

Thinking about becoming a delegate? Go here to apply

I’m sure to write a post about my experience shortly. Stay tuned!