Veeam started as a small privately owned company that was founded in 2006 by Ratmir Timashev back when virtualization was still a relatively new technology. If you’re a sysadmin and have been working with virtualization for a while you probably used one of Veeam’s earliest and most well-known tools, FastSCP. FastSCP was a tool for copying VM files using the SCP (secure copy) Linux command, what made FastSCP great was it had a GUI and it copied files really fast (hence the name FastSCP).
Back in those days Veeam was a very small company that had only 10 employees in 2008. As the virtualization market started heating up and adoption in the data center started growing, a few companies recognized this opportunity and developed products to support VMware’s ESX/ESXi hypervisor. One area in particular that virtualization had a big impact on was backup & recovery as virtualization really changed the way backups needed to be done to be more efficient. It also opened up many new opportunities for doing backup & recovery differently and better.
While virtualization was still relatively new, many of the big backup vendors like Symantec hadn’t really noticed and continued to support backup & recovery in the traditional manner without taking into account the virtualization layer. A handful of start-ups did take note though and if you remember back in those days you had the big 3 of virtualization backup, Veeam Backup & Replication, VizionCore vRanger and PHD Virtual Backup.
Competition was fierce between those 3 for years but eventually one company rose to the top, Veeam. Why did Veeam do so well? From my perspective as a longtime industry veteran they did many smart things:
- They moved fast and were not afraid to take chances, they recognized opportunities and trends early on and took advantage of them. When a new vSphere feature or API was available they pounced on it right way and it and incorporated into their product quickly.
- They were the most innovative company in the backup space by far, they recognized some cool things you could do by taking advantage of the virtualization architecture and came out with some cool and very useful features like SureBackup and Instant Recovery.
- They embraced the community in a big way and continue to do so, they have forged great relationships with many influential bloggers and industry people. Veeam has been a long time sponsor of mine and many other blogs I appreciate their continued dedication to taking care of the blogger community.
- They have assembled an awesome team of people. I’ve know Doug Hazelman and Rick Vanover for many years and they are really involved with the community. They along with the rest of the Veeam team are just some fantastic people to know and work with. They also have some super smart people working for them like Anton Gostev helping to make their products great.
- They are very customer focused, despite their size they still have great customer service. I’ve seen Anton and Rick jump in to help customers on Twitter and in the Veeam community forums helping to answer questions and resolve issues very quickly.
- They also throw some epic parties, the Veeam party at VMworld is THE party to get an invite too.
Today Veeam has more than 1200 employees and with 17 international offices worldwide, including regional headquarters for EMEA in Paris, France, the Americas in Columbus, Ohio, and Asia-Pacific in Sydney, Australia. They are recognized as a visionary in the Gartner Magic Quadrant and have won many industry awards. They even have their own Wikipedia page. Well now they have their own industry conference as well, VeeamOn.
VeeamOn is being held October 6th-8th at the Cosmopolitan hotel in Las Vegas. The conference will feature some well-known industry speakers and analysts from groups such as Gartner and ESG. The show will have general and technical sessions and an expo area to see products from vendors and solution providers. I looked at their technical sessions and they have a lot of great sessions listed, I love deep dive sessions and I always look for those at any conference that I attend. I noticed that there are several sessions in the catalog, one that caught my eye was a Backup Bottleneck Deep Dive session that covers the data flow process, considerations for CPU, Network, IOPS and WAN caching as well as a performance log deep dive.
Another interesting session I saw is The Ultimate Guide to Data Corruption which covers the data corruption basics: What is data corruption; Why and Where it happens. They will also feature business and partner sessions so you can choose from a great variety of content. No matter which sessions you choose you’ll probably have no problem soaking up a lot of great knowledge, tips, info, great advice and much more on backup and recovery. In addition they will also have training (you can get Veeam certified on-site!), hands-on labs with lab warz as well as user group meetings. And of course I would expect an EPIC party.
To find out more about VeeamOn, head on over to their conference site and check out all the details and of course sign up to attend so you don’t miss out on this great event!
