VeeamON 2024 – Thoughts & Review

I have been a Veeam Vanguard for seven years and Veeam Legend for just over two years and was fortunate enough to have attended the VeeamON 2017 event in New Orleans, VeeamON 2022 in Las Vegas, and VeeamON 2023 in Miami, which were all fantastic events.

This year’s VeeamON 2024 event was in Ft. Lauderdale, which I attended in person, and it was amazing.  Besides the great weather and hotel, there were again many sessions, networking, Lab Warz, Hands-on-Labs and the Vendor Hall.

Attending VeeamON is one of the best events if you want to learn more about backup and what Veeam is all about. From user sessions to networking and training, this event is packed with something for everyone.  Thanks to the #Veeam100 program I am part of, they covered my hotel and conference pass which my company appreciated.  What a fantastic gesture from @Veeam

VeeamON 2024

From the General sessions and keynotes to the breakout sessions, there was much to see and hear from Veeam.

Day 1

Monday was technically the first day of the conference, where you could register and retrieve your badge. I flew in for the first time on the Monday and arrived just after 2PM to the hotel. I checked in but had to wait on my room since it was not ready and I got an upgrade to a King Suite which was nice. So I left my luggage with the desk and proceeded to go to the registration desk to pick up my badge.

The Partner Day sessions were happening this day but I was unable to attend the general session but was able to make it to at least one of the technical breakout sessions for partners. You can catch the general session amongst others on the VeeamON page from now until July 15th – VeeamON – On Demand Sessions

That was pretty much it for day 1 and I took part in the pool with some fellow Vanguards/Legends for a swim – Nico Stein, Hin Tang.

Day 2

The day started out with an early breakfast with some fellow Vanguards then it was off to attend the General Keynote at 8:30. This was the welcome and innovation session for what was coming with Veeam.

There were some many key takeaways from the General Keynote –

A  New Vision for Data Resilience

Every business runs on data. Veeam is on a relentless mission to keep your business running and your data protected anytime, anywhere.  

Introducing Veeam Vault

Data Resilience depends on having a secure offsite location. Veeam Vault brings you fully managed, seamless cloud storage on Azure. 

End-To-End Data Protection with Coveware
“You don’t rise to the occasion for incident response, you fall to your   preparation level.” Bill Siegel, CEO of Coveware by Veeam, shares essential   tips for end-to-end data protection practice.  

Data Freedom: Expanded Hypervisor Support 
If migration is on your mind, Veeam makes it easy with support for the world’s leading hypervisors, including Azure Stack HCI, Nutanix AHV, Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager, and OpenShift Virtualization, and upcoming support for Proxmox VE. 

From here, it was time for breakout sessions and the Expo Hall, where the vendors were located. This years venue was much better than Miami with everything for the tech sessions being close to each other and not a lot of walking, so you were ensured to get to each of your sessions on time. I was able to attend some of the sessions that I picked out, but every year, there are always so many that overlap it is hard to choose, so this is why you can catch all of them again online at the VeeamON website – VeeamON 2024 – Ft. Lauderdale. I attended the sessions that I found relevant and what I wanted to learn on day 2.

A few sessions I attended on Day 2 that were really good –

• Generative AI + Veeam Data Platform = Data Master – Anthony Spiteri & Jorge de la Cruz

• NAS Backup Best Practices & Lessons Learned – Olivier Rossi & David Tosoff

Day 2 wrapped up with the Expo Hall happy hour, and there were draws from vendors for prizes. All in all a good first day for technical sessions!

Day 3 – Last Day

The conference’s final day again started with a nice walk on the beach to see the sunrise and then breakfast in the wonderful air conditioning.

There were many more breakout sessions and the Technical Keynote session to kick things off. Demos, demos, demos were the word of the day for the Technical Keynote session. There were demos on many of the new announcements made from the Day 1 keynote like Proxmox backups, EntraID and even the new Veeam ONE interface with AI which looks fantastic. There was also some sneakiness by Anton Gostev for the EntraID demo. LOL

Of course there was many more breakout sessions including the Top Secret Session –

• Better Together: Veeam ONE & Veeam Recovery Orchestrator – Emilee Tellez, Jorge de la Cruz & Matt Anania

• Top Secret Session – Introducing Veeam Backup for EntraID – Matt Crape & Michael Cade

• Veeam Hardened Repository ISO: What’s New, What’s Next – Rick Vanover & Hannes Kasparick. Lots of great things coming in this new way to deploy a Veeam Hardened Repository including Rocky Linux!

The last day also includes the famous VeeamON party, which I attended with fellow Vanguards/Legends. It was a blast and everyone had a great time.

So that wraps up another great VeeamON event in Ft. Lauderdale. If you can attend a VeeamON event, I highly recommend it as it is a great place to learn about technology, backups, Veeam and network with peers. One of the best events of the year, hands down!