Periodically when I’m talking with customers, they may ask a question, and my response is, “Did you know about…” or “The answer can be found…”. Often, the customer will indicate they were not aware of that specific resource, and it got me thinking. It would be great to share some of the best Veeam resources that you may have never heard of. These include:
- Veeam R&D Forums / “The Word from Gostev”
- #VeeamONECOTD
- Best Practice Guides for “Veeam Backup & Replication” and “Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365”
- Community Resource Hub
- Free Veeam Training
- A customised Veeam search engine
- VeeamHub
- Engaging a Support Manager via the Customer Support Portal
Let’s jump into it!
Veeam R&D Forums / “The Word from Gostev”
Do you have a technical issue that you want to discuss with the greater Veeam community? How about getting clarification of how a specific feature works? Or maybe you have an idea for a feature/capability that we can include in a future release? Well, the Veeam R&D Forums is the place to go!
The Veeam R&D Forums is your one-stop shop for a technical conversation about Veeam solutions and their related technologies. Not only will you be interacting with fellow Veeam enthusiasts, but many of the most active users are members of the Veeam R&D team. That means you will be interacting with the Veeam Team members that have made or will be making decisions on what features and capabilities will be going into future releases. What a fantastic opportunity to better understand how Veeam works and potentially shape the future of data protection!
Here is a little-known Veeam R&D Forums fact… did you know that the Hardened (Immutable) Repositoryfeature available in Veeam Availability Suite v11 was first discussed in the Forums?
To gain access to the Veeam R&D Forums, simply point your web browser to https://forums.veeam.com. If you have not already done so, you will need to register an account/username. Please note that this account/username is not the same one used at Veeam.com.
But wait, there’s more!!!
The Veeam R&D Forums also gives you the opportunity to subscribe and receive the weekly “The Word from Gostev” email newsletter.
Who or what is a “Gostev” you may ask? Well, Anton Gostev is our Senior Vice President of Product Management and is also referred to as the father of Veeam Backup & Replication. If that still does not ring any bells, Anton’s session(s) at VeeamON are arguably the most anticipated each year.
Not only does the email newsletter provide insight into the latest and greatest from Veeam (announcements, patch information, supportability updates, new release sneak peeks, trends, etc.) but it also includes comments on industry-related topics such as:
- Ransomware protection and recovery
- The state of IT
- All different types of storage (block, file, object)
- Highlight “Post of the week” from the forums
- Call out of the top forum posts
To ensure you don’t miss the email newsletter, simply log into the Veeam Forums and in the upper right corner, expand the arrow next to your username and select User Control Panel.
In the User Control Panel settings, select the Board Preferences tab and then ensure you enable Yes for Weekly digest subscription. It’s that simple!
#VeeamONECOTD
What is #VeeamONECOTD (Veeam ONE Catch of the Day), you ask? It’s a hashtag used on social media where Veeam Team members and customers share nuggets of information to help identify and resolve issues, all with the help of Veeam ONE.
Previous “catches” included:
- Identify potential ransomware activity
- What are these Veeam ONE HeatMaps all about?
- Discussion of new backup repository logic in Veeam ONE v11
- Understanding VM change rate history
- Archive Tier in the Scale-out Backup Repository
The list of “catches” goes on and on! Please feel free to share your own #VeeamONECOTD. The Veeam Team welcomes all knowledge sharing.
Best Practice Guides
The Veeam Help Center is an excellent resource for documentation. This provides system requirement details, step-by-step directions on how to install and configure each solution. But what if you wanted to dig a little deeper? What if you wanted to assess, design, build, operate and secure your environment using the same criteria and methodologies as your Veeam Systems Engineers and Solutions Architects? Well, Veeam has you covered with the Best Practice Guides for:
These guides will offer insight into:
Assessment: First, you start by surveying the environment you need to protect. You collect data, ask for technical and business requirements, SLAs, RPO and RTO, and all the other necessary information to design the solution.
Design: With all the information that has been collected, you can design a solution by involving all the needed Veeam components, and you will also learn how to properly size them with security always in mind.
Build: Once the environment has been designed, it’s time to build it. Here, you will see helpful information and tricks like configuration options, registry keys, hints and so on.
Operate: When the environment is ready, it’s time to use it! Here, you will learn how to properly configure the different jobs available in the software, and how to restore data.
Secure: When you have been through all the other stages, it’s time to make sure you have as little risk as possible. This section covers basic security principles that would help reduce risk and give extra confidence in your project.
Community Resource Hub
The Veeam Community Resource Hub provides users, partners and industry influencers with access to various community projects:
- Share experiences and learn from your peers and expand your network while participating in Veeam User Groups
- Bring your knowledge and expertise and contribute to the community while creating blogs and podcasts in the Community Resources space
- Gain industry recognition by becoming a Veeam Legend. It’s a NEW community program that we just introduced
- Have fun and get rewarded. We want to acknowledge every contributor to the community! Check out the leaderboard widget with the most proactive members
And just recently, the Veeam R&D Forums and Community Hub integration went live! What does that mean to you? It ensures you can easily connect your Forums account to the Veeam Community Profile and start getting points for all your Forums activities. Steps on how to link the accounts/profiles can be found here.
Free Veeam Training
Have you ever wondered:
- How do I get access to FREE Veeam training?
- How do I increase my knowledge and skills with Veeam data protection solutions?
Well, look no further than Veeam University! It’s a FREE training program explicitly built for end users. Whether you’re new to Veeam or a veteran, get access anywhere, anytime, on any device to the knowledge and expertise you need to be the very best in the industry. Everything is available in bite-size video content, accessible on-demand and a-la-carte, so you pick what you want to learn when you want to learn it.
As of the creation of this blog, the training topics available are:
Veeam Availability Suite:
- Deployment
- Backup
- Restore
- DataLabs
- Cloud
- Integration
- Monitoring
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365:
- Installation
- Configuration
- Restoration
In addition, there is a fantastic “Veeam How To Series” on YouTube where numerous Veeam Team members will share their knowledge about specific features and technologies. This will be a great compliment to the information and training located at Veeam University.
And content is continually being added, so check back often!
Customized Veeam Search Engine
Did you know that there is a custom search engine that allows you to explicitly search:
- Forums
- KB Articles
- Whitepapers
- Press releases
- Blogs
- Success Stories
- GitHub
- Help Center
- Videos
Simply point your browser to http://vee.am/VeeamCustomSearch and search with confidence that you will receive only official Veeam content.
VeeamHub on GitHub
VeeamHub enables the Veeam community to create, save and share different software projects. This includes (but not limited to):
- PowerShell scripts
- Freeze/Thaw scripts for various databases
- Ansible code
- Grafana Dashboard for various Veeam solutions
- Postman collections
If you want to use any of the shared code/projects, just like any other GitHub resource, you can retrieve the code (under the MIT license) and use it for your own needs.
Please remember that the code in VeeamHub is community-supported but NOT officially supported by Veeam.
Engaging a Support Manager via the Customer Support Portal
If you have a support case open, did you know that you can request to speak to a Support Manager at any time directly through the Veeam Customer Portal? It’s as easy as clicking the “Talk to a Manager” link and providing some details on the purpose of the request:
I hope you found my “Veeam resources that you need to be aware of” blog to be beneficial, and there was at least one where you said, “Gee, I was not aware of that!” Are there any other resources that you feel are not known by the greater Veeam community? If so, I would like to hear about them in the comments below!
