I'll be an attendee at VeeamON 2017 in New Orleans this week, with about 2,000 other IT Pros. I'm honored to be going as a Veeam Vanguard, ready to learn, socialize, blog, and enjoy the remarkable keynote speakers:
Mark Russinovich
Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft Azure
Frank Palumbo
Senior Vice President Cisco Global Data Center & Virtualization Sales, Cisco
Bill Philbin
Senior Vice President and GM for Storage & Big Data Segment Solutions, Data Center Infrastructure Group, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
I got to hear Sanjay speak at VMware's internal WWKO 2017 earlier this year, but I have never heard Mark Russinovich speak, having used his Windows Sysinternals tools regularly for over 2 decades now. Looking forward to all of these keynotes!
I was recently asked some questions about Veeam by Valdecir Carvalho, aka @homelaber. He'll be publishing the full interview soon, translated into Portuguese! Watch for it at homelaber.com.br, meanwhile, here's an excerpt, in English:
Valdecir asks: You're a Veeam Vanguard, right? How did you join the program?
I spent a lot of time with Veeam FastSCP a decade ago, helping test the move to 64 bits. Then in 2014, I replaced Windows Home Server with VEB (Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE) very publicly, regularly reporting any issues I encountered, along with providing enhancement ideas. You find stuff when over a dozen family and friends PCs are doing daily backups to your home’s server. I even did a bit of beta testing of Veeam products. I was then nominated and accepted into the (61 member) Veeam Vanguard program.
And finally VeeamON is just around the corner, tell us what we should expect from the event?
Looking forward to learning and socializing with Veeam folks like Rick Vanover, Clint Wyckoff, Anton Gostev, Doug Hazelman, Neil Condon, and Mike Resseler. Hopefully, I also get to talk some Xeon D with Anthony Spiteri! Maybe I even get the man behind the Dima P. handle on the Veeam forums, who documented Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE database resets. Yes, I’m proud to be a Veeam Vanguard, my 3rd year! Hopefully Anton has forgiven me by now, for getting a bit too creative with the Veeam Endpoint Backup installer back in 2015 (Windows 10 beta) and 2016 (Windows 2016 beta).
Oh, and the many VMware colleagues that’ll be there at VeeamOn too. I always love the chance to deep dive chat about vSAN, NVMe, and 3D XPoint, with the likes of John Nicholson.
I have since learned that VMware's New Orleans local vSAN and scripting legend Jase McCarty will be there at VeeamON too, see jasemccarty.com/blog and his many posts at Virtual Blocks. I can't wait to (hopefully) catch up with him to nerd about vSAN, Optane, and more!
Finally, hopefully I'll get to meet VMware's @vPedroArrow, aka, Pete Flecha! What legend, with his amazingly entertaining and education Virtually Speaking Podcast with John Nicholson.
TinkerTry.com, LLC is not a Veeam Pro Partner, but I am a Veeam Vanguard Program member who received travel assistance getting to VeeamOn 2017. Veeam has been an advertiser on many virtualization sites for years now, and Veeam is currently running a BuySellAds-purchased advertisement along the top of TinkerTry as well. All TinkerTry advertisement goes through third party BuySellAds. None of my articles are sponsored posts, and there are currently no affiliate links for Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE, or any of their other products. There are no commissions for any Veeam products folks buy after reading one of my articles.
TinkerTry takes extreme care to protect visitors by using only one ad network, BuySellAds, which has never had a security issue to date, and is very commonly used in the virtualization blogger community. Their CEO seems to get what's going on with ad blockers, evident in his recent post. I regularly receive lucrative offers from various companies looking to have me inject JavaScript trackers into TinkerTry, which I of course turn down.
I reserve and exercise the right to freely write about topics that I choose, whenever I choose to, an essential part of what makes blogging about home virtualization labs, storage, and backup so much fun for me. I tend to feature articles about stuff I actually use.
TinkerTry - PCs, EVs, home tech, efficiency and more, including virtualization. My opinions here. IT Professional offering part-time consulting.
These systems still work great for many even 9+ years later, mine included, even with (unsupported) vSphere 8 and Windows 11 Version 21H2. But unless you added the optional TPM module, it may be the end of the line as far as repurposing them for running the latest Windows 11 Version 24H2 and beyond.
After 6 successful years testing then shipping well over 1,000 Xeon D Bundles, Wiredzone had to stop SuperServer bundles in mid-2021 due to cost, supply, and logistics challenges. Bare bones system sales continued for years longer.
What's next in 2025? I don't yet have my answer for my home lab, especially now that VCF certification is required to keep non-production home lab licenses going, even as a vExpert and VMUG Advantage EVALExperience customer.
As for a SuperServer follow-on, the Xeon D-1700/2700 (Ice Lake D) was a minor refresh for 2023, with Xeon D-1800/2800 (Granite Rapids D) refresh slightly better in 2024, and hopefully Xeon 6 (Granite Rapids-D) much better in 2025 featuring PCIe Gen5, MCRDIMMs, and 100GbE networking, wow! Feb. 27 2025 update update looks promising, but pricey. Infortunately, it's become clear to me that Supermicro is less focuses on the mini-tower form factor these days.
As for the CPU industry, it's unfortunate that Pat Gelsinger was apparently ousted from Intel's helm in these challenging times, but I'm also grateful to have had the honor of working at VMware when he was the CIO there. I'll leave it at that, given the whole Broadcom thing.
These systems still work great for many even 9+ years later, mine included, even with (unsupported) vSphere 8 and Windows 11 Version 21H2. But unless you added the optional TPM module, it may be the end of the line as far as repurposing them for running the latest Windows 11 Version 24H2 and beyond.