This post will provide a high level overview of the capabilities that Veeam can offer with the NetApp portfolio, providing Availability for the Always-On Enterprise, from utilising storage snapshots to create application consistent backups to fast SAN/NAS based repositories. Orchestration Veeam’s Integration allows Veeam Backup & Replication to sit on top of the FAS storage systems and control application consistent Snapshots for local fast Recovery Point Objectives. Veeam also enables the ability to orchestrate and schedule those application aware snapshots to be sent to a secondary NetApp FAS array. Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots This feature allows Veeam the ability to see within existing historicalRead More →

There have been some recent posts and articles around Veeam and the Cisco UCS 3160 being a great fit together, with the availability features offered within Veeam’s Availability Suite and with the Cisco UCS 3160 high density storage and compute capabilities. When I say great fit the UCS 3160 offers compute function where Windows 2012R2 can be installed and can be used as a Veeam Backup & Replication server as well as a proxy, along with the high capacity direct attached storage it offers for a potential large backup repository. Whether the end user is looking to integrate into their existing Cisco UCS environment orRead More →

The unveiling of Cisco HyperFlex Systems On the 1st March 2016 Cisco will announce a new HyperConverged solution based on their existing UCS C & B Class compute, existing UCS Fabric Interconnects and a new Software Defined Storage approach that allows Cisco to offer that “Complete Solution” inclusive of Compute, Storage and networking where as other HyperConverged are missing that element that Cisco do really well, Networking! “True Hyper-convergence” Before I dive into the deep information regarding this new range from Cisco I want to touch on the current state of Hyper-convergence, a caveat from myself here is that I for one do not doRead More →

I wanted to put together a post outlining What OpenStack is…. from my point of view I have not seen any deployments of OpenStack but I have heard so much about it within the industry, so much so I felt that I needed to take a look and deep dive a little more into what OpenStack is…. Introduction & History Mission Statement : To produce the ubiquitous Open Source Cloud Computing platform that will meet the needs of public and private clouds regardless of size, by being simple to implement and massively scalable. ·         Founded in 2010 o    Nebula platform (NASA) o   Cloud Files PlatformRead More →

In true personal fashion I am always posting these prediction posts about 2-3 months into the new year. We are well under way for the 2016 year and already kicked off some milestones that I had in my initial plan. The reason for this post really is to put across what I already have planned and have done from a work perspective as well as some tech industry predictions that I believe will continue to grow, fall or begin this year. Veeam V9 January 12th 2016 saw the release of the long awaited Veeam Backup & Replication version 9, along with its monitoring and reportingRead More →

2015 – A Year in Review My first post of 2016 is going to have a quick look back over 2015, from my own career perspective and also the industry as a whole. Starting with Veeam At the end of March 2015 I joined the Veeam team and I have not looked back, just short of a year now and I have to say I love it. Vendor land, Pre Sales and systems engineering a year ago was a little unknown to me, having worked in a predominantly post sales capacity it was a big step into the unknown but I knew I wanted toRead More →

2015 was a busy year for me, but I did make more of an effort around posting on the vZilla site. It’s seems my content was viewed a lot more as well compared to previous years so much so I decided to summarise the key areas and focus points on the vZilla website. How many posts??? The majority of my posts in 2015 were around my key technologies VMware, NetApp, Cisco and Veeam. As I said in the introduction I have made an extra effort to contribute within the community and using my blog as well as my twitter and LinkedIn accounts to reach theRead More →

Last year I was really intrigued in participating in the #vDM30in30 but there was very little chance of me hitting anywhere near enough posts, plus not hearing or knowing anything about it till we were pretty much already in November meant there was no chance of getting involved. Firstly what is #vDM30in30? Well during the month of November on each of the 30 days a new blog post is created, there is no fix on what these should be about there can be and have been a range of personal and technical posts come out during the month. If you want to know more thenRead More →

NetApp Insight 2015 – EMEA – Berlin Introduction In just 4 days the NetApp EMEA contingent of both Technical Insiders, Partners and Customers will descend on Berlin, Germany for the second year running. 4 days of intense long hours but very informative days. I am very lucky I have stated in previous posts that I get to attend both the US and EMEA event, I have attended the EMEA event for the past 3 years and last 2 years in the US. This year will be a little different for me though as I will be representing Veeam on the Sapphire stand we have there.Read More →

For those that do not know what NetApp Insight is, it is NetApp’s annual technical conference that is ran in Las Vegas to cover the Americas and  in Berlin to cover EMEA. I am extremely fortunate to be able to attend both conferences. As part of the NetApp A-Team, in Las Vegas not only were we able to get to the General Sessions or the Technical breakouts but we were also  able to network with some of our peers, within NetApp, that we may only get to communicate over email with that are. Alongside this we got to take part in certain press events andRead More →