Simply Resilient Conversations
What does it take to build true cyber resilience?
In Simply Resilient Conversations Geoff Burke, Veeam Vanguard and Senior Technical Advisor at Object First, explores this question through engaging discussions with our ACES community members. Join us as we break down complex cybersecurity and data protection topics into accessible conversations that help IT professionals keep their production workloads running and their data safe!
Simply Resilient Conversations
From Help Desk To Architect: Building A Career In Backup, Community, And Resilience
Enterprise architect and community leader Chris Childerhose joins us to trace the arc from early mistakes to designing backup systems that bend without breaking, and the discipline it takes to write books, mentor others, and still ship reliable recoveries under pressure.
We dive into the strategic moves reshaping backup: Veeam’s shift to PostgreSQL as the default database, why some teams wisely waited for the Veeam Software Appliance, and how object storage evolved from capacity tier to direct-to-object. Chris shares how service providers adapted Cloud Connect with object on the back end, pairing immutable storage with managed expertise. We explore the 3-2-1-1-0 rule in practice, the realities of ransomware recoveries that stretch for months, and the value of automating proof with SureBackup and SureReplica so you aren’t guessing about what will boot at 2 a.m.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Object First Podcast, Simply Resilient Conversations. Right away, I'm going to wish everybody a happy new year. We're actually recording this before the New Year, but it's coming out in the New Year. So I had to remind myself, say happy new year. Everyone think you're like the Grinch who stole New Year's. So today, another fantastic guest, a superstar from the Veeam community, Chris Childerhose. We'll get to him in a second. Before that, I just want to remind everybody that the new year is going to be very exciting. Object First has a lot of interesting things that are going to come out in the new year. And I think that the honeypot has been very successful. So I've gotten some feedback on the honeypot. That's a feature that came out in the fall. And there's been a lot of feedback about that. People really enjoy having that. But there could be other things coming too. So I don't want to spoil anything, but just keep your eyes open. Also, very important is if you remember, in February is when we announce our new ACES. Our new ACEs, by the way, Chris Childerhost, who is here, is not only a Veeam Vanguard and Veeam Legend. We're going to talk about that. He's also an object-first ace. So we're going to have a new uh application for ACEs in February, and we will announce the new ACEs in March. So if you're interested in that, please contact me, listen to Chris, and you'll know how to get in. Okay, with no further ado, uh, I'm going to introduce Chris Childerhose. I'll say right off the bat, he's also from Canada. He's also from the Toronto area. And I first met him way back, and it seems like it's pre-COVID. You know what? I say this. I say post-COVID and pre-COVID. People go, wow, pre-COVID. So I met COVID, uh, I met COVID. I didn't mean COVID, thank goodness. I met Chris before COVID, and he was already a Veeam Vanguard. So he's been a Veeam Vanguard for a long time. He's also been in the world of data protection for a very long time. So if you want to hear about an interesting experience or if you're looking at a career in data protection, really, there's no one better to talk to to Chris. So welcome, Chris. Uh, first off, uh, I want you to tell us a bit about yourself.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. Uh, I've been in data protect and basically the IT world for over 30 years now. Um, I started out as help desk, as most of us probably do, and whatnot, and then progressed my way through systems administrator, doing engineering, and finally to where I am now, which is an enterprise architect uh for ThinkOn, a large managed service provider in Canada. Uh, we do data centers all across the world. I work on doing the Baz DRAS portfolio here. I design everything to do with Veeam. So Veeam is my daily job 24-7, pretty much. Uh, I work through that. I help design things. I'm level three escalation. If people need to talk to me and whatnot, most times I prefer that they not, because then it lets me get my other stuff done and whatnot. But uh yeah, so it's I've been in the world for a long time and it's it's been a rewarding one.
SPEAKER_00:So that's really interesting because uh the one of the things that I always like to hear about people's experiences is in their time in the profession, what are the biggest things that have changed? What are the biggest things that have affected your uh work positively and negatively?
SPEAKER_01:Probably one I know one of the it's it's it's the learning aspect. So going through from being a help desk person to assistance administrator, as you as you progress through your career, you learn things, you do things, you fail at things. Um I failed at one thing at one job, which I think is what caused me to be unfortunately let go from that job. But uh it was uh quite the learning experience. So you learn from that, you take that to your next job, and then at that point you continue to grow, learn, fail, fix, do, and all that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a really good point that you're bringing out because I think there's a misconception out there that people who are now, let's say, stars of the data protection world or IT world in general are just, you know, just from day one were perfect. They were the Michael Jordans or the Wayne Gretzki's or the Sidney Crosby's right from the start. But what you mentioned is really important because I think we've all done this. Our road is full of a lot of failures. And in fact, if we're in the position we're in now, it's probably because we've learned from those failures.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. I learned from one of my jobs uh there was a problem with the hard drive. This is going back in the day. I didn't deal a lot with hardware when I first got into this industry and stuff, and I didn't realize that in servers, the drives start at zero, not at one. So you can probably picture where this is going, but it was like, okay, uh, one of the jobs was or one of the drives blinking orange in the server. So at the time, I was the internal person, but they also had an external consulting company that they dealt with. So I called the person there. Oh, yeah, the drives are hot swappable. Just pull it out, put in the new one, and the server will rebuild it. Okay, fine. I f I I looked at the the report. Okay, it's this drive letter. Okay, so I'm looking at this. Okay, so it's that drive there. So I pulled it out. Well, unfortunately, it was the wrong drive that I pulled out and I crashed the file server. This was at a law firm. Wow. Needless to say, I spent the weekend sleeping on a partner's sofa in their office and working on rebuilding the server, which we I got back up on the Monday. But by that point, it was like, okay, I'd probably sealed my fate, but yeah, live and learn, right? I took that to my next job and I never pulled out the wrong drive again. I realized that. Okay, yeah, it starts, it starts at zero, not at one.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and and I'll tell you, I worked I worked as a system administrator in a law firm too. And I have to admit that I I've never seen such different mindsets, lawyers and IT folks. And so the only thing I'll say about that experience was that we would want to do reboots of our servers back in the day after Windows updates, and we would have to send two emails, uh, week in advance, and then like a day in advance, and then five minutes before doing it at 2 a.m. in the morning. Okay, 2 a.m. in the morning. So two warnings and 2 a.m. in the morning, a final warning. And inevitably, we'd immediately get back. I'm not joking, two or three emails. You can't do this. We have a top big, big tomorrow thing happening, whatnot. And so there'd be this war between us. So yeah, I can see a situation there. But it's good you pointed it out because I know that a lot of times failures sometimes totally uh, you know, they take out any kind of morale or or any oomph that people have in their careers because you want to be successful. And and the problem is too, is that people forget we all make dumb errors too. It's not just, you know, because this error you made, it was more an inexperienced area, but I've made errors where it was just a stupid decision. And when I look back, I go, why did I decide to do that? So I'm glad you brought that up. The main thing is not how you fail, it's how you recover, just like data protection.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, well, that's really interesting. Now, what's apart from your incredible career, because you're you're now a system architect at ThinkOn, as you said, um, you also, on top of this, and on terms of having a big family life and whatnot, managed to write a book. And I asked a lot of people, and the fact that someone writes a book in the first place is pretty awe-inspiring. But then if you take on everything else they're doing in life, you just wonder, does this person sleep? So tell us about the book. Tell us how you first got the idea. Uh, was it a bet? Did someone bet you or whatnot? And and what was the experience like? And then you keep doing it too. So it's not like you did it once, okay, I'm done, I'm never going back there. But I think you've got like three editions out, or even a fourth one coming out. So tell us, first of all, the start of the whole book journey.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, sure. Um, it actually wasn't me per se that started the book journey. I was actually contacted by a publisher who was looking to get into this space. So they said, Oh, you deal with this. How would you like to write a book for us? I'm like, uh I kind of flip-flopped, went back and forth, and then thought, okay, why not? Let's uh let's see how this goes. So that began the first book, which was on backup and replication. I believe it was version 10, was the first book that I did. So the company name Pack Publishing, that's who I've been going through the last um three books, and then as you said, there's a fourth book coming, which I'm working on now. Um but I had to learn all of their nuances. They have templates that you have to apply to your document. They have specific coding for images or keywords, or uh if you put code into your book on even just like a PowerShell command or something like that. So the funny thing is, is the first book took me I think it was close to a uh eight months, nine months to get done and get out because it was a ton of back and forth. I had to get used to how they would do editing, put comments, I had to go in and rewrite things or answer a question or why is this this way? Is this supposed to be this way? So it took me a long time. Well, by the time version 10 book came out, version 11 was already out. So I was already I was already behind the eight ball, right? So at that point, at that point, it's like, okay, I approached them after the first book and said, okay, can I do another one? We'll do version eleven now. And because I knew all the nuances of the templates, the formatting, the pictures, uh everything to do with how they cobble it all together, I thought, okay, I can do this one quicker. So I think the next one only took me four months to finish and get and get going. So I was able to release version 11 while version 11 was kind of still out. So version 12 came out. I did a book on version 12. That one took me about the same, maybe three months, almost four. So I'm gonna see how this one goes, the fourth book now. Um I'm already kind of slightly behind because I just finished two weeks of VMware VCF training, which is mandatory for work, blah, blah, blah. And with the holidays and stuff. But um, I also have a special guest writing a chapter in the fourth book.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's yeah, I think I know who that is. One thing I wanted to ask you related to all this is if there are people who are starting out in their career and they also want to get into, let's say, evangelism is what you're basically talking about with writing books or even blogs. The big question I think on their minds, especially young people, uh, because when I was younger, I didn't have time for anything, even though I got older and I I still have time for everything. But how do you manage to actually get this done considering the fact that you've got a full-time day job, which is quite demanding, and a family? What is is there a system, is there a technique, is there a secret, or is it just pure discipline?
SPEAKER_01:I think a lot of it is discipline. Um I've learned to be able to it's taken a long time in my career, but I've been able to learn how to multitask. Which is hard for some people. Some people it comes easy. For me, it comes easy. I can work on three or four things in a day. I can do my job, write some of my book, um, and do other things in my eight-hour day and stuff. Now, when I first started writing the first book though, I didn't do it during my workday. I would finish my workday, I would go down with my wife and daughter, have dinner, and then I would come back up to my office and dedicate two hours a night during the week to write the book. I didn't do anything on weekends typically because I really wanted family time on the weekends and I you have to get stuff done around your home and all those other good things. But it's just you have to be you have to figure out your own discipline. It may not be the same as me where you can do five things at once and stuff like that, but just uh take it slowly. Um if you're gonna think about writing a book, you probably will have to dedicate some time, like in the evening, an hour or two to start the process, get things going, but then as you get going, you'll f you'll figure it out and be able to do stuff.
SPEAKER_00:So right, and probably the fact that you had been an avid blogger before then helps because in a sense it's like an extension. It's just the next level.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, exactly. And it's if you want to get into evangelism and you're just starting out, one work with the product. Just to me, to me, I'm a hands-on guy. I'm sure you probably are too. Um and I just I love to play with things, use software, figure it out, break it. Um, there's been a lot of support calls I've done with Veeam where I've solved it for them and stuff like that. Maybe, maybe I shouldn't say that, but um but they they they appreciate all the feedback and things like that. I'm working on a couple things with them now to do with high availability clusters and Veeam One and all this stuff. But it's use the products, and then if you want to get into evangelism, start off basic. Um, Veeam has multiple places, they have the community, which is probably the best place to start. Don't go jumping into the forums and try to go in there and post stuff and whatnot, because it's more technical. The product managers get involved in there and those kinds of things. But just go on the community and see what people are posting. If somebody asks a simple question and you can answer it, answer it. Post it.
SPEAKER_00:Chris is talking about the Veeam Community Hub. And so you can just you can Google it and it'll pop up. It's the Veeam Community Hub. You can create an account there, and it's a great place for starting out. For one thing, if you don't have your own blog, you can use this as a blog site, basically. Uh you can write articles and put them in there. And then there's the Veeam Forms, and that is more, as Chris said, you know, project manager watching that. You don't want to go in there and just uh put something you're afraid that uh might not be correct. Uh it's more a place where you found a problem with the product, but it's not a support problem or it's a feature request, something like that. So, one other aspect, Chris, I want to ask you about is obviously, even if you're multitasking, the way your employer looks at this is very important. And I've heard from people in the community often that you know sometimes they'll have employers who think, you know, what is this waste of time? I'm not paying you for this. But I think we both know, and at least everywhere we've worked, um, our employers have really benefited from this. Can you tell us what the benefits are? And then we'll talk about getting into these communities. So, what's the benefit of you writing a book or having a blog for your employer, not just for you?
SPEAKER_01:I think my employer likes it because it makes it it helps them market our services. So we do a lot of Veeam services, it's probably one of our number one things that we do here and everything. But then they can say, okay, well, they put stuff out on the on our web page about me and blogs and even about my books and things like that that I've read. A lot of people like to see that kind of thing. So it's it's it helps the the business market the services and then people see, okay, yeah, this guy knows what he's doing. So okay, let's go talk to ThinkOn and we'll uh we'll see what they offer and see what he says. I even have some people reach out to me on LinkedIn asking me questions and things like that too, right? So I have somebody that I used to work with at a consulting company. He's working, I don't know if he's still working there or not, but he was reaching out asking me questions about how to set up VB365 best practices and all that stuff. So I answered him.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I mean to me, it seems like a no-brainer that everything you've just said, that it's only uh extra value added to a company to not only you know advertise their services, but but show that these type of people work for them. That's another important thing. Here's somebody who can not only do the job but write a book as well, and he works here. Uh, obviously, if it's a bad environment or the company is being tricky, uh then good people aren't going to work there normally or they try to get out. So that's my extra added input. Okay, so we've established the the book writing and the blogging. Uh, and then the next question is the communities themselves. So you're a really active community person in numerous communities. I don't know if I can keep track of them because I know you were also uh you still are a VMUG leader as well. Ace is Legend, Vanguard, your Cisco, I think as well. So when it comes to the communities themselves, what is your advice? Should you just pick one or two communities, or do you can you multitask? Obviously, since you said you multitask, that's one of your secrets, how you manage to keep it keep involved in all these communities. But if I'm just brand new to this, or let's say I'm even a veteran, by the way, I keep talking about young people, but if there's someone out there who is a veteran but has never gotten involved in this and is now being tempted, tell us what you would do and what are the proper steps and how much energy it takes.
SPEAKER_01:Two words. Start simple. Don't try to become part of every group out there. If you don't know about something and you try to become part of the group, more than likely you're gonna get denied, right? Right. So I at one point I was also an AWS community builder. At one point, I got in and then part part way through the that particular intake, they were making changes. So they had me pick a different category and I moved over to this new category, but then the following year I didn't I didn't get accepted when I reapplied. So I thought, okay, I I I'm just gonna not worry about that one and that kind of thing. To me, if you have passion about specific things, those are the communities to go after. So in my case, my passions are Veeam, as well as being one of the aces for object first, uh, and as well as VMware, I'm a V expert too. Been for six years and things like that. I'm a V mug leader, but it's it's the passion, the technologies that you use daily that you're passionate about, those would be the ones I would say focus on what communities are out there, see what's there, and then just get your get your toe wet, as I say, dip it in the pool and go on to like the Veeam community hub that we've been talking about. See what's on there. There's there's thematic groups on there, there's country groups on there. I'm also a VUG leader for Canada or the community site, too. So that's like three thematic three three thematic groups from Veeam that I'm part of and stuff like that. But it's like just start small and then work your way up. Don't try to like dive in the deep end and tread water and do all these things and whatnot, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So basically do what you think you can handle. And the other thing, which I think is important to point out about these communities, is I've had people ask me, well, what's the point? Uh, you know, okay, it's like just a fun thing, you get some swag and whatnot. Uh, for me, though, and I think for you as well, is that you know, once you've been working for a while in the IT world, you very quickly come to understand you you can't know everything and you can't be an expert in everything. So instead of uh having that as a permanent weakness, by joining communities, you're basically adding on a whole bunch of new connections of top-level professionals who can help you. And for them, it's very simple. Just like probably a question that someone asks you, which takes you two seconds to answer, is simple. Somebody else, even with the help of AI, could get lost. And so that's another benefit that people sometimes I think forget about is that it's not just you know a fun club. Uh, it's actually helps your career. So, from that point of view, how would you say being a Veeam Vanguard? Let's take Veeam Vanguard, some because specifically we're talking about Veeam now. How has that helped your career? And you became a Veeam Vanguard, I think, in 2017 or 16, even 2018 is the first thing I got on my trophy.
SPEAKER_01:It's sitting on my desk. No, um getting into these programs really does change how you look at things, change how your career moves, how it motivates you in your career kind of thing. Um I know when I first got into the Vanguards, it was this kind of like, oh wow, cool. And then going to like the summit, which is a yearly thing where you get to go over to Prague and or an other place, Berlin we went to one year, you get to meet the prod project product managers, speak to them, talk to them, ask them questions and everything. It just it's it's very rewarding if you don't think about it as oh, okay, I get the status of okay, I have the Veeam Vanguard title and I get swag, and I don't do it for the title. I don't care about the title. I do it to help the community learn myself from other people that are there who have had experiences and things like that. I tell them my experiences. If I'm wrong on an answer, I'll be the first one to admit, okay, yeah, I'm wrong. This person's right. Mark their answer is the best answer for the the question that you asked and things like that.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, that's that's really good. And I think um, I'm just thinking back now, but all the times I ask questions, um, even if it's just a safety net, so to speak. So, in other words, I think I know the answer to something. Maybe I've Googled it, maybe now I've checked with AI, but I want the human opinion from the human expert as a last resort because there's you never know when you'll get wrong answers somewhere. They'll be very convincing. But for someone who's actually been at that level and has done it, you can't replace experience. Anyways, talking about technical stuff, now we got you on the show. Uh, I wanted to ask you a few things because I've been through your books and there's some interesting topics there which you might want to go into a bit more depth or discuss. So, one thing that was a big shift in the Veeam world was when they moved from Microsoft SQL to Postgres SQL. Now you can still install a Microsoft SQL, as I understand it, but now all default installations have Postgres SQL. And this was a bit of a challenge for organizations, and you covered that in your book. So, what can you tell us about that and what was it like and what advice would you give?
SPEAKER_01:It was a big shift. Um, I know we really like that shift here at Thinkon because as everybody knows, with Microsoft, you pay for licensing and it can cost you a lot. We're trying to get away from a lot of Windows stuff and things like that. But when Postgres came out, it was kind of like, oh, cool. Now, there was a caveat at the time when Postgres came out that you could only use it for VBR uh and not Veeam Cloud Connect. Now we're a big Veeam Cloud Connect shop because we have customers send backups and things to us. But at the time when Postgres came out, they hadn't fully tested and optimized and looked at it for VCC. And it was kind of like, okay, well, that's a big part of our business. How do we all right, we still got to deal with SQL, let's go. Um but I started looking at doing Postgres for internal uh Veeam servers and things like that. So we haven't fully migrated to it yet because other projects work gets in the way, those kinds of things. I'm hoping next year to be able to actually do the move. But now the thing is we have the new VSA, the new Veeam software appliance, which has which has Postgres built into it where you don't need an external server. So it's like, okay, now I'm gonna sit and have to see if I can wait until we get to that point, and then at that point we can move to Postgres. So but it's to me, it seems like a better database. It's more optimized, and Veeam seems to run much in my eyes, a little smoother than it would with SQL.
SPEAKER_00:It's one of those times where uh a delay because of other work turned out to be a good thing because you might have you know ended up leveraging the VSAs anyways, in which case there was no point in creating an extra Postgres. That's one of those situations where technical debt can be a positive, right? You haven't been forced into it too quickly.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:I and also, of course, um you know, Postgres has been around a long time. It's not that Postgres is new, it's just that it's new in the in the Veeam world. So moving on, uh obviously Object First is a S3 on-premise appliance. And I wanted to ask you about your relationship of object storage. Um, correct me if I'm wrong, it came out and at first was only for capacity tiers, uh, in Veeam, that is, uh capacity tiers in a scale-out repository. And then, of course, from there it just grew and grew and grew. So, when was the first time you used object storage for Veeam? What was your experience with it? Um, I know there were issues at first with a lot of API calls and things like that.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. It's been I used it when it did come out for capacity tier because we had object storage here. We've had different we've gone through different flavors where I work. Um we've gone through things like um Dell ECS, Atache H C P C S, uh, and now we've kind of standardized somewhat on pure object flash blades and stuff like that. Um it was great when it was capacity tier, but as soon as they released it out to do direct to object, I was kind of worried a little bit. I thought, okay, is this gonna kill like say our VCC sales? Um, are people gonna just want to buy object from us instead of buying the Veeam Cloud Connect and and doing all the backups and stuff? But we've actually taken the approach where we're slowly uh migrating all of our Veeam Cloud Connect instances to have object in the back. So we're taking we're we're taking advantage of both things and whatnot. So it's like, okay, this is cool. So but object object has been great. Um thankfully and lucky enough, I've been able to get one of Object First's appliances. Um that's in one of my data centers. I use that for testing and doing a bunch of stuff. And at home, I have the uh Object First has a VSA, which is a software appliance. It's not huge, one terabyte. You can put three of them together in a cluster to have three terabytes. I don't back up a lot of data in my home lab anyway, so I don't, it doesn't matter to me the size of it. But it's it's also been a very good thing to do sit and test with and write blogs about and all that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, and we'll reminder the the VSA that we have is only for testing, not for production. Uh simply because at the virtualization level, it it's got a, you know, if someone gets control of your hypervisor, uh, they can wipe out any virtual machine. So yeah, that's interesting. And the other thing I was uh interested specifically, what Chris is talking about here is that with a Cloud Connect, uh generally you come into the Cloud Connect uh repositories that are behind the Cloud Connect. But when direct storage came out, there's the possibility of just having people send their backups to object storage. And that's what he was talking about. That and because he's I remember seeing this from other service providers too. They were worried that uh-oh, people won't need Cloud Connect. However, what people forgot about was all the extra services you get when you go through a Cloud Connect partner like PinkCon because you never know when you need help at two in the morning. And Chris has got a cell phone right next to his bed. No, yeah, right. It wouldn't be Chris anymore, but but um but there's a lot of added value, and um, so it's definitely worth cloud connect if if that's what you need. Some customers they just don't have very much, I get it. Uh but then you can use object storage. Okay, so another thing which is really important in the backup world is to have multiple copies of your data. The the famous 321 rule. When was the first time you saw that? Because back in the day, I remember we had tapes, and then someone said at one point, okay, take the tape to a bank, uh, to a safety deposit. That was the first kind of off-site, but it's come a long way from there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's I'm trying to remember when the last time or the first time I've heard about 3-2-1. I know when I first started getting into Veeam, it was back up to disk, and then we also had tape as well. And it was kind of like, okay, that works, but thankfully we had a service that would come in and pick up the tapes, take them to the vault, and blah, blah, blah. But it became to me, it became somewhat of a hassle. I know tape is never gonna go away, but it became sort of a hassle if somebody said, Okay, I need to restore this or whatever, and it's like, okay, give me a minute, I gotta bring back a tape and and whatnot. But I know when the 321 rule came out, and when we come into things like Object First, Wasabi, all these other companies that do off-site backups and stuff, it was like, okay, here we go. Now we can get into 321. We put a copy on our disks, we send a copy off-site, uh, and things like that. It was it was great when it came in because then it it made your data more resilient. That way you can have immutable copies too off-site, um, and everything like that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I think uh uh people sometimes forget that these things evolve not because someone's sitting there thinking of good ideas, it's generally in response to something that's happened. So a threat, and of course, we all know what has really pushed the 3-2-1, it's ransomware. And um, again, I don't think there were organizations that had off-site and there were reasons for it. Sometimes it was just archiving for long term and they want to store it somewhere, but the impetus for this enormous expansion of online backup and off-site backup has been ransomware. So tell us a bit about ransomware. Have you ever dealt with ransomware? Uh, has there been ever a situation when you thought everything was lost for a customer or for your environment?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there has. I can't talk too much about it, but there was a big event that happened actually here with us. Um, it was in one of our US data centers. And I think we spent upwards of six to eight months working on securing things, restoring things, recovering things. Even our even our CTO, who was the boss, my boss at the time, he was spending 18-hour days online. Wow. Because he knows he knows Commvault very, very, very well. And a lot of stuff was being done through Commvault, as well as Veeam, too. But he just he was online for like 18-hour days, and I know when I would talk to him and stuff, I'm like, you look tired, man. Go have a go have a nap if you need if you need me to tag in, just tag me in or something like kind of thing. But it was just, it's you gotta be really careful with ransomware and make sure everything's immutable, send it off site, make that second copy and all that, and f just follow the 3-2-1-1-0 rule. Make sure you test it, dude.
SPEAKER_00:And it's interesting because almost I I have not honestly talked to an organization that has not been hit in some form or whatnot. And of course, that's when really uh your your plans you created before, your disaster recovery plans, your skill set that's available really kicks in. And it does take a lot of time sometimes, too. But uh, that is really the the the solution is to prepare yourself. And I know that you also do a lot of that for your customers and creating disaster recovery plans. How important is that? I mean, I think I think I think it's a no-brainer, but you know, just from your standpoint, if you've seen customers you've dealt with who have prepared properly, as opposed to those who kind of have half prepared and then something happens.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we try to that's one of the things that we try to go through when we sell our services to a customer. Make sure that we develop and work on the framework for a recovery plan. There's even some customers that insist on having backups and everything tested. So once every quarter, once every half year, or whatever, the the Veeam engineers get on and go through all this testing and stuff with um like replication. Anyone that signed up for our replication services with Veeam, they'll test the replication and whatnot. They'll do a failover, test everything, fail back, make sure everything works, and whatnot. We're all we're also looking at implementing and doing um selling sure backup, which is an automated, automated way to test things, right? So, and it and it even gives you a report at the end to say what worked, what didn't, what failed, and all those things, so we can take a look at what needs to be maybe optimized in the customer's environment.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, that's one of the beautiful features of Veeam is they have this sure uh backup and sure replica. And in essence, it's automated, as you said. You set your backup off, uh, let's say once a week you can do it. You can do it anytime you want, and then it'll do the incremental backup, and then it immediately brings up in a sandbox the VMs you've chosen and can even run tests on them, and you can even create your own uh custom tests for them. So this is fantastic because it's it's a real insurance. You know that these VMs are bootable, but you also know that the applications within them are actually functioning. Uh yeah, I know you've seen this too, where you've restored a server I was sent into a company to help them out, and I restored the VM, it was great, and the applications weren't working because they didn't have application wear on. And the the fellow said, Well, wait, but but the VM's working. I go, Yeah, but inside there's an application, and if you don't properly back it up, it's not properly going to be restored. So these are beautiful things. Um, speaking of replications, that was in your book as well. Uh, you talked about continuous data protection. So the difference between just replication and continuous data protection, what are they?
SPEAKER_01:Well, replications run on a schedule. So you schedule the replication, it'll run at X time, it'll do the replication for you. But then if something happens, depending on when your replica was done, you could end up having to go back in time and losing some work that you've done. Whereas with CDP, which they came out with in version was it version 11 that they started that? I don't even remember now. It might have been version 11. I think I think it was version 11 that it came out. I I played with it because you have to install CDP proxies, um, and you have to do some setups in a specific way. However, you can have all of your critical VMs set up with CDP where it's like they're replicating every down to like five minutes. So you can have like barely anything lost and stuff like that. Whereas with replication, like I said, it runs every X, it runs at the scheduled time, but then you've got that window in between.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. And and one thing to remember, folks, because I've had customers who uh in the past wanted to cut costs, and I tell them don't cut costs in data protection because it's like cutting off your toes. And one typical thing that I used to hear, because you can restore files from replicas, and people learn this, they go, well, wait a minute, then I don't need the backup. The problem is, as you know yourself, if you get ransomware, replication is gonna replicate that automatically to your other VM. And so, as opposed to backup, where you can have you know many retention points, a lot more than replication. I think replication uh with VMware, there were there was a certain amount of snaps, because it's it's based, well, replicas are based on snapshots. Um, and so there's only a certain amount you can have. Uh, but basically the the story is don't cut costs in data protection. Um, and I think meme are now coming out with a universal CDP, if I'm not mistaken. Uh so that's even better. It's not just restricted to the the VM world. Okay, here's another key question. We always uh well, we always this is a second podcast, but uh this is and my my home time I ask these people, uh I ask people questions these questions. With the expansion of hypervisors, it seems that every day I turn on my computer, I get an ad or something for a new hypervisor I'd never heard of. Um, how much more difficult has your job become? You now get customers with, let's say, scale, with Proxmox, with you know OpenShift.
SPEAKER_01:It's it hasn't affected us just quite yet. Um because we we're a VMware platinum partner still in the new Broadcom era. So we we're still partners with them, and VMware is our is our biggest thing. Now we are looking at setting up some Hyper-V stuff because that relates to some Veeam customers because they want to be able to do replication, right? So you need to have Hyper V on the other end. But for us, it hasn't been. We we've started to kind of look at some of the other um hypervisors, kind of like OpenShift um stuff. We haven't really looked at Proxmox. To be quite honest. I've looked at it myself just to play around and see what it's all about. But we're we're making the shift to the new um VMware Cloud Foundation. So VCF. I just finished two weeks, two weeks of training on it and doing courses and stuff like that. So it's it's we're still gonna be a very VMware heavy shop, only because we're still a partner with them. So they're kind of relying on us to keep going with that and and whatnot. But yeah, every every day now there's what Hewlett Packard has a new hypervisor out that I've seen. It looks pretty it looks kind of cool and whatnot, but would we move to it or look or look at it? Probably not. I would probably do something at home just to play with it and test it and those kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the problem too is is that you know we only have so much time. And uh it's one thing if they're all a lot of these are KVM based, so that at least the the foundation is the same, so a lot of the uh the tools might be similar, but the sheer scope, uh it's it's difficult to call yourself an expert and everything. So that's that's uh definitely gonna be a challenge. Okay, well, getting back to expertise, which is important. Uh obviously you do this all day long. In the evening, you're also going over this for your book, whatnot. Uh, but what's equally important, of course, is how to show people that you know what you're talking about. And if you haven't started writing a book yet and you don't have um a lot of any blogging done yet, then obviously the old school way of doing this is to get certified. And I wanted to ask you about your you've probably done a lot of certifications, you've probably had to repeat them over and over again. What is your advice to people with certifications?
SPEAKER_01:If you can avoid getting into it, don't know. Um it's it's it's good for your career because it shows that you know what you're talking about. Don't if you're gonna get into certifications, make sure you study, make sure you know, get hands-on, and know know the material so that you can pass the exam. There's some people that are just they call them paper certs out there where somebody will go. There's everybody knows about dump sites and all this stuff where people publish things where it's exam questions directly off exams and stuff for VMware, Veeam, uh, Microsoft, uh Microsoft and VMware are probably the more prevalent ones that I've uh found or seen out there when you're when you're uh starting to study and stuff like that. But just know the material, do hands-on, study, um, and all those kinds of things. Don't don't get into dumps and those and that kind of stuff. Um and don't try to focus, try to focus on exams that are relevant to well one, your passions and your job. Um, don't try to go overboard. Like I I I have VMware and Veeam certifications. I have some Microsoft ones from way back in the day. I think 2000 2008 R2 was the last ones that I did for Microsoft. But I'm not going and doing things like um Cisco and all these other ones because it's it's not part of my job. I know it's appealing to people to have like, oh, let me go out and get like 50 certifications and stuff just to show that I'm I'm I'm good at being a technologist. But I don't if you can avoid that, do it. It's to me, it's way too hard to kind of do that kind of thing. I just focus on Veeam and VMware mainly now. Um I haven't done a Microsoft exam, like I said, for probably over a decade and things like that. But just focus on stuff that's pertinent to your job and your and your passions and things like that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. You're right there, because if someone shows up and has 50 different certifications, you start wondering, or the assumption comes that they are what they call a paper paper technical person. In other words, they've they focus on studying to get the to get the piece of paper. And they might be doing it you know legitimately, but the problem is uh it's it's half the ball game. I always look at certification as a really good extra in the sense that uh if I'm working in a certain environment, you know, there's certain things that I'm working with, certain technologies. But let's say I don't have a NetApp or I don't have uh you know uh M365 or something, or some other piece of Veeam. But maybe one day I will. Well, if the exam forces me just to focus a little while on that to get the bare minimum, then it's worth it. Uh but paper, paper certification is a problem. Dumps, I mean, dumps are just a ripoff in the sense that you're cheating mainly yourself because uh I don't know anyone who would hire someone, and then if during the first week they ask them some basic questions which should have been covered in a certification, and the person can't answer, I can't see you locking much longer at your job.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. That's the thing. If you don't if you have the cert but don't know how to do something, when you get into an interview, you're gonna have trouble. I've been in some interviews lately here where we've interviewed people to come in for specific jobs, and after the interview's over, we all have a quick chat, and it's like, okay, this person is just a paper cert, they don't know what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or or now I guess we'd call it an AI cert because I mean all the all sorts of incredible ways people are cheating now with AI, and uh one person with well, and and you know this, and I'll tell you why, because uh one of these exams I did recently, uh I didn't I can't remember which one it was, but um it was proctored remote, so I'm at home. And you know, I expected the regular, you know, put your camera under your desk, uh, show the room, show the closet. There's no one hiding in there, but then it was okay, show your ears close up. This is getting a bit a bit silly. But then I figured, well, no, because someone could have some really tiny, you know, little ear pot button there and and then be talking. Um, and of course, the the other thing with that is they're watching you during the exam, and uh, I remember getting some tough questions, and I just kind of would say to myself, Oh, uh kind of what word I used, probably not the most uh uh you know polite word, and they say, No talking during the exam. But oh that wasn't talking, I was uh I was complaining.
SPEAKER_01:But I was talking to myself.
SPEAKER_00:I was talking to myself, but nevertheless. So yeah, they've gotten better about it. But at the end of the day, you're coming into a job and you won't be able to rely. And and I again, this is another important thing. I am playing a lot with AI now in some of my home labs situations, and and there's a temptation to speed things up uh occasionally. You know, I I don't have much time. I just want to do this quickly. I don't really want to read documentation. Just tell me how to do it, and I'll kind of wing it. And oh boy, has that wasted time? Because it'll take you off somewhere to planet Pluto, and then you have to slowly swim back. So that definitely is uh a good piece of advice. Now, I don't know what's gonna happen, they say in two years it'll all be smarter than us, but I somehow think that won't be the case. Um yeah, so anyways, let's move on. Uh, I want to ask you what do you think, what's coming next in data protection, in the data protection space that excites you the most? Uh what are you looking forward to?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I like where Veeam is going with the new security AI acquisition. They're gonna they're gonna be able to make sure your data's safe, make sure your data is looked after. Um my guess is that because of the name Security AI, AI is gonna be involved.
SPEAKER_00:Good guess.
SPEAKER_01:But at least you'll know that your data is good. It's it's gonna be very interesting to see how they integrate these two products together or how it's gonna come about. But it's something that I'm kind of looking forward to because it'll add that extra layer that then companies like ours can provide to the customer and and things like that to make sure, okay, your data's safe no matter what. Here's here's a report on ransomware or whatever, and here you go, kind of thing, right?
SPEAKER_00:So added services. And and in fact, what we're basically talking about, um, a lot of people don't know this, is that your backup data can actually be useful. It doesn't just have to be sitting there. And and you spoke about uh the you know the sure backup jobs, which bring your servers up. Okay, you know they're restored. Uh, but at the same time, that's production data, but not in production. And so Veeamar already doing this. And I think you in your book you also mentioned you know, the ransomware scans, the malware scans. And perhaps with security AI, it'll come in and and make more use of your backup data. In other words, I know that classification is a big problem. Companies have trouble classifying what data is important, what's less important. And so data protection is really moved, I guess, to data, what do you call management or organization?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:So hopefully we'll we'll see that. And I guess, I guess you're gonna have to write another book about when they bring in all these new features. Uh I guess the thing about your job is that you're gonna be the forever student. So hopefully that keeps you young. Um, you know, you didn't just get your degree and then leave, and I'm free. It's like if you're in IT, you're you're forever uh going to be doing this and learning.
SPEAKER_01:Forever learning. That's what that's that's that's what I say, forever learning. That's what you are.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And that's one thing I think right off the bat, you have to point out to anyone who's joining this profession is uh it's a never static profession. It's evolving. Um, what was the first? So, as one of the final questions to ask, what was the first data protection product you you used? I mean, was it copy and paste? Was it put on a floppy?
SPEAKER_01:Or do you remember what was that one called? Was it called Power Ranger or something?
SPEAKER_00:Or oh, I remember Ranger for VMware. There was a Ranger, V Ranger, V Ranger.
SPEAKER_01:V V V Ranger, that was one of the first kind of like virtualization ones. Yeah, yeah. That I that I looked at and stuff, and it was kind of it was cool in a way and everything, but then as soon as I hit Veeam and all that kind of stuff, it was just like, okay, yeah, these guys are gonna eventually corner the market, and VRanger fell off the map and and what and whatnot. But yeah, I think I think VRanger was one of the first virtual ones. I've used backup exec with like physical boxes and tape drives and and all those wonderful things, but that was just a system that also is eventually gonna RIP, I think in what 2026 or 2029 or something. There's a meme out there somewhere with a tube stone, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, I mean it's it's incredible because when when I started my career, I remember backup was the job no one wanted, and it was generally given to the new people, and the technologies were kind of tricky. Uh whereas now, really, you're the superstar. If you if you recover uh some a company from ransomware, you've basically saved the company, so it's a superhero. But um so final question: when is your new book coming out and where can people get it?
SPEAKER_01:Well, it'll be available on Amazon through Pack Publishing as well. Um, timeline. I'm aiming to get it out hopefully by the end of March, beginning of April. Um I've kind of fell a little bit behind with my training and stuff lately at at work, but I'm gonna pick up the pace. I have somebody else writing a chapter for me, so that'll save me some time as well. Um, hopefully he's got that almost done now because he's off on vacation. Uh hopefully he'll get it.
SPEAKER_00:It's the same title, right? It's just a new version.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's mastering Veeam Backup and Replication, but it'll be called the fourth edition because this is the fourth book and stuff. Um, and having the guest co-author and stuff, they're hoping that I'll we'll be able to sell uh a ton more. So if you're listening, buy it when it comes out, please.
SPEAKER_00:Um we're all looking forward to it because uh again, the the the longer you're in this profession, the more experience you accumulate. And that's just folks, that's just gravy. Instead of going through this yourself, someone else has been through it, and so you can learn from their successes and their failures, and hopefully you won't repeat them. Well, Chris, thank you very much. This has been wonderful, and I hope we can have you back in the new year.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Just invite me back and we'll we'll do this again.
SPEAKER_00:Alrighty. Thank you very much much, folks, and we will talk to you next month.