I received some positive news the other day concerning my Veeam Vanguard 2022 application, I’ve been renewed for another year in the Program. As a Veeam enthusiast, there is no better thing than being a Vanguard member.
For those who haven’t heard about the Vanguard program before, it’s awarded to those who have contributed to the Veeam community.
I recommend anyone interested in becoming a Vanguard to get involved in the Veeam community, whether it be through Veeam Use Groups, the Veeam subreddit or even the Veeam community forums and apply to the Vanguard program during the next intakes.
There are a couple of benefits of becoming a Vanguard including access to roadmaps, betas, free keys, awesome swag and access to those in the know at Veeam.
You can find all the Veeam Vanguards from past and present at the following link: Veeam Vanguard List.
I’ve been fortunate enough to be a member of the Veeam Vanguard program since 2017; an advocacy program run by Veeam consisting of like-minded individuals who are passionate about all things Veeam, many of whom I consider as friends. I always look forward to time spent with the group as the knowledge and experience shared within has always been invaluable to me. Hopefully, I have many more years in the Vanguard program to come, and I urge anyone with a passion for Veeam to apply for the program which is expected to open in late 2019.
One of many excellent perks that come with the program is attending the Vanguard Summit, for the second year in a row the summit was held in Prague. While it takes around 24 hours to travel from my home town of Brisbane to Prague, it’s well worth it. Prague is an amazing location, vastly different in so many ways compared to what this simple Australian is used to back home.
One of the reasons why the Vanguard Summit is held in the Czech Republic is because Veeam’s main Research and Development (R&D) Centre is located in Prague, making it the prime location for getting the Veeam R&D team and Vanguards in the same room. Anton Gostev, Alec King, Dmitry Popov, Pavel Tide, Nikita Skestakov, Oleg Patrakov and Mike Resseler all made appearances and presented on their areas of expertise.
It’s been a bit quiet on the blog front for the last couple of months because I’ve focussed my attention on a “little” side project which recently reached fruition. This side project was, of course, the VMCE 9.5 Unofficial Study Guide that we released on the 15th of March.
VMCE Unofficial Study Guide
Rose Herden and I started working on the book back in November 2018, the initial framework of the book actually came from a presentation that Rasmus Haslund and I submitted for a VeeamON 2017 session. We had hoped to present but unfortunately, our submission not selected. From the ashes of that presentation, with contributions from Florian Raack plus several peer reviews from fellow Vanguards, VMCT trainers and Veeam employees, a study guide for the VMCE was born. Working closely with Rose on this book has been a fantastic experience, her knowledge and passion around the VMCE is second to none. What Rose has done around developing and assembling this book has been absolutely phenomenal.
Originally, the book was going to cover the basics around studying for the VMCE along with listing resources available such as the unofficial practice exams, write-ups, etc. Once Rose saw the early draft though she suggested we expanded the book by adding module guides, these would include key learning goals/outcomes, key terms, learning suggestions, concept checks and even a practice exam for every module from the VMCE courseware. These module guides quickly became the focus of the book filled with insight, tips and tricks from an experienced VMCT scattered throughout the chapter.
To date, our book has been downloaded over 800 times through our publisher, leanpub.com. We were even fortunate enough to be a featured book on leanpub during the first week of release. At the current rate, there is even chance of reaching over 1000 readers in the coming weeks. It’s a bit of an understatement when I say how this has completely blown us away to see how many readers have downloaded the book, we were aiming for 100-200 readers. More importantly, the feedback received so far from the community has been overwhelmingly positive which is a huge relief.
While the book is available for free, we’ve left the suggested price at $4.99 USD, readers just need to select the $0.00 price during checkout to download for free. Rose and I are very thankful to the readers who have paid for the book with any money raised going towards printing hard copies. We’ve initially planned for just 10 copies to be printed with any money left over to be donated to a charity called TECH GIRLS MOVEMENT.
I recently had the opportunity to visit Prague courtesy of the Veeam Vanguard program, this is my second year being a member of this fantastic community which is arguably one of the best evangelism/advocacy programs run by any vendor out there. While it was a long journey to get to Prague it was well worth it, to not only catch up with the other Vanguards but to get access to Veeam’s Product Strategy team, R&D personnel and Product Managers for in-depth discussions of everything Veeam related.
The summit consisted of two and a half days of sessions that included content filled to the brim with Veeam goodies ranging from upcoming updates to entirely new products that were still very early in their development cycle (kudos to Veeam for sharing). Veeam certainly was not holding back as questions raised from fellow Vanguards were answered honestly and truthfully, nothing was off the table including any questions about v10. All of this provided an insightful glimpse into the inner workings of the Veeam team and further cemented the value I place in the Vanguard program.
The real golden nuggets of information were found whenever we delved into the reasoning behind how and why certain features and capabilities were developed. For example, session speakers might detail the limitations of a particular feature and how they have worked to address them even if it might mean investing more time than anticipated in developing the feature. Yes, it’s a difficult decision to make but Veeam isn’t in the business of making half-baked software and it certainly shows in just how reliable their software has been to date.
Rick Vanover has posted on the official Veeam blog regarding the opening of the Veeam Vanguard nominations for 2018. This will be the third year of the Vanguard program for which the recipients receive a variety of awesome benefits, one of which is a trip to VeeamON.
Some Vanguards are bloggers, some are active on the Veeam Forums, some are active on Spiceworks sharing a lot of Veeam-specific information or even on the Veeam subreddit, the list goes on for all of the ways Vanguards have engaged with the Veeam community.
If you know anyone that you’d like to nominate, perhaps yourself even, I strongly recommend giving it a go.
Nominations will be accepted until Friday, Dec. 29. You can go through the nomination process here.
Early last week I received news from Rick Vanover @ Veeam that I have been selected for the Veeam Vanguard Program. As a Veeam enthusiast, there is no better thing than becoming a Vanguard. Wow what an honour!
For those who are unaware of the Veeam Vanguard program, it’s awarded to members of the Veeam community to show Veeams support and appreciation for past deeds. There are a couple benefits of becoming a Vanguard including access to roadmaps, betas, free keys, awesome swag and access to those in the know at Veeam (I’m just curious to know if we get a bat phone to Anton Gostev (I wish)) just to name a few. What I’m really looking forward to though is learning more about this awesome program and meeting other Vanguards who share my passion for Veeam.
If you happen to read my blog or know me personally, you may be aware that I tend to champion Veeam a lot. I try and help the community whether it’s writing about errors I fixed in Veeam or the unofficial VMCE practice exam. Whether it’s just a small thank you on twitter, an appreciative comment on a post or being selected for a global program, it really fuels my fire to keeping creating, sharing and interacting to help the community more. So thank you Veeam, thank you for making such an awesome product to work with, thank you for showing support and a big thank you for recognising members of the Veeam community.
