Breaking Down the VeeamOn Announcements for Backup Admins

You found the backup wrap up your go-to podcast for all things

backup recovery and cyber recovery.

In this episode, we talk about my recent trip to San Diego where I already

live, but it was for Veeam O 2025.

We break down all the Veeam on announcements that matter

to folks like yourself.

I walk through the big security announcement, including their

CrowdStrike integration and the data resilience maturity model

that they developed with McKenzie.

Very interesting.

But the thing that got me really excited, Veeam finally did what many of us have

been begging them to do for years.

Create a Linux-based software appliance that'll make your backup servers way more

secure against things like ransomware.

Plus, I talk about their AI integration with anthropic.

That lets you basically like talk to your backups.

If you've ever used chat, GPT, imagine doing that, but with your backups,

this is huge, interesting stuff.

Hope you'll like it.

By the way, if you don't know who I am, I'm w Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr.

Backup, and I've been passionate about backup and recovery for over 30 years.

Ever since.

I had to tell my boss that we had no backups of the production

database that we had just lost.

I don't want that to happen to you.

And that's why I do this.

On this podcast, we turn unappreciated backup admins into Cyber recovery heroes.

This is the backup wrap up.

Welcome to the show.

Hi, I am w Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr. Backup, and I have with me my.

Robot vacuum advisor Prasanna Malaiyandi, how's it going?

Prasanna.

I am good Curtis.

And how are your two robot vacuums doing?

You know what?

I was just, I was just comment, commenting today that they are actually really

nice and, uh, doing really, really well.

I just, you know, 'cause we have, we have tenants, right, uh, that are

renting different rooms and today, for the first time since sort of mapping out

everything, I let it, 'cause we had a tenant move out yesterday, so I let it.

Go into the tenant's room and uh, and I wasn't sure, um, how

to map that additional area.

And all I did was tell it to, I opened up the door and I just

said to do a full, uh, vacuum.

And it was like, oh look, there's this new room.

And it went in there, it mapped it out, and then it marked it as a new room.

So then I created a.

I created a new room for that room and then I created a routine that

is a three x pass in that room.

Right.

So that I can, like when it, it's a tenant has moved out.

So then I'm like, Hey, send it in there and go in there and three times,

'cause it's only like 120 square feet.

So, um, or something like that.

And, um, yeah.

Anyway, so it's very.

before this, I can't believe before this, you were thinking of using

a non-smart robot that you had to actually control with a remote, like a

Yeah,

I, I,

was smart.

It just wasn't that smart.

I, I, I have no idea what, what you were even thinking, Curtis,

I was thinking cost, right.

I guess that's true.

Yes.

Rumba

'cause remember the, we, we had the Roomba.

The Roomba that we had was one with the sucks up the, you know, it has

the, the bag and all that stuff.

And that thing was like 800 bucks.

I'm like, I'm not spending another $800.

Uh, but I had no idea that I could get one this good.

It, it was also on sale, right?

It was like 160 bucks, something like that.

That other thing was like 150 bucks.

And I just, and.

got stuck.

Yeah, it got stuck all the time.

Like, like literally it didn't finish a single pass either upstairs or downstairs.

It didn't finish, finish a single pass without some catastrophic thing happening.

And the whole point of these things are that they're just supposed

to do what they're supposed to do without bothering me.

Yeah.

It might not be the best vacuum.

Right.

But it's supposed to just happen.

Right.

And uh, I'm not supposed to have to come home and have it, you know, on its back.

Like a turtle.

Exactly, and that just kept happening, you know, and you're

like, and it would climb stuff that you're like, why are you climbing?

That's clearly like the base of a fan, right?

It would see the fan.

Well, this is the problem is it doesn't see it, it just

uses, uh, it doesn't use lidar.

It used, um, what was the other, what was the other?

Oh, IR.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He uses IR sensing and I guess it doesn't see the fan, and so it just

drives right up on the fan base.

And then I'd come in there and the thing would be like beached up on

the fan base or try to go under the couch and it would go under the couch

and it would just get stuck there.

Just get stuck going, oh Lord, what a mess.

Well, I'm

Anyway,

least that it's been working well and

very.

major issues.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Very.

Yeah, it's been working very well.

Um, and it works well with like these other rooms that are shut off that I can

then say, Hey, the tenants moved out.

You know, send it in there.

Yeah.

But anyway, so, you know, I continue to list you as my, my robot vacuum advisor.

But, uh, so, um, I thought we could do a quick.

Review of the conference that I just went to.

I just went to Veeam on, which is veeam's annual um, conference.

And this is my first one that I went to since.

Before joining Druva.

Right.

Um, so I went, I went, the last one I went to was many moons

ago, and it was in New Orleans.

This one was a little bit closer, which is, uh, it was in San Diego.

So, which is like, you know, 40 minutes from where I live.

And, um.

It was nice, uh, to go there and to see the things that they were announcing

to again, you know, uh, get to get some face-to-face with, uh, some of

the people that we've had on the show.

Right.

And to make some new friends as well.

And, uh, to also experience, uh, San Diego as a tourist.

It was kind of interesting.

So this was in San Diego, right?

In a giant convention center.

Were there customers there in addition to, and analysts, I'm

guessing, like who was there?

Yeah, so there were, there were analysts and press and I was in that, um, section.

They corded us off.

They gave us like a nice front row seat with tables, um, so that we

could use our laptops, uh, and things like that during the presentation.

And there were.

I, I don't know how many people were there.

It's not, it's not a conference that's like, that's like the

size of, I mean, this does not compare to, to reinvent, right?

Reinventing is like just ginormous.

It's like a billion people.

It's like, I, I, I think it's up to like 60, 70,000 people.

This was not like that.

This was a much, much more intimate event, but it was still.

You know, measured in the thousands.

I, I don't, I don't know what the actual number was.

Uh, and, and it's a very big stage, very big presentation.

Very, very, you know, they, they had a nice intro video each day.

Um, you know, it was, it was very professionally produced,

uh, which is all, all very nice.

Uh, they took care of us as analysts and, uh, and press, uh, to, you

know, to make sure that we didn't serve the death and all of that.

So this is a sponsored event that you attended, right?

They did pay for your hotel and

Right.

and visiting, but everything we're talking about is for the rest of this episode.

Is your opinions, right?

terms of

Yes.

what we will

Right.

This is not a sponsored episode.

Veeam is not paying for these words, uh, nor anybody else,

uh, paying for these words.

And, uh, yeah, this is just my thoughts as of, and it is interesting because,

you know, preparing for the show, you know, we looked at some of the,

um, of the coverage of the show.

And it is interesting, the, the, the, um, what do you call it?

Um, the.

Perspective that other people had when they're, when they're covering the

show versus, versus my perspective.

And the, the one thing I walked away with that I was super excited

about that what was interesting that they didn't even talk about.

So, uh, we'll talk about, I,

get.

we cover that last, what do you think

I, I, I think that's sounds good.

that makes sense.

what would you say was like your one big takeaway, or what was the one message

that they were trying to ensure everyone walked away with from the conference?

The one message was that they heard it loud and clear the need for strong

security and defense against ransomware.

Right.

There were a number of features that talked about that.

The, you know, there, there's the CrowdStrike integration,

there's this, uh, the, the ransomware, uh, trends and report.

They have the, uh, data resilience maturity model.

We'll talk about that in a minute.

Um, and, um, it, it is just a, it's just a, a topic, just like.

I mean, just like all the other, the backup vendors, right?

Yeah,

They all, they all wanna make sure that it, it is top of mind, right?

Um, and so they wanted to make sure that message has been received and

we are doing all of these things.

Um, you know, previous shows that I've seen, it's like the big announcements

are, we're covering this new platform, or we have this new thing.

And they had some of those things, but the things that they led with

were the cybersecurity message.

Um, you know, and, and some really big stuff that, that

it fell into that category.

So just given that it's the flavor of the year, I guess, and a

conference will not be a conference unless it's being discussed.

Was there anything around ai.

Oh.

Yeah, AI came up, uh, and actually a really cool demo, uh, that

we'll talk about in a second.

Uh, actually the one AI thing that they talked about and then demonstrated it

was something that we've talked about for many, many years, and I actually

got to see it happen even though what they're demoing was like days old.

Yeah.

Uh, that was, that was really cool.

Okay.

Awesome.

So maybe let's just dive into it.

Do you want to start with the security side of announcements

Yeah, so, so the, you know, there was this, uh, this, this Integr integration

with CrowdStrike, um, you know, to, to basically help to, again, again,

identify and, and hunt out and find, uh, ransomware and, and various

other threats that I liked a lot.

Um, don't wanna delve too much into that, but that, that was, go ahead.

before you move on though, I know you don't wanna talk a lot.

It's interesting though, right?

It just seems so obvious to us just having been in the backup in

Right,

right?

It's like, oh, you have all your data there.

Why wouldn't you wanna look for ransomware in that treasure trove of data?

Right.

starting to see like all the backup vendors now doing

integrations with CrowdStrike,

Mm-hmm.

the latest with their announcement.

Yeah, I, you know, it's, um, and they've had some similar features, but this

is, you know, you know, a, a solid integration with CrowdStrike, so, yeah.

Um, but they, they also released, uh, this, uh, ransomware trends report.

And this, I don't wanna, I don't want to go into the, like, the, the, the different

percentages and stuff, but basically it.

It showed, um, you know, their continued efforts in this area right.

To, to, to help people understand just how big the ransomware problem is and just

how, um, I. In case you were the, the, the, the one dentist out of the, the five

dentists that doesn't recommend sugarless gum for their patient's chew gum.

Um,

the, um, that was a dentine reverence for those that didn't get that

reference anyway, uh, that they.

Um, you know, they, they, they, they drove that message home loud and clear that,

uh, this is continues to be a problem.

They showed things like the percentage of people that that paid the ransom, the

percentage of people that paid the ransom, but still didn't get their data back.

All of those interesting things.

I, I think every one of these, these reports, uh, are,

they're always very interested.

Yeah, and, and

go ahead.

for someone who, maybe you're a Veeam customer, maybe you're not

a Veeam customer, you should go.

Grab that report and take a look at it because it could help you as you're

trying to explain to your bosses or the head of it, Hey, we need extra funding

because there is risk in our environment.

And look, even these other companies that thought they were protected were not.

And so I think having actual data that you can then take and talk to

other people, be it on the business side or wherever else, right.

I think is helpful.

Just having a larger sample set.

Yeah.

Agreed.

Uh, and, and speaking of things that you can go get and don't and aren't

specifically tailored at Veeam customers.

There is this data resilience maturity model.

This was actually really impressive.

Um, they worked with McKenzie, which is a big consulting firm for those of

you that don't know who they are, and also with, uh, a professor at MIT and

they interviewed, um, you know, uh, I forgot what the actual number was, but

quite, it's, you know, it was either.

I, I, I should have the number here.

I should have the number in front of me, but it was quite a large

number of, uh, CIOs and they talked to them about the, the various.

Things that they were doing from a data resiliency standpoint.

And what they then did was they, um, they modeled that out into a maturity model and

then they were able to show you, these are the things, if you're doing these things,

then you are, and only these things.

Then you are at the very basic level of maturity.

It's like, you know, you're, you're making backups, you're making copies

of those backups, things like that.

Um, and then.

That, that's like the, the most basic, it's like table stakes.

job.

you're making copies and you know, but then as you started to add

things like, um, uh, immutability, add, add things like, um, uh, the

incident response plans and a, as you added all of these additional

things, whether or not you were doing.

Um, you know, they have the concept of the 3, 2, 1, 1 0.

Are you doing these things?

But, but they didn't use that specific term because again,

this, they weren't catering this specifically to Veeam audiences.

But are you making sure that you have an immutable copy?

Is it offsite or you know, and are you doing, um, tabletop discussions?

Are you doing recovery testing?

Are you doing automated recovery testing as you worked your way up

the resiliency, um, you know, model.

You could see that.

Basically anyone can look at this model and say, here's where I am.

And again, this is another tool that you can use when working with

senior people in your organization.

You can say, look, I, Veeam came out with this maturity model and we are

like the most basic, I've been trying to tell you we gotta, we gotta get better.

Right?

And it's something that you can use to.

To, to basically make yourselves better and and more resilient

against things like cyber attacks.

Yeah, and I think I also like the resiliency model and like you said,

laying out those levels because could then decide and say, look, we might

be at basic to get to intermediate, or whatever the next step is.

Here are the things we need to cover.

Rather

Right?

Hey, let's just start randomly adding things from like the

advanced category, right?

Yeah.

not even, it doesn't help you in the long term, right?

Because you don't have the things you need to cover the next level.

So it gives you a way to sort of structure and organize your thoughts.

do the table stakes, add things as you can, uh, make yourself better over time.

Yeah.

But, um, so, um, they talked about how that, um, they now have Microsoft intra

I support with the Veeam Data Cloud, which if you're not familiar with the

Veeam Data Cloud, they went from not doing this at all to boom, you know,

doing, doing it for a lot of things.

And so they now basically have a SaaS based, um, you know.

Backup product for a number of.

Uh, um, you know, for a number of products.

Here's an interesting stat that I picked up from the Veeam on conference, and

that was, uh, again, it's a stat that I have not verified, but it's a stat that

they said multiple times with the guy from Microsoft standing on the stage.

So what they claimed to be was the largest provider of.

Backup from Microsoft 365 and they actually gave a number, and if I

recall correctly, it was something like 20% of all Microsoft 365 backup, uh,

customers are using their product, right?

Not just 20%, 25% of the people that are backing up Microsoft 365, but

2020 it was 20 or 25% of the entire.

Microsoft 365, uh, customer base is using the Veeam Data

Cloud to back up Microsoft 365.

That is

Yeah.

Considering Con, especially considering that they were actually kind of a late.

Entry in this market, right?

The fact that they've, uh.

Garnered such a big market share is a big thing.

Also, by the way, I just extrapolated from that.

I remember there was a time when if you interviewed, if you, if you did a survey

of, of Microsoft 365 customers, I. We came out with a number that said that like only

5% of 365 customers were backing up 365.

So that number has clearly been increased because if they're doing 20 to 25% and

there are other people that are doing it, so that, that, that's good news to me.

Maybe everyone listens to our podcast 'cause I know we

That's what it's,

backup

it

365, right?

Yeah, I, I think we should take claim for

And to the Veeam Data Cloud, they added support for Microsoft Intra id.

So, um, otherwise known or formerly known as Active Directory.

So, um.

They also added, uh, Veeam CDP for Windows and Linux.

Um, that was something that, um, you know, the idea of basically being

able to back up the data every few seconds, um, for certain workloads.

What's that?

Go ahead.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

CDP meaning continuous data protection.

And, um, then there was another announcement, which I was very excited

about, what they demonstrated was if you have, if you're using Veeam Vault, right?

So first off, what is Veeam Vault?

Veeam Vault is their cloud storage in Azure.

Um, and basically you buy by the, you know, by the gigabyte.

And if you're using the Veeam Cloud, that you could recover any image-based backup.

So a backup of Windows server, a Linux server.

Any image-based backup, you can, uh, boot up that system in.

Azure in under five minutes, and that was really impressive.

Right?

Um, now, uh, and I'll add to this, it, you don't necessarily have to use Veeam Vault.

You can do this by using, for example, Azure storage.

You can even do it.

By having it somewhere else, they're just saying, you know, they were demonstrating

the power of what they have there.

And uh, and, and if you use something else, you would also have things

like, um, I. Egress charges, right?

But if you used Veeam Vault and you did a recovery into Azure,

you would be able to do this, uh, per server in under five minutes.

Pretty darn impressive.

No, that is, and

I.

when they're doing this recovery, is that.

Being instantiated in the customer's original source location or

in their Microsoft account, or

The latter.

So in their Microsoft account in Azure.

Okay.

Right now, again, remember Veeam due to their relationships with,

um, Microsoft, they generally do a lot of things in Azure, right?

So they're doing their vd, their, um, Veeam Data Cloud in Azure.

They're doing the Veeam Vault in Azure, and, uh, they're

doing this in Azure, right?

So, uh, you're able to, and, and they are able to do recoveries

in other cloud platforms.

It's just this is what they're leading with.

Yep.

That's pretty awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Very cool.

So we have two more things to talk about.

The first is the, the, this AI piece, which I just thought was just super cool.

Um, and then we're gonna talk about something that like.

Literally we've been begging them to do for years and that they finally did.

So the first was that they have an integration with Anthropic.

Anthropic, for those that don't know is the company behind Claude.

Right.

Which is a big LLM large language model and, uh, and a, a product

that I've used quite a bit and.

They, uh, they demoed it.

I, I, I knew that they were working on it and, you know, and, and so

they announced it, but you know, you know how it is with announcements.

I didn't know how real it was.

I got to watch them.

They connected it, um, to basically two a demo backup environment,

and then they, they had two.

Um, sort of AI integrations.

One was an a, a natural language search where they could say things like, show me.

All of the, as I recall, there were some, like reports on, um,

weather, something about weather.

Uh, they, they, they said, you know, show me weather reports in 2024 or whatever.

And then they, they pulled 'em up and, and the result of

that search was kind of like.

It was very Google like, where you had a, you had a heading of

a document, then you had like a, like a summary of the document.

Then you could click on it and be taken directly to that.

So what are we talking about here?

We're talking about searching the backups.

hmm.

All of your Veeam backups that Veeam, that the Veeam catalog knows about.

You're talking about searching them using natural language

and then pulling up the con.

Searching the content is really important.

Searching the content of these backups because.

That is not typically something that you do with a backup product, right?

You, this is one of the rea, this is one of the differences

between archive and backup, right?

Is that with backup, we generally just know the server, the file

name, you know, date and time.

Yeah,

We don't generally know the, the contents of the file, but due to this integration,

you can search the contents of the file.

So they're like, show me files that.

Are about weather reports in 2024, and it's like, boop, here you go.

It's like Googling your backups, which was really cool.

that is actually pretty awesome.

And one of the things as you were talking through this that ran through my head was.

What does this mean for vendors who do e-discovery

Huge.

like Xero or disco

Yeah.

take your pick, right?

Yeah, it's huge.

And, and by the way, this is only the first of, of the two things

we're gonna talk about, right?

Um, so what they did next was, uh, was just like, and for those of you, if, if

you ever haven't, if you haven't ever used ChatGPT or Claude or something

similar, you, you would, you would just be blown away with this, right?

Again, having used both tools, what they're really good at, they're, they're

good at a lot of things, but some of it borders on, you know, like, um,

you know, when you, when you ask it to try to come up with something new.

Quote, new, nothing is really new in an ll but when you ask it to come up with

something new, it can sometimes have what we call hallucinations and make up

stories and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah.

But what it's really good at is summarizing,

Mm-hmm.

So we use that here.

Right.

You know, I use it with the podcast to, to like create a, a summary of the podcast.

Just read the podcast transcription and create a summary and it'll like.

Boop.

Right.

Uh, that's what it's really great at.

So let's take that query.

Mm-hmm.

the previous query that I was talking about.

Instead of saying, just show me all of the um, uh, you know, the weather reports.

You can literally say, you know, again, the back, you're connected to my backups.

You're looking at the content of all of my files.

What can you tell me about weather?

That, you know, in 2024, based on the information you can find

in my backups, I was like, boop.

And then they create a summary.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I was like, oh, like how many times, how many years have we talked about this?

The idea of leveraging your existing backup data for this kind of concept?

so here's my question though.

Yeah.

Do you think that they need to fine tune it more for the backup case?

Because as an example, say you said.

Tell me about my weather in 2024, and it provides you that summary.

It's probably gonna give you a summary based on the content, right?

97% of the time it was sunny in San Diego, right?

With temperatures between 60 and 72,

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Versus.

Maybe as a backup case or a security case, or an e-discovery case,

you're like, how often did this report get published or how often?

Like basically something from either like the file creation perspective or

It would be able to do all that.

Right.

Uh, basically the, the point is that it's connecting the, the LLM, right?

The anthropic MCP to your, all of your backup data, and then you're able to

then do all of the things that you think of Claude doing, uh, but using

your backup data as the source, right?

So you can

They, they,

it pulled up a window that looked just like Claude.

It.

And you type things, right?

So if you, if you wanted to say, how many times did I publish a report?

How many times did I, did I use the word sunny in my report on, you know,

Yeah,

all of those things, uh, would be available and it was just, yeah,

I'm gonna play the, what was it?

A person hates technology.

What's that person called?

the Luddite

Thank you.

I'm gonna play the Luddite

Okay.

right.

all sounds awesome, Curtis.

Yeah.

as a backup slash security person, we always talk about backups being your,

uh, your source of last resort, right?

That is like your last line of defense.

Yep.

And so you are now providing access, which how knows how the access is done

Yep.

to this vast trove of data.

Which, depending on how secure or insecure someone configures it may make

it easier for people to exfiltrate data, understand everything that's going on.

How do you ensure that I don't get to see Curtis's weather reports or

what he has been talking to about me?

Yep.

Yep.

And

I.

I think all these things now need to be thought through.

So.

So I had that exact conversation with Rick Vanover.

Right.

And I thought his answer was great.

Right?

First off, he's like, this is just development and testing right now.

There's no customer's data is being openly think, right?

He also said.

It is definitely the design is you are not handing your data over to Claude or to

Anthropic for training on anybody else's.

That's like number one.

And they understand, he understood that they need basically the AI

equivalent of a privacy statement.

Yep.

Here are the data flows.

Um, you know, here's, here's where your data goes.

Here's where your data doesn't go.

Um, here are the things, you know, I would, I'm gonna assume, um, but you

know, you can never assume and you gotta double check and all this stuff.

I would assume that, basically that you don't need to do anything additional to

protect this, that you just need to make sure that you're securing your Veeam

environment in the same way that you're supposed to, that you're supposed to be

securing the rest of your vem environment.

Yeah.

Does that make sense?

it does.

But then it's also the question of like, eventually people are gonna want

self-service, And so I. How do you ensure that access controls are honored?

As an example?

Yeah.

I mean, you gotta do all that, right?

Um, but

It's, it's still cool.

Don't take,

yeah.

Yeah.

way.

Right.

I think it's

Yeah.

because they're able to expose it, but I think now it's like, okay,

how do you build all those other controls that are needed in order

to make sure it's being done in the

Yeah.

And they've gotta do that and they've gotta publish what those controls

are and you know, all of that stuff.

Yeah.

So, and then the good news was they already know that and

they're gonna do all that stuff.

So, um, but now let's talk about what I thought

And

it's funny.

of the episode.

Thank you all for listening.

We will talk to you later.

That is a wrap.

Are you ready?

So, so it's funny, I with and talked mainly about one particular topic that

they covered in the show that the other.

Articles that I read didn't even cover at all.

They didn't even mention it, let alone like mention it.

My main thing was this topic and we're gonna finish with it here.

And that was the Veeam finally did something that so many of us

have asked, have been asking for.

And, and, and I also, you know, heard, um, you know, from Anton Gustav,

uh, I'm, I'm totally mispronouncing, I'm sure his last name, Gustav.

Um.

That he, this is something he's been wanting.

Right?

And so back before I was at Druva, I remember meeting with Veeam and I

said that, you know, the ransomware thing is only getting worse,

and this is almost 10 years ago.

The ransomware is only gonna get worse.

And that I was very concerned about the fact that they were 100% based on windows

and that that was their Achilles heel.

And that they really needed to, um, have a Linux version of the product,

and many of us weren't really sure that that ever was, that that was ever going

to happen, uh, due to their relationship with Windows or with Microsoft.

Yeah.

And, but in their, uh.

And to their credit,

Yeah.

they have been working towards some of that, right?

So like they have

Yes.

Yep.

run.

They had, I know if you've listened to some of our past podcasts

where we had Dave and also Rick on, right, they did also launch

their Linux hardened repository,

Right,

So you could already start to see them, but

Yes.

everything.

Right.

And

It wasn't the main backup server, right?

You had the, the, the, the, the hardened repository was Right.

Uh, a separate, you know, separate.

But it's a target to backup to.

Right.

But not the main, but you know, because basically it's like, it needed, you needed

pieces that just simply weren't available in, in, uh, windows, I'm sorry, in Linux.

And they did actually announce that.

They were going to do this at last VM o they did announce that this was

coming and um, it's now a reality.

But that wasn't actually the, the full announcement.

What they heard from their customers was, we like this idea from a

security standpoint of not having the backup server run the same operating

system that everybody is attacking.

Uh, but we also don't know Linux.

Yeah.

you don't know Linux, adding Linux into your environment is actually a bad idea.

As much as I like, uh, Linux and Unix, if you don't know how to

properly secure it, it's a bad idea.

And so this is the big announcement is that they have a, a software appliance.

Now, what is a software appliance?

It's a either a, a, you know, a VM image or an ISO that you can load onto a

physical piece of hardware that basically comes up as a fully functional, um, uh.

Backup server and they are using the concept of, or the, the paradigm

of just enough operating system, JEOS, which you can Google that

and, uh, realize what that is.

And basically it's you, they disable or remove everything about the

operating system that is not necessary to do the job and the, um, the

Reduce the

you have to do.

What's that?

Reduce the attack vectors,

Reduce the attack.

Yeah.

The attack surface.

And, and, and, and also what they did is they con everything that

did stay, they configure it in the most secure way possible and

they pre-configure it for you.

One of the things, for example, that is required and you literally cannot not

do it, is automatic security updates.

Hmm.

Right.

You can do automatic, you can also do automatic feature updates,

but they separate between those two and, um, that is huge.

Right.

Um, so, and, and, and, and they drew a, they drew a, um, an analogy between,

uh, they talked about an Android phone, an Android phone runs Linux,

and they said, you don't need to.

Know Linux to run this appliance any more than you need to know

Linux to run your Android phone.

yep.

You

Yeah.

the complexities.

It's like user doesn't care about that, and you do a great job of

securing it versus letting the admins decide what they should or

should not do and end up with issues.

Yeah, and, and, and they demoed this, it was hard to see sometimes what was

version 13 and what was this appliance, but they demoed version 13 and the

appliance like at the same time.

And so one of the things, for example, was that they, they have.

Greatly increase the granularity of, uh, role-based administration controls.

And so you could, for example, you can say this person is only allowed to do

restores, but they're only allowed to do restores back to the original location

Hmm.

or for an additional level of risk, but functionality.

They can restore to these predefined locations.

So you can, you can, they're allowed to restore to something else,

but only something else that I,

I've

um, have, have defined and ordained.

Right.

And then, um, what I really liked was no one gets root.

Mm.

Right.

No one gets root.

That's because, you know, if you have root you, you can do just about anything.

Right?

And so, um, I really liked the idea that, uh, they did that.

And, and I said, and so I, I, I pulled, I actually met the actual

person who, you know, he's like, this, this was my baby, right?

I talked to him and I said, I was like, dude, it's Linux.

Someone has root, right?

Root.

Root exists like, like UID zero.

So are you saying like Veeam admin, it's not root, but it's UID zero that's root.

He's like, no, no, no, no.

That's not what we're talking about.

He's like, literally, you don't get the password

Yeah.

Root obviously does exist.

They have a, again, they don't want you to ever have to touch Linux.

So what they do is, but if you do really, really need to touch Linux,

they have a facility to do that, but they have a completely separate

security, uh, person who has to approve you having root for a period of time.

And I didn't.

situation.

like a, yeah, it's like a break class situation.

And, um, and I do.

Um, 'cause like one of the things that you can do if you have root is you

can turn off the IMMU immutability feature that they're using, right?

So you wouldn't want that to be available.

I'm going to assume that that is then in a, like, sudo environment, which then

would be completely logged and everything that you do is logged and, um, and so

they, um, but it, they're designing it so that you wouldn't ever have to do that.

Yeah.

Right.

Um, and, and this is like, it's in beta now.

And, uh, so it, you know, it is real.

And they're, they're controlling the beta via their sales process

because they want, they, you know, they want, they want feedback, right?

that makes

And I verified that this was a fully functioning full, you know, all,

everything that Veeam is with caveats, they're like, well, there are certain.

Things that you cannot do in Linux.

One of them talked about was like, I, I believe one of

them was like a live restore

Hmm.

to, um, a a, a Windows environment.

Like you need, there's, uh, components that you need, um, to do that.

By the way, speaking of components.

They mentioned that one of the reasons that this was made possible

was the porting of T net to Linux.

I.

Hmm.

That, so this is not actually an entirely new code base.

This is a code base.

I'm sure that they did some changes, but it's essentially the same code as what

they're running on the window side, but that they're then, you know, they tweaked

it a little bit to run in this, uh,

Which is

environment.

Which

Yeah.

Which is great.

the security patches,

Yeah.

Yeah.

and rather than something that's like, ah, is it really gonna get

the same love and attention as

Yeah.

core area?

Yeah, I, I think it's great.

So I was super excited by this, uh, by this functionality and,

um, uh, got to see it demoed.

Uh, and that was, and it was interesting when Anton came out on

the stage to introduce it, he started out saying, I'm about to talk about

something that I'm so excited about.

I might get emotional.

He goes, I've been trying to do this for many years and

he's now able to finally do it.

I, I literally, I just think this is huge.

And I think, uh, you know, like we talked about, uh, before we had,

um, I. We had Blockie for Veeam on here, and I said, every Veeam

customer should put this on their box.

Right.

That I, you know,

Yeah.

Blocky's not telling me to say that, but, um, every Windows based Veeam

customer needs blockie for Veeam.

Um, I mean, anyway.

Okay.

It just, it stops all rights to the file system that aren't done by Veeam.

Yeah,

Like, how awesome is that?

Right?

And it's the only product that's like that.

It's the only product, the only ransomware preventing product that you

can install on the Veeam backup server.

yeah.

And um, I'm now saying if you really want to do security right, do

this as soon as this is available, replace all of your, uh, as much

as you can of your, of your Veeam infrastructure with this new appliance.

Do you know if they mentioned anything about a migration path

for those customers that may today be using the Windows based Veeam

Yeah.

moving over to Linux based software appliance?

That's a great question.

I did not ask that question.

Um, where, where, where were you?

Well, I will say this.

I, I made the same statement to them.

I, I, I, you know, I, I was talking with, uh, with Dave Russell and I,

I, I was just with him and I, and I spoke privately also to Anton about

I. Dude, I'm super excited about this.

This is so awesome.

I'm so excited.

Like, it was funny, like even to them, they, this wasn't like, this wasn't

what they were leading with to me.

I was like, it was the only thing I was care.

I wanna talk about this and I'm super excited about it.

And, and, and I made that comment about like, I think every they, I.

They, they seem to think that where will, where it will primarily take off

is in the new customer acquisition and the MSPs and, you know, these, these

kind of things because people, vendors will be able to package it right.

Um, and sell it as an actual appliance.

And, um, so they, um.

Uh, but when I said, I think every Veeam customer should make this

thing, they didn't say, oh, wait.

Oh, we we're not ready to do that, or anything like that.

So I'm assuming they have a plan.

I just forgot to ask 'em about it.

Yeah.

this is awesome.

I think it's gonna make a huge difference and hopefully we'll.

Stop hearing so much about ransomware, uh, gangs attacking Backup servers as

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I know you mentioned Curtis.

The vendor other partners can now integrate.

Mm-hmm.

that came out was, uh, they had, uh, scalie made an announcement that they've

now shipping an appliance to hardware appliance where they can take their

scalability object storage, plus add in the Veeam backup server and package

it all into one box for customers who want something simple and ease of use.

Yeah.

And so that leverages this appliance, right?

The software appliance.

And, uh, I, I think that's great, right?

Because, you know, as, as you know, I'm a big fan of, of

object-based storage for backups.

Yeah.

Um, I like this idea.

Go ahead.

yeah, and it is interesting because I think it gives them something

to compete with the Cohesity and the rubrics of the world.

I think it very much does.

Yeah, exactly.

Es especially, um, especially, well scalability would be the

one, I guess, directly competing at that point, but yeah.

Scalability and Veeam together, right?

Yeah.

And, and th this is, I'm sure this is one I I know they, they hinted at some

other vendors that would be coming out.

I'm sure that this is one of many vendors that are gonna, that are gonna do that.

Yep.

Yeah, so it was a pretty big show.

Um, and um, it was so hard for me to get there and back.

But

Oh, Curtis.

yeah, it was, uh, it was, it was, it was nice to be able to drive to a trade show.

All right, well thanks for letting me chat about, uh, VeeamOn 2025.

Thank you for giving us that update and for catching stories that may not have

been covered in, uh, the other articles.

So,

Absolutely.

All right, well thank you for our listeners.

Uh, you know, you're, why we do this.

That is a wrap.