VeeamON 2024 Recap

INTRO

Last week in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, VeeamON 2024 took place, as every year the most awaited and important event organized by Veeam Software.

This year’s event was particularly rich in announcements, and there was really no lack of surprises.

Lots of demos and technical sessions, though not all available for those like me who followed everything remotely.

Veeam’s vision continues to focus on data resilience through 5 main strategies: Data Backup, Data Freedom, Data Recovery, Data Security, and Data Intelligence.

WHAT’S NEW

Starting to explore Data Backup, the core part dedicated to protecting and saving data, new versions of some solutions were officially presented.

  • Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager (oVirt): native support for OLVM, a KVM-based virtualization platform, has been available already since a few weeks
  • Proxmox VE: announced a few weeks ago the compatibility with this virtualizer, during VeeamON 2024 the first demo was presented, with the Veeam solution that promises to be 3 times faster than the native backup solution. The official release is scheduled for next Q3 2024
  • VBA v7: some new features for the future version of Veeam Backup for Azure announced, including the introduction of support for Cosmos DB
  • Veeam Backup for AWS v8: new features also for the Amazon cloud backup solution, introducing, for example, support for Redshift and Fsx
  • VBM365 v8: many new features also for Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, coming out probably next Q3 2024, including MFA for console, proxy pools, immutability for backup, restore operator audit in Veeam ONE
  • Veeam Backup for Salesforce v3: additional features for this solution as well, where support for data encryption, data archive and data pipeline will be introduced
  • K10 v7: of course, it could not be missed an overview of the new version of Kasten, which includes, among others, support for FIPS-Enabled Clusters, for Azure Blob Immutability and for VMs on Openshift

We now turn to the surprises, which, as anticipated, were not lacking. Notable among the new features announced were, without a doubt:

  • VBR server on Linux OS starting with v13, with the specific capabilities of native zero trust architecture, and support for HA of Config DB, which will add that level of resilience and automation to the software that to today was lacking
  • Enter ID Backup, a solution that will be intergrated into Veeam B&R, to protect data, such as users, groups and app registrations, from Microsoft’s cloud-based identity/access management solution (Q4 2024)
  • Mongo DB Plugin, which will increase the package of natively supported enterprise applications (Q3 2024)
  • Lenovo TruSacle Backup, which will intregrate Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam ONE into Lenovo ThinkSystem solutions for on-premise backups


In addition, as we know, Veeam has recently expanded its range of solutions by introducing fully SaaS services, further explored at this three-day event, including:

  • Veeam Data Cloud for M365, a preconfigured Microsoft 365 backup solution with a predictable cost model (per user/unlimited space)
  • Veeam Data Cloud for Azure, native and optimized backup solution for Microsoft Azure
  • Veeam Vault, fully managed cloud storage, with flat/TB rates, including api call charges and any outbound traffic

We move on to the Data Freedom and Data Recovery strategies, which is Veeam’s ability to use its own format to move a piece of data from one platform to another, allowing it to bypass the so-called β€œvendor lock-in”.

In this section we can mention the announcement of more new features for the upcoming version of VRO (Veeam Recovery Orchestrator).

Regarding Data Security, that strategic component through which Veeam and its solutions help data to be resilient to increasingly frequent cyber attacks, much space was given to Coveware, a company specializing in incident response acquired by Veeam last April 2024.

In particular, the key role it can play in a Cyber Recovery phase was explored, as it offers services such as:

  • Assessment
  • Forensic Analysis
  • Identification of ransomware type and impact on the customer’s organization
  • Negotiation with cybercriminals
  • Incident remediation and documentation


Also in the area of Data Security, also worth mentioning is the new partnership with Palo Alto for SIEM integration.

Speaking of Data Intelligence, another big surprise presented was the formalization of the partnership with Microsoft for Copilot AI integration with Veeam solutions.

Finally, we must mention other improvements and developments announced on Veeam ONE, Veeam AI assistant, Linux Hardened Repository and Veeam Service Provider Console.

CONCLUSION

In short, there was a lot of news, and I’m sure there will be an opportunity to explore some of them in more detail in future posts..STAY TUNED! πŸ’š