Hi Folks,
This week we will talk with someone who I think should be nicknamed Mr. Video Architect! Many of you will know Matt Price from his time at Veeam doing enablement. I have seen some of those great educational videos, but I always assumed that the stars on camera had no idea of the technicalities involved in creating high-quality video content. That is not the case with Matt, who could probably get a part-time gig in a film studio if he wanted! Apart from being a pro running the camera he is also an expert with Veeam software and that is what we will focus on here today.
Geoff:
Hi Matt, It is great having you participate in this series. One of the reasons I started this effort was to help others get to know on a personal level some of the best Veeam Software architects out there. Michael Cade, Luca Dell’Oca, Rasmus Haslund, Micheal Paul , and many others are all well-known faces. I think after sitting down and talking to them, we now know a lot more about them and how they got to where they are today. I know you are humble guy, but you are definitely in that category as well. Your work doing enablement at Veeam means a whole generation of Veeam users equates your name with Veeam expertise.
How did you get started in IT? Was that your first career choice?
Matt:
Thanks, Geoff! I really appreciate you including me in your amazing series!
I have always been a techie! I first got started as a young kid on my very first computer, a Tandy 1000. This was pre-3.5” drives! From there, I advanced to a 486, where I was able to set up and run my very own Bulletin Board System (BBS) using a dedicated POTS (plain old telephone service) line & a 14.4k modem in my parents dining room 
It was here that I really gained an appreciation for security as I had a malicious user, even in the early 90’s, drop to CLI and format my entire system. Lots of work, no backups, no security, just a blinking white cursor letting me know I had failed to protect my time. Never again! It was then that my appreciation for solid backups & security was instilled in me!
Fast forward to my professional career, I first got into IT professionally by running the IT infrastructure for a check-cashing business. Being an IT Director gave me a wide range of opportunities to develop skills across several areas, such as software, hardware, communications, customer service, etc. Speaking of communications, I then moved to a telecommunications company specializing in emerging VoIP infrastructure. Ironically, guess who was a customer? Veeam! I was actually managing the Veeam account and started chatting a lot with Veeam because, sadly, the VoIP service wasn’t stellar, to put it nicely It was then I decided to make a change and join Veeam in February of 2012 as an Inside Systems Engineer! The rest is history
Since I have the virtual mic for a quick moment, I just wanted to give a special thank you to Jose Mendoza. This guy has bled green from the day we met, always puts his employees before himself and took a chance on me having virtually zero (see what I did there) virtualization experience being an engineer for a software company selling data protection software for virtualized vSphere environments! Thanks again, Jose.
Geoff:
I have to say I think that you are the first person in this series who I have interviewed who ran their own BBS. For folks who missed this incredible time in the evolution of IT BBS were like forums somewhat. You would dial up with your modem for free and could find all sorts of information. It was wild and wonderful and being what I believe used to be called a "Sys Op" correct me if I am wrong, was a badge of distinction.
To have dealt with a malicious user who deleted data that far back would, to say the least, classify you as a true veteran of the data protection world.
Joining Veeam in 2012 also means you were center stage for the Veeam golden years. Could you tell us what that was like? How much did Veeam change during that time? How did your journey at Veeam evolve? Many of us know Matt Price from the many enablement videos we have all seen, but how did you get to that point?
Matt:
You hit the nail on the head with the BBS! In fact, you could logon and play games as well, albeit they super rudimentary I remember it being such a BIG day when I finally got 2 dedicated lines of my own haha..
Veeam in 2012 was right there in the thick of major award-winning releases, such as Instant VM Recovery and SureBackup. The whole idea of running an actual server directly from a backup in minutes was, let’s be honest, GAME-CHANGING! This flipped the whole recovery world on its head. No more waiting hours on bulk-data restores while you twiddle your thumbs waiting for servers/services to come back online; that was a thing of the past! Being an SE in the early days was such a delight! I can’t tell you how many times I would hear, “Really?! No way..” I would then pull up the vSphere client (VI thick back then ), I would show them the VM gets created and then powered on seconds later, followed by a live/working console! Sometimes, seeing is believing, and this was a sight to see. Fast forward through the years, I watched Veeam continue to disrupt the market, with new enhancement after new innovation, year in and year out! Hats off to Anton Gostev & team. They are all brilliant minds behind the Veeam code! Later in my tenure, around 2018-2019, a new branch was established inside the greater Veeam org (Sales Acceleration). Jose, who I mentioned previously, took the lead on running the technical enablement team and was asked if he had any SEs he wanted to bring. I joined forces with him to start the technical enablement branch with the goal of further enhancing not only our own internal engineers but also the partner engineers and end users who were looking for best practices and new ways to leverage the world-class software they had purchased. This is how the Veeam How-To video series was launched! In addition to the How-To video content, I also helped with VMCE/VMCA development & delivery.
Geoff:
Your story about wowing customers with new Veeam features, I think, can be echoed throughout the support, especially in the Veeam service provider world. I witnessed the exact same reactions when showing instant recovery or instant restore to Hyper-V from a Veeam Agent backup, which effectively resulted in P2V restores. (As if my memory serves me correctly, instant restore/recovery was at first only Hyper-V came first), the list goes on. We all have to work, but when you get people genuinely thanking you, it makes things so much better and so much more fun.
If you have one, what is your favorite Veeam feature and why? You can have more than one.
Matt:
My favorite Veeam feature.. Hmm. There are so many, but I would have to say SureBackup has been and is still my single-favorite Veeam capability. Why? Because testing recoveries is done WAY too little in today’s world. What scares me the most is, so much emphasis is put into diversifying backup data, which I do wholeheartedly agree with. That said, NONE of those copies are worth anything if they haven’t been tested & verified before they are diversified. Veeam realized this was a significant and under-leveraged activity in data protection. Many organizations don’t have the manpower to bring someone in over the weekend, for example, or they lack the extra infrastructure to be able to have a true test/dev separate environment. Veeam solved all of that with the Virtual LAB technology that enabled SureBackup to shine! Thanks to Instant Recovery, they took that one step further and allowed users to fire up servers directly from backups, but not into production where conflicts would occur. Instead, they create an isolated bubble inside the existing infrastructure which allows customers an isolated area to test in. Resources scarce? Not to worry, as these VMs can be resource throttled, so that super hungry 64GB of RAM SQL servers can be throttled down to say, 8GB, because, after all, the primary goal of SureBackup is to ensure recoverability of the server, verify networking connectivity and check that certain apps are responding on appropriate ports, not to mimic full performance. Brilliant design! Still an all-star in my book!
Geoff:
Finally, the future and predictions are always a tricky business, but people need to be aware and prepared for various possible scenarios. One thing that has caused a lot of awe and fear recently is the advancements in AI. As technology people there is always a worry that the powers that be might try to replace the human with the cheaper machine. What is your opinion about that? Should we be scared for our jobs?
Matt:
Ahh, the infamous two-letter acronym taking the world by storm, Apple Intelligence.. j/k I think AI definitely has a place in today & tomorrow’s future; however, to be a little corny and quote a Spiderman reference, ‘With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility.’ We have to be vigilant and ensure the digital workers don’t become the overlords. There are plenty of things that can be drastically improved with AI, in fact, I just spoke about this the other day on our Zero Gravity show with weather forecasting. I think as long as we approach AI with caution, realize it’s a tool to assist humans, not replace them, we have a bright future with AI. We have all seen how the movie ends when that isn’t respected! #skynet
Geoff:
What technologies are you excited about?
Matt:
There are lots of exciting new & emerging technologies. I’m a huge fan of blockchain tech, being a crypto enthusiast myself. Blockchain has a wide range of use cases today & tomorrow. In addition to blockchain, augmented reality I think has a huge future. Google Glass was just a bit too early to the party, but the idea of walking around with a normal pair of glasses (or, who knows, contacts further into the future) where you can simply go about your daily life with helpful insights without having to pull out your phone sounds super exciting. Think Siri/Alexa/Google, but instead of pulling your phone out or talking to your watch like Dick Tracey, you simply look, at say a store, and say, “When do they open?” And based on visuals & GPS location, it shows you visually the answer vs. speaking it back in a clunky voice. Lots of promise there I think
Geoff:
If you could give people just coming into the field of IT some advice what would that be?
Matt:
Don’t be intimidated by others’ knowledge or where you are in your journey. You also don’t have to have a degree in a technical field if you have a passion for technology. Dig in, learn, be curious, and don’t be afraid to get hands on with tech. My single-best investment I ever made in myself to help learn technology was building my very own home LAB. It’s one thing to hear others talk about tech, and see others’ infrastructures on calls, but never truly realizing how it got to that point. The ability to look at a blinking white cursor and have to learn & figure out, “okay, now what?!” is truly how you become a wizard at your craft. Hands on, just do it!!
Geoff:
Thanks Matt, great answers and words of wisdom!
By the way folks if you want to see Matt’s video skills in action and have a fun time watching about IT and Technology topics in general make sure to visit here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIi-WYFWGZlseKlrrCTtYuA
