I’ve been in the IT field for a long time now and doing well for myself. I’m pushing 40 now and it’s made me look back on things and made me more appreciative of a lot of it. Many things that seemed not too long ago were actually... long ago. As funny as it sounds, one of those things is Veeam and this wonderful community.

I first put hands on keyboard with Veeam almost 10 years ago now in August of 2015. I started working for a local MSP that specialized in servicing foundations and organizations in the healthcare space, specifically for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. One of the Senior Sysadmins, Scott, began training me up on something I had never heard of before - Veeam. Although Veeam backup and recovery was a smaller part of my role it was crucial in two ways. One was seeing how a solid data protection platform like Veeam does more than just protect data. It protects people, patients, individuals. A file lost, or report deleted, a ransomware attack encrypting files… these weren’t just 1s and 0s. I joke that seeing Veeam in action at this level “radicalized” me when it comes to data protection - seeing it in action at a very human level where outcomes mattered most, not just because of a dollar and cents impact on a bottom line because of down time but because it ultimately protected human beings. Second, Veeam was crucial because it put me on my current career path. The things I learned from those I worked with in this role gave me my real start with Veeam and poured the foundation for my professional development.

In 2017 I moved into a Sysadmin role with another company where I used Veeam with a fellow Sysadmin, Jesse, to overhaul an aging backup and recovery strategy of another product. We used Veeam for physical tape backups, VTLs in AWS, Backups and Backup Copy jobs to NAS locally and at our DR site. It was some of the most fun I ever had. Jesse and I found out about a “Veeam User Group” in New York City. We gave it a shot and were hooked. I remember filling up a notebook with so many ideas. We started discussing all the things we wanted to try and implement on the way back to the office feeling empowered. 

In 2019 I found my way to a Cloud Service Provider, Opti9, that heavily specialized in Veeam. I learned even more and had more great mentors like Joe and Sagi. I got my hands on replication and Veeam Cloud Connect. It was like drinking from a firehose, but it was incredible being able to work on so many different things and protecting so many different kinds of environments and use cases. It was in this role that I would really be exposed to the larger Veeam community. I met other Veeamers, attended VeeamON and talked with Vanguards. I also built amazing relationships with our Veeam partners like Sean and Marty. The Vanguards were like juggernauts in my eyes - the real deal! With a lot of encouragement and help I decided to apply to become a Vanguard myself. I was overwhelmed with excitement when I got accepted, but also nervous. The nervousness went away quickly - I’ve never been a part of a community that was so welcoming. It wasn’t just talking shop - we talked about life, personally and professionally. If you had a problem or project you were working on you could ask questions and everyone seemed so eager to help and held an actual interest in what you were doing. I remember talking with Brad for what felt like hours about Hyper-V and walking away feeling that sense of empowerment again.

Eventually I would find myself as the Manager of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery here at Opti9 Technologies with new mentors like Andrew and Matt. I’m now able to help empower users to protect their own enterprise, small business, or non-profit. I can help coworkers develop technically and professionally for success using Veeam as the vehicle. Beyond all this though, I’m able to provide for my family and as cheesy as it sounds it’s because of Veeam - this community and those who mentored me around it along the way. Almost ten years on and as I reflect on all those years, I see the human impact Veeam has had on me and my personal life, and that mentorship in this community never stops it only grows.

Last year I was asked to attend the Boston Veeam User Group to help out. I helped present alongside the amazing Emilee Tellez and though I was intimidated at first, I quickly found myself at ease as I spoke and found my passion coming forth. Here I was now on the other side of the table from my first VUG experience, but now I was the one hopefully empowering others to fill up their notebooks with ideas as they rushed back to start tinkering and protecting. I was floored when I was asked to be the next Boston VUG Leader. I accepted and I’m working on planning our next event in Boston and I hope to see some of you there! I’m so excited for this next chapter of my Veeam journey.

If you’ve managed to make it through all of my rambling this far… thank you, and I hope you take away that Veeam truly is more than just a data protection platform - it is empowerment. Empowerment in a community, empowerment via protecting the workloads that support and give voice to so many people, empowerment for the sysadmin that needs a rock-solid solution so he or she can sleep at night, empowerment to the small business that cannot afford downtime, empowerment to the guys and girls trying to make a living like myself that have a passion for protecting data.