VeeamOn 2019 is scheduled for May 20th through the 22nd of this year. With all the other conference options available, you may be asking yourself why you should attend. The capabilities of the Veeam software offerings can make it one of the most vital parts of your environment. The information gained by attending such vendor conferences can make a large difference in the success of your company. Veeam software deals with Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery. Most companies don’t really know the importance of these two items until they need them. Many don’t know the difference between them. In the modern age, having your companies electronic presence disappear from the customers can mean the difference between success or failure. Reputation means a lot today. And, if you don’t think your company is a technology company, you may not be doing business much longer.
In my years of experience working with customers I have seen many unexpected and unseen reasons cause a data center outage. One customer was using a powder fire suppression system in their data center. Because it did not have a delay timer, they would disarm it during the day to prevent it going off with a person inside. One evening when they were rearming it, it discharged for no apparent reason. They could not see through the fog to see how the systems were running. They were ventilating their data center and it was taking too long, so they decided to open the false ceiling above the racks to increase airflow. When they did, all the warm, moist air above the tiles rushed in to the 60 degree datacenter and quickly became dew on the electrical equipment. They observed all of their UPSs fail and all of the systems powering off almost immediately. Their datacenter was offline until new UPSs could be obtained and all of their servers and storage dried off. A dehumidifier run on the data center removed about 2/3rds of a 55 gallon drum of water from a room just large enough to hold 5 racks.
Another customer experienced multiple data center outages before their Business Continuity plan was implemented. Living in Oklahoma we spend much of the spring observing the tornadoes. This particular customer was located in Moore, Ok. So, one was caused by the May 20th 2013 tornadoes where their data center suffered a direct hit. Another outage occurred when the panel where their commercial power entered the building caught fire interrupting commercial power. Their backup generator started, and subsequently sent its power to the same electrical panel, causing damage to the backup generator. They obtained quite a few gas powered generators and ran extension cords into the data center just to get back online. Someone had to add gas for over a week until the electrical panel could be replaced and commercial power restored.
In both of these examples, the customers did not have to recover their data. Once the systems in the data centers could be brought back online they were, and normal operations resumed immediately. In fact, the rack mounted systems hit by the tornado survived and were moved into another data center and restarted. But the customers involved were offline for more than 24 hours in these examples. What would happen to your company if all of your data were unavailable for over 24 hours? Both customers were able to prevent any major impacts but several of these outages occurred before data and internet became so important. It is impossible to protect yourself from outages caused by unexpected reasons. While tornadoes might have been expected, the other two reasons are not things most companies would consider.
VeeamOn will present you with the information that will help you to ensure that you are planning not just for Disaster Recovery but also considering your Business Continuity plan. What would you do if your data were unavailable for more than 12 hours? More than a day? Can your business survive an extended outage? These are all questions that the speakers and breakout sessions at this conference can help you to answer. The companies in the expo center can show you multiple ways to implement a Business Continuity plan and provide you with the tools to implement it. There are also 3 days of Veeam training leading up to the conference that can hone the skills of your technical personnel to ensure they have the knowledge to protect your company. Besides, who wouldn’t like a few days in Miami Beach!