Ken Ciolek

In this article I’m going to walk you through deploying a SOBR from scratch in my lab environment — not just the wizard clicks, but the design decisions, the gotchas, and the things I wish I’d known the first time I built one at scale. In recent years, before Veeam introduced direct-to-cloud capabilities, SOBR was

In this article, we’ll explore why backup validation matters and how you can validate backup integrity using Veeam Backup & Replication. A question I always ask customers. Do you test your backups? The answer I get is I don’t have the time or the resources. So, how do you know if the backup is good? Well,

Commvault is incredibly powerful. But that power comes with complexity—and complexity is where mistakes creep in. I’ve worked in enough environments to see the same patterns repeat: And most of the time, it’s not a product issue. It’s configuration. Here are 10 Commvault configuration mistakes I see all the time—and how to avoid them. 1.

You’ve probably heard the 3-2-1 rule a hundred times. Keep 3 copies of your data, on 2 different media types, with 1 copy offsite. It’s been the gold standard of backup strategy for years — and for good reason.

A question came up during a recent customer demo of Veeam I was hosting == Is a snapshot enough for a backup or do you need an actual backup. My answer was you should have both. In this post, we’ll break down exactly what snapshots and backups are, where each excels, where each fails, and

Testing new backup technologies in a lab is one of the best ways to understand how they will behave in a production environment. Recently, I deployed another use case for Ootbi (Out-of-the-Box-Immutability) from Object First and integrated it with Veeam Backup & Replication in a small lab environment. This environment will also be used as a use

In this article, I will explain Instant Recovery with Veeam, its functionality, and its significance. I’ll run through a quick demo (screenshots) of the Instant Recovery process with Veeam In today’s always-on digital environment, downtime isn’t just inconvenient—it’s expensive, disruptive, and sometimes catastrophic. Businesses are under constant pressure to ensure systems are available at all

This is my first blog, I’m a Team Lead and Sr. Solutions Architect for the Data Protection Practice at a Veeam partner. I work in their Solutions Lab where I provide pre-sales support and product demos for several data protection products including Veeam and Data Domain. I’ve created several Veeam demos with different use cases.  Steps

So, I have recently deployed Veeam in my lab. My Jobs are configured. Backups are running. Everything looks… green. Cool. Now comes the part most people skip—and regret later. Because here’s the reality: Day 1 is the best time to break your backup environment on purpose. If something’s going to fail, you want it to

In this article, I will talk about Recovering Fast after a Ransomware attack using Veeam. I have tested this in my lab and educated my customers on every demo on the importance of having this all-in place. You would be amazed at the responses I get and how unimportant backups seem to everyone until they’re