What is Backup Academy?

Last week I was asked by Rick Vanover to review a new community project he was putting together called Backup Academy.  The site, located at www.backupacademy.com, is dedicated to IT and Storage professionals who are looking to learn the basics of performing backups and recovery of a virtual environment.  This site is product / vendor neutral and is supported by experts in their respective fields.

Backup Academy greets you with an introductory video that is narrated by Rick as well as an introduction to all 5 current professors.  The initial group offers information from the following people:

 

These 5 experts have put together a total of 8 videos that cover a variety of backup and restoration topics:

    • Why virtual machine backups are different?
    • Core technologies used for virtual machine backup
    • Disaster recovery of VMware workloads
    • Backing up enterprise applications: Transaction consistency is key
    • Restore capabilities of VMware backups
    • VMware backup integrity tools
    • Best practices for VMware backups
    • Best practices for Hyper-V backups

Once you have completed these videos, you should have enough knowledge to earn you Backup Academy Certification.  This simple 35 question exam covers the material reviewed in the videos and ensures a basic understanding of backup and restore technologies in a virtual world.  I was able to pass the exam on my first try and I am now Backup Academy Certified.

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So I urge you all to checkout the website and learn as much as you can from the videos.  If you think you have something to offer in return, feel free to apply to be a professor.