VMworld 2017

This was as I expected, the busiest day sessions wise for me. There was so much good stuff I had to be a little ruthless on what I wanted and or needed to attend while also wanting to get into the solutions exchange.

Also at the end of the day the customer appreciate party was scheduled so that was something I was looking forward to a great deal (Hint - Kaiser Chiefs)

Transforming Networking and Security for the Digital Era

Wednesday morning I attended the Network and Security keynote which, if I’m honest, I found to be a bit boring. To be fair, it was probably aimed at business leaders and maybe not those that are technical. There were three customer stories, but I would have liked to have heard much more about the problems that NSX solved for them specifically, rather than being datacenter transformation/cloud journey stories that included NSX. For me, it felt like there was nothing new in the presentation that hadn’t been covered in the general sessions. I would have liked to have seen and heard a bit more what the NSBU’s leadership think is going to be big over the next 5 years.

I was honoured to be asked to be part of VMware’s CrowdChat for the general sessions this year, the idea being to live-tweet the General Session as it progressed. I’ve tried to embed the session from CrowdChat itself below, but it might be blocked by your browser for running unsafe scripts. You can also see the commentary on the Day Two General Session here .

[http://www.via-cc.at/657sc]

I managed to dodge the rainstorms in the morning before arriving, the hotel being just across the road from the Venue was a huge help (Thank you Xtravirt )

The main session was great particularly HCX announcement and the VR admin demo.

I then hit the solutions exchange as soon as it opened. There are all the usual suspects there -except- Cisco (anyone know why?)

It was also great to see the guys from Blue Medora .

Sunday

Arriving in early on Sunday as the local flight choices are more limited from Bristol than perhaps a larger Airport, very fortunate to have a hotel so close to the VMworld venue, perhaps not so great for the evening activities but I am happy with it this way around.

Other than registration (4pm-8pm) and hopefully catching up with a few folk who have also arrived early.

In the evening I had the pleasure to meet many awesome people from the vCommunity.

It will be no surprise, given my impending move to the VMware PSO NSX Practice , that this morning I’ve been focussing on NSX-T. The two sessions I attended were the Introduction to NSX-T Architecture and Integrating NSX-T with Kubernetes. In a weird twist of scheduling, the Kubernetes session was before the introduction session, but it worked out OK.

I found the Kubernetes session really enjoyable and really felt like the speakers delivered a great overview of the integration and how they work together. I was pleasantly surprised with how familiar a lot of the concepts were, coming from an NSX-v and vRealize Automation background. It’s similar, but different! This is something I can really get my teeth into.

I was honoured to be asked to be part of VMware’s CrowdChat for the general sessions this year, the idea being to live-tweet the General Session as it progressed. I’ve tried to embed the session from CrowdChat itself below, but it might be blocked by your browser for running unsafe scripts. You can also see the commentary on the Day One General Session here.

[http://www.via-cc.at/057s1]

VMware vSAN 2017 Specialist Exam

I always like to take a discounted exam at VMworld, this year I opted for the VMware vSAN 2017 Specialist exam, which was released a few weeks ago. Having delivered quite a few vSAN based solutions over the last few years, I was fairly confident in the blueprint. I am pleased to say that I passed the exam with a score of 422, way higher than I expected! I thought the exam itself was fair, and covered and tested the basics of vSAN well. You definitely need to know the supported architectures and how storage policies effect and apply to the data on vSAN.

**a non-VMware employee! I am very much looking forward to meeting friends old and new during the week, so if you see me come say hi!

Where can you find me?

During the day I’m likely to be found in the bloggers area, or hanging around the vBrownbag stage, when I’m not in a session. Monday evening I’ll be leading a fearless team of hackers for the VMware {Code} Hackathon, hoping to create something cool! Tuesday evening I will be at the vExpert party, and Wednesday is the VMworld Customer Appreciation Party (I’m pretty excited to see Kaiser Chiefs play!). This year I’ve opted to fly back on Thursday morning and see my wife and kids, so I won’t be about.

Having missed last years VMworld I feel very ready for attending the EMEA VMworld in Barcelona.

I almost felt annoyed about missing last year as the big announcements really caused a stir in the community and wider afield. (VMware on AWS) The announcements from the US VMworld this year were equally exciting so I am very keen to hear what else VMware has planned to reveal in a Barcelona.

I have put a good deal of effort into planning what I will be doing and attending to maximise my time there without burnout (Veterans I hear you laughing)