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)

First up for me (and it was not a hard choice) was Iwan’s vROps session “Operationalise your world”. This was subject he usually covers in a day (workshop) so it was condensed right down to 1 hour but he did a great job in getting the message across about how to effectively monitor and bring real business value with vROps.

The session challenged vROps practitioners approach and also gave new ways to use the product to help deliver even better service to the users/customers.

If you want to learn more about this I would highly recommend visiting Iwan’s blog and search for the session video when it becomes available on the VMworld videos site.

Iwan dropping some serious vROps knowledge.

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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. (more…)

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.

On Wednesday I plan to spend some more time in the Solutions exchange to see what new cool and useful tech is on offer to help achieve customer goals.

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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.

My current focus has been on vRA so it was great to meet some well known and knowledgable.

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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.

Moving into the NSX-T architecture session, Kevin and Dimitri walked through the components and functions of NSX-T and demonstrated integration with OpenStack as a cloud management platform to automate deployments. Again I was pleased with the familiarity of all the concepts and terminology. (more…)

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.

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.

You can check out my new badge on Acclaim

VMware Code Hackathon

Having taken part and thoroughly enjoyed last year’s hackathon at VMworld Las Vegas, I was definitely keen to get involved with the event this year. When I signed up there were no teams that took my fancy, so I created my own based on PowerCLI and some of my pod deployment scripts.

I was joined by some really good guys who all put in a serious amount of work in the short time we had – most importantly we had a great time and learned a lot! We managed to get a mostly working deployment of vROps, a HTML5 interface for the script config and the beginnings of the PowerShell required to deploy OVF templates from the vSphere Content Library – the content library script is available on my GitHub account. I’m hoping to continue working on it to develop a module to contribute to the PowerCLI script examples.

This year I will be once again attending VMworld Barcelona with huge thanks to the vExpert program for my blogger pass. I love going to VMworld for many reasons, but this year will be my last as 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. (more…)

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)

This will also be the first time I get to go officially for my employer Xtravirt (previous years I have been lucky enough to self fund etc).

My focus this year on sessions will be vRealize Operations, vRealize Automation, VMware on AWS and vSAN. Although where possible I also hope to cram in some NSX (Hands on Labs) as well.

Also this year I will get to finally meet my vROps Webinar Brother Sunny Dua, this is something I am looking forward to a great deal and we also plan to record a webinar while at the event so watch this space! Sadly Sunny will not be able to make it to Barcelona so I shall have to wait a little longer to meet. The next webinar has been scheduled though and there will be a guest!

Another first for me will be to attend the VMworld EMEA Hackathon on the Monday evening. Up until now I have never attended a hackathon although I am always told they are a enjoyable and a great source of learning so when I was told (er I mean encouraged) to attend by Sam McGeown I registered. I am looking forward to what promises to be a really fun event.

Aside from the social activities which are always a very high standard I am looking forward to visiting the solutions exchange and checking out the latest tech that the vendors have to offer.

Finally but not least I am really looking forward to meeting old and new faces in the vCommunity so if you are attending VMworld this year and want to say hi, ping me on twitter it would be great to meet.