VMWORLD

I can tell from the ever-increasing urgency of emails from the events team that VMworld 2021 is just around the corner! Virtual conference event fatigue is real. I have attended and presented at many since the pandemic began, with varying levels of engagement. As an introvert, I can’t quite believe I’m saying this, but I can’t wait to get pack to meeting up with people in the real world! The value of a conference is super-charged by the mix of dedicated time, networking opportunities and quality live content.

Where can you find me at VMworld 2020 VMworld 2020 - possible together VMworld 2020 is fast approaching (Sept 29th-October 1st), and in case you hadn’t heard, it online and free! If you struggle getting funding for tickets and flights normally, this could be a golden opportunity to get involved! Register for VMworld 2020 for FREE here! Please come and talk to me for my round table session, it will be awkward by myself!

I did a quick search online and could not find a collated list so, by way of a quick summary from all the VMworld 2018 announcements and comments my good friend and PM for vRealize Operations Sunny Dua has made, I have collated a list of what we can expect to see in the next iteration of vROps (7.0). The list is in no order of interest or importance, some of the mentioned improvements have been long standing requests so enjoy and get hyped (I know I am).

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.

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 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!