Sep
4
VMworld 2011 – My Take
Filed Under Uncategorized, vCenter, Virtualization, VMware, VMware View, VMware Workstation, VMworld | Leave a Comment
My VMworld 2011 points
Now that VMworld 2011 is over, I wanted to share my experience of this year’s virtualization main event.
There were a couple of key points I wanted to make sure I got out of the conference. First, I wanted to get a further technical understanding in some areas I did not have alot of exposure to such as vCloud Director, vCenter Operations, and vCenter Chargeback. Second, I wanted to get a better understanding of how VMware is innovating around the application layer and the technologies associated with that area such as the vFabric product family. …And on one other note, I was very excited and impressed about the VMware AppBlast announcement. I can’t wait to dive in and peel back the layers on this technology to better understand it!
These areas were important to me because I believe it is going to be imperative for the many VMware Engineers out there to have an understanding of the Management & Automation capabilities and the Application layer technologies. The hypervisor is the foundation layer but it is going to be the layers higher in the stack that are beginning to really drive Cloud technology and innovation. This is apparent in VMware’s announcements and offerings. I’ll save further discussion on this topic for another blog post.
Social Scene
VMworld is an opportunity not just to attend sessions and labs but to meet people and become active in the virtualization community.
I had a great time meeting some of the key contributors in the VMware community. Although I met many in VMworld 2009, there seemed to be so many more two years later. In fact, several people I was hoping to bump into became just impossible with the enormity of the conference and busy schedules.
One nice thing is that the awesome VMUnderground party, Veeam party, CXI and others helped in meeting new people and seeing twitter friends etc.
Outside of attending sessions and gaining knowledge, I think this is what VMworld is about..the virtualization community.
The VMworld party was super crowded and The Killers were AWESOME!!
I didn’t attend the after pool party. Rather, I went and enjoyed a nice steak and wine at Delmonico Steakhouse to cap the evening. I just couldn’t bring myself to be herded to the pool area with 20,000 other people. BUT it would have been awesome to see @jtroyer take that dive into the pool! 
Last thoughts
This was my second VMworld (2009 was first) and it seems to get better every year. There are definitely some pain points with a large attendance of 20,000. Overall I thought VMware and the Venetian did a great job. The logistics behind this must have been incredible.
I really enjoyed the opportunity to attend VMworld this year. Once again, I want to thank Greg Stuart and sponsors for the opportunity to win the trip!
I hope to be a bigger contributor to the community and give back some to so many others that give so much in this community.
I’ll see everyone in San Francisco next year!
Sep
2
I’ve had a very busy VMworld so far dedicating time to networking and sessions. This evening I also had a full schedule on happy hour and parties. I started of the evening at the Thirsty Bear where the south central teams for VMware, Cisco, Intel, and Iland hosted the event. Later, I attended the WYSE party at the OLD MINT where there was great food, wine, and live performance. Check out my video from the OLD MINT.
Outside of the OLD MINT
Inside Edition
Flamenco Dancers
Sep
2
VMworld 2009 Datacenter
Filed Under VMware, VMworld | Leave a Comment
For anyone that is at VMworld you have heard of the datacenter that has been put together to support VMworld operations and labs.
For those that are not aware, there is a total of 512 Cisco UCS blades utilizing a unified fabric of Cisco MDS and Nexus 7000 gear including literally tons of storage from EMC and NetApp. Capable of taking on tens of thousands of VM’s and many many terabytes of storage.
37,248 Virtual machines on 776 Physical Servers
Cut power from 25Megawatts to 540 Kilowatts by virtualizing
Here is a short take of the implementation..
Sep
2
Monday Night Tweetup
Filed Under Virtualization, VMware, VMworld | Leave a Comment
I had a great time meeting many fellow bloggers and analysts from all over the world. Thanks mucho to John Troyer from VMware for putting together this event and making it possible. Here is a brief video of the happenings at the tweetup with me facing another flip from Joep towards the end of the video!
Sep
2
Blogger Table Before the Keynote from Yesterday
Filed Under Virtualization, VMware, VMworld | Leave a Comment
I took a video snippet of the Blogger table this morning for the VMworld keynote session.
I’ve never seen so many instances of tweetdeck running across laptops. It was great to meet everyone in the virtualization blogging community.
