Archive for the ‘VMworld’ Category

In this miniwag I chat to John Troyer, VMware Social Media guy… We chat about VMworld’s past and present, and how the VMware Community has evolved over the years.

Lee Dilworth is one of my main contact points for SRM in the UK – and reviewed all the SRM books to date. In this miniwag we chat about the new vSphere Replication feature…

In this miniwag I chat with Shannon Snowden about some of the sessions he’s attend her at VMworld. He attended a session about VDI and medical arena – which is Shannon’s area too…

In this miniwag from the VMworld Bloggers pen is with Alan Renouf (aka PowerCLIMAN) we chat about the new features in PowerCLI 5.0 and auto-deploy.

Kenny was one of the very first chinwaggers, and as a testiment to the power chinwag – he now works for VCE. We chat about vBlocks and how the industry is heading toward pre-assembled and pre-packages mix of storage, network and servers.

Eric is famous for his “scoops” – and this year he’s doing a session of myth busting. We talk about his inspiration for the session – and we chat about the use of distributed vswitches.

This miniwag is Steve Beaver. He’s a bit of legend in the VMware Community and one of old hands on the VMware Forums… We talk about the company he’s work with current which does network analyse who are getting into virtualization – and we talk about how much VMworld has changed since the early days.

This year I’m hanging out at the bloggers lounge doing mini-chinwags with folks who stop by and say hi. This one is with Tom Howarth, we talk about whether ESXi is “ready” for secure environments, vCenter on Linux…

If you have ever attended VMworld before – you’ll know that one of the top experiences are the VMware Labs. You know there’s an awful lot of talk and powerpoint at these kind of the events, and the VMware Labs offer an excellent chance to escape hot-air, and actually get your hands dirty with the technology. I think I will be doing a number myself as part of my research for the “Hotel California” book. It’s going to have a lot of technologies I’ve never ever touched before, and I see the VMware Labs as a good opportunity to dip my toe in the water – so to speak.

All labs are self-paced and walk-up. So there aren’t massive lines with labs only starting at set times. That’s a thing of the past. The labs are delivered though a dedicate “lab cloud”, and the lab guys who build this stuff are real pioneers within VMware. For example they were one of the first groups to use “nested ESX” – ESX inside a VM, to ease the spinning up of various environments. So if you like VMware Labs is a real example of VMware “eating its own dog food”…

Here’s a graphic that shows how the Labs are being delivered to Las Vegas…

You can see VMworld Labs by solution here: http://www.vmworld.com/community/conference/us/learn/sessions-labs

Here’s some exclusive behind the scenes views of the VMware Labs being built out… Great job, guys!

After doing my key labs I’m hoping to catch-up with subject matter experts at the Genius Bar. Despite my rather good contacts with VMware my links tend to be restricted to certain product silos – such as vSphere, View, SRM, vCD and vCHBS. But I know there are vast swathes of the company that I have little or no contact with. So I’m seeing this as chance to pick up a few business cards – to act as the first contact with those different product groups.

I’m pleased to announce that my a limited pre-publication or “rough cut” of my SRM 5.0 book will be available to purchase at VMworld in a hard copy format. You will need to be quick on your feet as there are only 200 copies of the book available. I understand a 30% discount will apply… and that anyone buying the book will qualify for a free digital download of the final work when it eventually GA’s.

I’m so pleased about this – as I think this a bit of scoup for me. Readers will know that RTFM generally has the most detailed coverage of new technologies from VMware on the “day-of-the-download”. Generally those works are free or at a very reasonable cost. I think this is the first time I’ve had something out before the actual GA of the product itself (that’s because I would normally have to respect beta NDAs). This time around the tie up with the VMware Press has allowed something I previously wouldn’t been able to do.

The other thing to mention is that there is a number of gatherings to mark the event. So you catch me at the vMeetUp at the Bloggers Lounge at VMworld between 10-11 on Monday. There will lots of luminaries from the VMware Community there as well.

I will be doing a book signing event on Wednesday, 1.00-1.30pm. So grab a copy of the book when you can, and get me to sign it at the book signing. Remember every book signed by me doubles its value on Ebay :-p

You can see preview chapters of the books in the VMware Press here:

Also there is a sweepstake that VMware Press is running to win a 3-book library of the three inaugural books that have been written for the VMware Press launch.