Here we are again. VMworld 2018 in Las Vegas, THE tech conference of the year for all people, customer, partner dealing with VMware technology.
When I began to use/learn about VMware technologies on a professional level in the year 2010 all of the use cases were around the customers on-prem datacenter. Since than a lot has changed and VMware made a transition to offer enterprise-solution within a very broad spectrum for all kind of use cases. VMware is a key player on the digital transformation for many enterprises.
The following post should give you a short summary about 2018s development in certain fields and which people/session you definitely should have a look at during VMworld US. Go to their session, follow them on twitter and maybe there will be chance to have a private chat during this years conference. Just as a small hint: If you follow persons in real-life in a weird way… that’s stalking! :D
Please be aware of that this is a biased personal perspective on the relevant sessions and people. There are many other great persons out there ;-). Where to find the people? VM Village Social Media Booth, VMTN Tech Talks, Their Sessions, Eye Candy Bar in the center of the Mandalay Bay Casino late at night.
There are much more community events on Twitter. Just search for #vSoccer, #vBeards, #vFIT (That’s sports acutally), #vBreakfest and many many many more.
So far 2018 has been a interesting year from a product release perspective. Let me tell you about a few products and which session/people might be interesting to follow. As every year I expect all the sessions to be available only shortly after VMworld has taken place.
vSphere:
vSphere 6.7 has been released including a lot of management scaleability, API and Security improvements. Especially the recent announced L1TF bugs around Intel x86 CPUs are something where a lot of expertise can be found during the conference.
Which session to visit?
vSphere Platform Security Update [VIN1305BU]
ESXi Security – A Step Ahead [VIN2762BU]
Meet the vSphere Experts Panel [VIN3032PU]
Deep Dive: Supporting Microsoft Virtualization-Based Security with vSphere [VIN1304BU]
vSphere Security Deep Dive: Supporting TPM and Virtual TPM 2.0 [VIN1303BU]
vCenter Server with expert Emad Younis [MTE5010U]
Nerds with Appliances: vCenter Server Migration [VIN2410BU]
Journey to vCenter Server Availability and Recoverability [VIN2405BU]
Which person to follow?
After one of Emads and Adams session during last years VMworld ago I have received one of the rare and great #migrate2vCSA you must – Yoda tshirts. I had the honor during one of #VCDX #Wolfpack organized party to had a chat with Adam as well about the greatness and difficulties of the vCenter – its appliance and its former SSO characteristics.
Emad Younis @emad_younis
Mike Foley @MikeFoley
William Lam @lamw
Adam Eckerle @eck79
PowerCLI:
PowerCLI has been released for version 10.20. Since the transformation to Powershell Modules and the integration within the Powershell gallery the operations around PowerCLI has become pretty awesome. And you know what’s the best? You can use PowerCLI also on Mac OS and Linux with Powershell core. Keep in mind automation buddies. On Windows we remain with the .NET variant of Powershell (5.0) when dealing with PowerCLI!!!
Btw. Just in time a cool new fling has been released: code capture. Just like Onyx this little tool captures actions made in the vSphere Client (html5) and produces PowerCLI code out of it. Best start to capture and replay tasks -> Automate all the things!!!
Which session to visit?
PowerCLI with Kyle Ruddy [MTE5007U]
Start Automating All the Things with PowerCLI [VIN2661BU]
A Deep(er) Dive with PowerCLI 10 [VIN1992BU]
Using PowerCLI for Devops with expert Kyle Ruddy [MTE5063U]
Mac and Linux Users, Don’t Despair: PowerCLI Is There! [VIN1709BU]
Which person to follow?
No matter how long you have worked with Powershell and PowerCLI – If you try to get into a deep talk about it with Kyle or Luc Dekens your mind will defintly throw some smoke/flames. I met Luc at multiple times at the blogger table and had some fantastic chats with him. And if you don’t know what to say – say thank you -> Whenever you have solved a PowerCLI problem with help of google the probability is nearly 99% that Luc helped you here.
Kyle Ruddy @kmruddy
Luc Dekens @LucD22
Alan Renouf @alanrenouf
vRealize Operations:
vRealize Operations has been improved to version 6.7 during this year. The product team has made some great improvements made regarding out-of-the box functionality and dashboards. Especially the idea of creating a community based shared dashboard repository is a pretty powerful operations tool.
Which session to visit?
What’s New in vRealize Operations Manager and vRealize Log Insight [SPL-1901-01-CMP_U]
Tales from the Trenches: Realizing the Full Value of vRealize Operations [MGT1336PU]
Operationalize Your World: Practical Steps Toward Proactive Operations [MGT1440BU]
Automating Troubleshooting with vSphere Operations Manager [VMTN5522U]
Which person to follow?
Oh men – I never met Iwan and Sunny during VMworld before. I hope this will change this year. I am a fan of vROPS eventhough it has its weaknesses and would love to thank them for their community and product work to improve the product over the years.
Thom Green will have an interesting session this year about vROPS. I met him last year after the concert when walking from the T-mobile arena back to the Mandalay Bay where we had a few drinks in the crowd at the Eye Candy bar.
Iwan Rahabok @e1_ang
Sunny Dua @Sunny_Dua
Thom Greene @tbgree00
Horizon 7:
Aligned to the seasons of the year VMware is offering a new Horizon version. This year has been amazing integrating features like session collaboration, help desk tool improvements and further enhancements for the remote protocol blast extreme and the usage of vGPU.
Which session to visit?
VMware Horizon 7 Enterprise – Security, Operations and Troubleshooting [SPL-1951-05-VWS_U]
Troubleshooting Your Horizon 7 Deployment [WIN3523BU]
Is Anyone reading this here at all?! Twitter about it if you Do! [WTF312FL]
Powershell for Horizon View [VMTN5594U]
EUC Champions Panel: Everything You Were Afraid to Ask About VDI [WIN3530PU]
Designing for the Unexpected: Delivering IT on a Boat with VMware Horizon [VIN2650BU]
Which person to follow?
Nearly all persons mentioned here are part of the EUC Champions Panel where I will attend on Monday during VMworld. So if you want to meet us -> Go to the session. I guess all of them will be Brian Madden’s event in the Luxor on Tuesday evening to have freestyle EUC chats.
So far I have never met Wouter Kursten, but this will change this year. He will be delivering some sessions about the Horizon PowerCLI module and will join the #vSoccer session on Tuesday night. So if you want to play with us (yeah I am playing as well) you can register here.
Sean Massey @seanpmassey
Wouter Kursten @Magneet_nl
Brian Madden @brianmadden
Eduardo Molina @molikop
Dane Young @youngtech
Workspace One:
Workspace One is getting more and more important. Getting rid of a pure mobile device management solution (called Airwatch) towards a managed any-endpoint solution called Workspace One Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (including Windows 10, MacOS, Mobile Devices). Workspace One 9.6 has recently been released and includes many new capabilities (check them out here: https://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2018/08/whats-new-in-workspace-one-uem-9-6.html)
Which session to visit?
The Digital Workspace Keynote: End User Computing and Mobility Live! [DW3727KU]
Beyond Horizon 7: Moving to a Digital Workspace with Workspace ONE [WIN3480BU]
Digital Workspace Transformation Best Practices from the Field [LDT2188PU]
Which person to follow?
Shawn Bass is the CTO and VP of VMware’s EUC division. I have never met him in persons, but his session and visions have been quite enlightened. I am really looking forward to the EUC keynote since in the era of EUC a lot of huge changes are coming to us. Jens and Reinhard are good colleagues of mine that are totally into the Workspace One story, delivering a lot of systems and trainings to customers within EMEA. So if you want to know more about their experience, contact them…. Where to find them? There is comdivision team at the hackathon on Monday and we can definitely be found from time to time at the eye candy bar :D. Schedule the event in the schedule builder and register for the hackathon here.
Shawn Bass @shawnbass
Jens Hennig @hennig_jens
Reinhard Partmann @rpartmann
vCloud Director:
#Longlivevcd -> vCloud Director has made an interesting developement over the last years. Being demoted and promoted multiple times, VMware is now pushing a lot of effort into enabling VMware’s Service Provider to quickly offer multi-tenant Infrastructure-as-a-Service and managed-services on top of the platform. vCloud Director 9.1 has moved ahead in integrating NSX and html5-ui functionalities while starting to enable integration with vRealize Orchestration workflows and self-developed UI-Extensions .
Especially the new VMware Cloud Provider Pod can be used by Service Provider to easily deploy a fully validated (and documented) vCloud environment within a short amount of time.
Which session to visit?
Introducing VMware Cloud Provider Pod [HYP1499BU]
Extend vCloud Directory with vRealize Orchestrator with Joerg Lew [MTE5106U]
Which person to follow?
Joerg Lew is Mr. Orchestrator. A great guy that is very knowledgable with a little gap in his dancing skills…. :P Yves and Matthias are great persons that have an unbelievable knowledge about most of the SDDC components. Catch us at the hackathon if you want to have a chat. A little hint: Bribe Matthias and Yves with a beer, steak or gin-tonic and they will get chatty :)
Yves Sandfort @yvessandfort
Wade Holmes @wholmes
Joerg Lew @JoergLew
Matthias Eisner @matthiaseisner
Book:
I know, I know: Book isn’t a VMware product. Giving the section here the name book is not a good type of language usage at all :). Within the last weeks 2 books has been released that are a must read for people in our industries. With Clustering Deep Dive 6.7 another master piece has been created that gives us insight in HA/DRS/IO-Control. For all the EUC and VDI huggers the VDI Design Guide has finished just in time for VMworld to make sure we all follow a common design-methodology when creating Horizon 7 environments. Seriously: Get your copy right now !!
Which session to visit?
vSphere Clustering Deep Dive, Part 1: vSphere HA and DRS [VIN1249BU]
vSphere Host Resources Deep Dive: Part 3 [VIN1738BU]
Clustering Deep Dive 2: Quality Control with DRS and Network I/O Control [VIN1735BU]
Which person to follow?
Duncan Epping @DuncanYB
Frank Denneman @FrankDenneman
Niels Hagoort @NHagoort
Johan van Amersfoort @vhojan
If you want Duncan Epping, Frank Denneman and Niels Hagoort in Person. Check the book-signing on Monday between 17:00 and 18:00 at the @rubrikInc booth.
Johan (and his book) can be found on Monday (27th) at the VMworld bookstore at 10:30AM, Tuesday at 1:30PM at the NVIDIA booth, on Wednesday at 11:00AM at the VMUG booth and on Wednesday 11:30PM drunk at the casino floor.
I am really sorry for all those other great guys I havent mentioned here that also have sessions. vBrain aka Fred will made all the way from Austria to the US VMworld to enjoy Vegas and have a VMTN tech talk. I am also looking forward to meet Steve, Marc / virtualhobbit and Katarina again (Men have I got drunk last year after arriving from the airport and heading directly to the bar to meet some of the vCommunity). If you want to know what Marc and Kata have done on a boat -> Check the recommendation I made earlier in the Horizon section ;-).