Author: lenzker

#VMworld 2018: Day 4 Summary Videolog

lenzker

VMworld 2018 in Las Vegas is over. I must admit: I think it was the best VMworld that I have ever attended. It has been so much fun doing a breakout session with my fellow EUC champions Sean Massey, Dane Young, Eduardo Molino and Brian Madden.

And you know what’s better than having a session? Having a session that people obviously liked. The survey showed that each of us had an average >4 out of 5 with an overall result of 4.14 (more details). It has been the first time I am doing such a panel discussion and I really enjoyed it. I need to do that more often to improve my capabilities in such a round.

If you want to watch the recorded session. Check it out here

Other social highlights have been the meet-up with the many many vExperts and other guys in our field. Besides the regular sessions I want to give a shoutout to Brian Madden who organized a great EUC forum on Tuesday evening and Cyndie Ziekmund who leads our EUC Champion program. She did a fantastic job in bringing the product people responsible for the Horizon and Workspace One products to us. We received access to road maps and deeper technical information, VMware gets feedback from people dealing with it on a regular base -> Win-Win if you ask me. I don’t need to add that the dinner afterwards at Strip Steak (mmhhh) has been fantastic as well.

Meeting up multiple times a year with all of the other comdivision guys has been awesome as well, especially when Yves Sandford surprised us with a great helicopter flight through the grand canyon on Saturday morning (instead of supposed to be legal meeting). Thanks for that. I could write so much more about this fantastic event, but hey… the title says #VMworld 2018: Day 4 Summary Videolog. So I assume I should deliver finally a video.

Here we go. I will add an additional one with further VMworld cutovers within the next week.

//You want to know my motivation behind those video where I do talk in a selfie mode? To be honest: I hate how I do it currently. I don’t like //the way I talk in front of a camera (I can barely watch it) and I want to improve it. So I will repeat that at certain occasions over the year //and if I think I still suck after next years VMworld. I will just leave it as it is.

It is time I will head back home! I had a great time (did I told anyone that my back still hurts from #vSoccer?!), but I am really exhausted. All of you still reading this, have a safe trip home and hope to catch up with some in Barcelona.

#VMworld US 2018: Datacenter and Cloud products, announcements and releases

lenzker

During (and around) the general session at VMworld 2018 (US) VMware has made clear that hybrid cloud is the way to go in the future.

The general session was focusing on the 4 so called super powers of technology.

  1. Cloud
  2. Mobile
  3. Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
  4. EDGE Computing

The keynote showed up how and with which products VMware is settling for remaining a digital player in the next century (tighter AWS cooperation, vSphere on ARM, hybrid / multi-cloud, Workspace One, Pulse) while keep the principle of doing good (for the people). Seriously a lot of good stuff in the pipeline.

People that were expecting news or announcements of the core products haven’t heard any news about them even though many have been refreshed

To make you aware of all kind of changes / new releases within the current product portfolio and the new I tried to summarize key elements of the new products or releases surrounding the #VMworld conference. I will add useful and good detailed blog posts of my fellow colleagues that have gotten into much deeper detail. Read more →

#VMworld 2018: Introducing VMware Cloud Provider Pod

lenzker

[DISCLAIMER]
The Cloud Provider Pod is a product that I was involved with since the beginning of the development phase. All information are accurate, but for sure some comments or opinions are biased ;-).
[/DISCLAIMER]

Within the session Introducing VMware Cloud Provider Pod Yves Sandfort and Wade Holmes presented a new VMware solution for VMware’s Cloud Service Provider Program (CSPP) (View the session online here). The goal of the Cloud Provider Pod is to easily enable service provider to setup a fully featured and supported vCloud Director environment based on the requirements of the service provider.

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#VMworld 2018 – Announcements for the VMware Cloud Provider Program (#VCPP)

lenzker

Just in time for this years VMworld VMware has updated key products around their cloud portfolio for service provider. Within the VMware Cloud Provider Program (CSPP) a Service Provider can use VMware’s technologies and offer public IT services for their customer, while being charged only for the workload that is used (and therefore sold) to the customer.

Using the SDDC stack (vSphere, NSX, vSAN, vRealize) and integrate it within vCloud Director (and its add-ons like vCloud Director Extender) service provider can use a fully software-defined stack to add value for their customer by adding Services on top of this platform.

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#VMworld 2018: Sessions and Experts: Gonna Catch Em All

lenzker

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.

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Going to #VMworld for the first time? Check out my hints and tricks by @lenzker

lenzker

VMworld Las Vegas is just around the corner. For some of you it might be the first time you are going to visit this event in Las Vegas. In my opinion there are some things I would have loved to know before I have been there for the first time.

So let’s don’t lose time and start:

  1. Spend your time wisely. As it’s always been in life, it is important to find a good balance. At VMworld it is important to find a good balance between scheduled appointments (sessions, meetings, etc.) and ‘time-to-discover’. The sessions are great, but remember. They are getting recorded. Pick those session with the real hot topics for yourself; pick those session that have a level of interactivity or expert level. It is always great to ask the questions and interact after the particular session.
  2. The best sessions are full at an early stage -> Schedule those sessions early.
  3. VMworld is much more than just sessions. It’s about meeting people that are also as geeky as you are. Don’t hesitate to talk to the people around you. How to meet them? Join twitter and look for the #VMworld hashtag; Join the VMware code channel on Slack;  Go to the #VMworld hackaton. How to participate? Register in the schedule builder and go to the hackathon site to join a team.
  4. Check out the VMware community booth and hang out at the blogger table :-). If you meet me, I am looking forward to any kind of chat.
  5. Plan the evening. Checkout Andreas Lesslhumers fantastic collection of parties and gatherings during VMworld US.
  6. Bring a bottle you can fill up with water. One thing I hate during VMworld US is the fact that there is a lack of drinking water. The prices around the convention center are ridiculous -> Bring larger bottle to fill it up once you find a water dispenser.
  7. Wear comfort shoes ;-) You will walk a lot – no matter if you spend the nights in the Mandalay or Luxor.
  8. If you walk from the Luxor to the Mandalay Bay in the morning and need a quick coffee. There is a Starbucks just around the corner before entering the shoppes between both Hotels.
  9. A good place to meet other fellows in the afternoon or evening is the Eyecandy in the middle of the Mandalay Bay. This is always a good gathering point ;-).
  10. Bring a warm pullover or jacket for the sessions. Even though we have pretty high and humid temperature in Las Vegas they conference rooms will be frozen down close to zero degrees celsius :P.
  11. Leave as much work at home as possible. Going to VMworld is also some kind of invest. To get the maximum benefit out of it try to spend as much time as possible to extend your knowledge and network. –> Bringing to much work to VMworld will definitely  decrease the ROI ;P

Follow me on Twitter and try to reach out for me during VMworld. I will participate in a EUC/VDI Session with fantastic experts on Monday at 1PM. Check out and schedule our ‘ EUC Champions Panel: Everything You Were Afraid to Ask About VDI [WIN3530PU]’ . 

You want to see how it has been last year? Check out my video…

VMworld Video 2017 Las Vegas

Lenzker’s Why VMworld ? 10 Reasons Why You Should Go

lenzker

It’s this time of the year again where a lot of us need to decide. Shall I go to this year’s VMworld? From time to time discussions come up with statements like:

“(#VMworld) is not the same any more…..When I was young, real knowledge and content was presented… . I was at #VMworld in the old days before it was cool….Virtualization is legacy, Azure and AWS is the only thing that counts”

Who am I to contradict those statements (even though the are wrong :P). I will try to give you my opinion why #VMworld is still the tech-conference highlight of the year.

If it’s your first time visiting VMware’s US event I am going to create a second article called ‘let’s visit #VMworld’ about some personal tips and tricks how to get the maximum out of this years #VMworld

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#VMware #Horizon App Volumes: Hints (for Performance and Packaging)

lenzker

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure to spent 4 days on problematic Applications within an App Volumes environment of a customer. The best thing that can happen to me as an infrastructure guy is to work on building AppStack with guys who know how to package and therefore troubleshoot those applications. Bringing together the knowledge from multiple domains helped us to fix the problems that we had so far with App Volumes.

Common issues we have been faced with:

  1. During the AppStack provisioning process an Application was not able to get installed
  2. (Crappy) Applications put user-data-files into C:\Windows
  3. Start-Up Performance of applications was really really slow (factor 20x slower)
  4. A mounted AppStack leads to a repair of Office-components

One of the common problems I have seen with App Volumes in the past. The infrastructure can be designed and delivered by an Infrastructure guy -> As soon as we talk about applications. We or more correct the organization that is planning to create AppStacks needs application packaging expertise.

So let’s make it quick. I will give you some hints how some of your problems might get solved.

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Using #VMware’s Unified Access Gateway (UAG) for internal #Horizon 7 connections – Design Discussion

lenzker

Over the last months I gathered more and more experience about VMware’s secure Linux appliance  that allows secure access to a virtual Desktop (and more) over an unsecure network (e.g.) the Internet: Unified Access Gateway (UAG).

Keep in mind the UAG is not just a replacement for the old Windows based Security Sever, it is also  offering much more functionality (Edge Services for Airwatch / Workspace One, reverse proxy, 2nd-factor authentication integration, etc.).

There might be use cases where we want to design our horizon environment in a way that we use the UAGs not just for external unsecure access, but internally as well.

Examples:

  • Offering access to internal users coming from a not so trust-worthy site/location (including a second-factor authentication for those users). // Access restricted via Firewalls/ACLs
  • Constraints to always use tunneled connections (because of network-simplicity or security constraints).

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