lenzker – vLenzker

#VMworld 2020: Free for everyone, take your chance and see my top 5 sessions

11. September 202011. September 2020lenzker

2020 is different. The pandemic situation has changed the way we work, the way we meet each other. The same counts for our beloved IT conference. For multiple years I am attending VMworld which is the annual conference of VMware in person. I have written yearly posts why you should attend VMworld and many of the reasons are still valid.

This year #VMware has been migrated from a in-person conference to an online event which for sure has a lot of disadvantages like the missing social factor. So the opportunities to network in person are limited.

On the other side if we look at an IT conference like #VMworld, we must admit it is something that locks out many persons who are not privileged enough to pay for the travel & hotel, conference pass and further expenditures (which can be easiliy added up to 5000-10000$ for a week in San Francisco where VMworld would have taken place).

This year is a chance to experience VMworld for a minimum of capital invest, because it is free. Everyone can experience certain live-sessions or around 700 pre-recorded technical sessions around the #VMware portfolio.

Two passes exist:

General Pass: Access to on-demand an live sessions.
Premier Pass: Cost 299$ (available until 22th September) which includes 1:1 technical expertise sessions, guided labs, exam-vouch and many more.

Check out the details here.

I love the approach that everyone can access #VMworld and maybe for the future the online event might be an addition to the physical VMworld which would lead to a VMworld US, VMworld Europe and VMworld online [with Edge locations where VMware customers, partners, fans can meet in person]. I would highly appreciate that.

Personally me and my comdivision friend we will make a in-person event out of it to still experience the social character of VMworld. I am really looking forward for it.

What’s next?

Register for VMworld

Check out my top 5 VMware sessions this year:

VMware and NVIDIA CEOs Discussion on AI and ML [VI3178]: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger discussing about the technological future of Aritificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
How to Architect for Success: Ask the EUC VCDXs [DWHV2826] – Including EUC all-stars like my colleague and friend Jens Hennig, Sean Massey, Johan van Amersfoort, Maarten Caus,
60 Minutes of NUMA [HCP2453] – Frank Denneman will abstract the complex topic of CPUs and NUMA characteristics into an understandable form, including latest CPUs like AMD’s EPYC2, etc.
VEBA and the Power of Event-Driven Automation – Reloaded [HCP1358] – William Lam and Michael Gasch talk about the VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) which was released last year. The idea is that certain events can trigger certain automation task in your environment. Definetly a hot topic over the next years since this will lead to a certain form of intrinsic automation.
NSX Data Center for vSphere to NSX-T Migration: Real-World Experience [VCNC1590] – NSX (for vSphere) is dead, long live NSX(-T). The migration projects are coming more often and an exchange of experience is quite needed.

Better together: #vSphere 7 and #NSX-T 3.0 OR We are slowly getting friends ;)

20. April 202020. April 2020lenzker

Let me start with a quote I wrote down 5 years ago (wow did time pass by).

IMO this quote is still correct (maybe I should have used network & security skills) and really changed the quality of services I can deliver within the IT field. My NSX journey startet at this time with homelabbing and learning NSX-v from the one and only fellow comdivision partner & friend Matthias Eisner.

NSX-v; NSX-T; NSX Datacenter; NSX Cloud; NSX Advanced Load Balancer; NSX Intelligence.

Woa woa woa ….. that’s a lot of NSX…. Remember; NSX is not a single product. NSX is a suite of network & security products fullfilling VMware’s dream: Deliver every network & security service in software.

NSX-v (or NSX for vSphere) has been the software defined networking solution for vSphere evolved from the product vCloud Networking & Security. We were able to to create software-defined VXLAN networks or software defined network services with edge services gateway in a simple manor & create microsegmentation around vSphere based virtual machines.

It was good but it was a product around vSphere and not a real network product (which made it easier for me to get started with it).

Better together: #vSphere 7 and #Horizon 7.12 with #Nvidia vGPUs in high end #vdi environments

17. April 202017. April 2020lenzker

Current situations accelerate the demand for virtual desktops and a proper virtual desktop infrastructure. I am working for years in the field of the software-defined datacenter and virtual desktops delivered via VMware Horizon. While standard office virtual desktops have become something like a commodity, the usage of hardware graphics accelerated workload and high-end demand is still kind of ‘newer’ and not as mature as the non-gpu workload.

I am involved in a large scale product that creates a virtual desktop landscape for engineers doing a lot computer aided engineering (CAE). This is a very interesting environment that comes with a lot of difficult user requirements and how it can be solved.

3D Acceleration required during normal “working” operations when modelling / analyzing components. (NVIDA vGPU for the win)
Huge amount of local persistent storage to cache models loaded/checked out from a network location. (vSAN is everywhere in the cluster, included in Horizon Advanced & brutal fast if you do it right).
High throughput between the virtual desktops and the network location (The big benefit of a VDI setup).
Secure access from everywhere & sharing of the session (Another big benefit of VDI).
Windows & Linux Desktops must be supported (Horizon can do that)
Huge amount of memory per virtual desktop since sometimes models can have 100/200GB of size and needs to resist in the memory of the virtual machine. (vSphere scales indefinelty [almost :P]).
Most engineers will require a dedicated linux desktop where he can individually use modules/kernels/packages based on his needs (an IT managements nightmare). (dedicated user assignment with persistent VDIs).
Different working behaviours (more than 500 different user-interaction scenarios) that cannot easily be matched to a single use-case.
Store certain states of the virtual desktop. Loading / pre-processing might take 1-XX hours and needs to be repeated several times (VM snapshots with memory ftw).
Certain Desktops should be shared among team-members (working in parallel or sequential).
…..

#VMware‘s Center of Advanced Learning (#VMwareCAL): We did it … and it was quite an interesting ride

25. October 201925. October 2019lenzker

Almost two weeks are over and I am back at the SFO airport. I have written about my expectation of VMware’s center of advanced learning and it is about time to wrap things up.

First of all. Congratulations to Yves Sandfort & Jens Hennig and therefore the whole comdivision for being involved in multiple post-cal awards e.g. as a top-scorer on the class besides Mr. triple VCDX Safouh Kharrat & Rachit Srivastava more about that later).

Besides that Yves’ team an our team were awarded with the best final presentation based on a case study and a customer C-level sales pitch simulation.

#VMware‘s Center of Advanced Learning (#VMwareCAL): What is it good for …. and my personal expectations

14. October 201914. October 2019lenzker

A dream comes true. Since I started specializing on VMware products I always wanted to visit its Headquarters in Palo Alto. I have driven through Palo Alto multiple times during personal trips over the last year. Silicon Valley, Stanford, so much great myths surround my head when I think about this place.

And here I am: I am currently traveling to Palo Alto to visit the VMware campus for two weeks. Being part of comdivision, a German VMware Partner holding all 5 master services competencies, Yves Sandfort, Jens Henning and myself were given the chance to attend a special training at The VMware headquarter.

Center of Advanced Learning

VCAP-NV Deployment Exam Preparation: Tips and Tricks

30. May 201930. May 2019lenzker

During VMware Empower 2019 in Lissabon my colleague Jens Henning and myself had the honor to do two breakout sessions about the VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Network Virtualization (VCAP-NV) exam.

In this session we covered tips and tricks for the deploy exam. This short post should summarize the content for all those people who weren‘t able to attend. The following information are totally suitable for the VCAP-Deploy exam in all kind of VMware‘s tracks:

Datacenter Virtualization
Network Virtualization
Desktop- and Mobility
Cloud Management & Automation

Lenzker’s Why VMworld 2019 ? 10 Reasons Why You Should Go

27. May 201927. May 2019lenzker

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 they 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 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