VMworld 2018 USA

Are you heading to VMworld 2018 in Europe, below is a summary of the sessions we attended at the USA event which may be of interest to you. See below.

VMworld USA 2018 recently ran in Las Vegas, August 26 – 30, and is billed as The Leading Digital Transformation industry event. I can say hand on heart this is absolutely spot on. Everything from the general sessions, breakout, solution exchange and entertainment were first class.

In the general sessions Pat Gelsinger reiterated the importance of the Hybrid Cloud strategy, and further extension of this to the Edge. Which from an NSX biased viewpoint, really start to show how the networking story is coming together. Sanjay Poonen hosted Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which was a highlight for all, and really cut to the core of the ethos of the company and why many of us are so proud to work for VMware.

During the breakouts there was a mix of talks and discussions around the EUC, SDDC, NSX and Hybrid Cloud stacks, and what was really nice to see during this VMworld was how the story was really starting to come together. More on this below.

Finally, the Entertainment, kudos to the Events Team, it was top notch.

So firstly the breakouts, I could not attend all the breakouts, obviously, and as we know they are usually published post VMworld, but the highlights for me were the following:

Day 1

  • NET1855BU – NSX-T Data Center Performance Deep Dive
  • VIN1249BU – vSphere Clustering Deep Dive Part 1: vSphere HA and DRS
  • HCI2810BU – Virtual Volumes Deep Dive
  • VIN1859BU – vSphere SSO Domain Architecture Unplugged

Day 2

  • VIN1735BU – Clustering  Deep Dive Part 2: Quality Control with DRS and Network I/O Control
  • NET4857BU – NSX-T Data Center install Deep Diver and Best Practices including PKS/PAS

Day 3

  • NET1128BU – Logical Routing Deep Dive on NSX-T Data Center
  • NET1562BU – Next Generation Reference Design with NSX-T Data Center Part 2
  • NET1327BU – VMware Cloud on AWS wiht NSX: Use Cases, Design and Implementation

If you can attend any of these you will not disappointed. The highlight for me was the Clustering Deep Dive, these two sessions highlighted a few misunderstood fundamentals, which was great, and a bonus was that there was an opportunity to get a free copy of the vSphere Clustering Deep Dive book.

As for the Solution Exchange there were a number of vendors, and any free time was really spent here. As part of Livefire we are always discussing vendor solutions, outside of the VMware stack, and the Solution Exchange gives a great opportunity to find out more about what our partners are doing.

Arista: They demo’d future capability to support DFW to physical workloads using ACLs, very interesting and cool. Look forward to seeing this in the future.

Bitdefender: They were demonstrating new cyrpto currency attacks that you should be aware of. This isn’t necessarily related to VMware NSX, but was interesting none the less. Worth checking out.

NTT: The Team were demonstrating how they utilise VMware HCX to provide a hybrid cloud solution. Well worth having a conversation if HCX is of interest to you.

VSI: Demonstrating how their capacity testing tools can support a VDI deployment

Intel: Demonstrating how their technology supports the SD-WAN offering from VMware

One of the great things about VMware is that they don’t just do the technology right, but the entertainment is spot on to. At VMWorld USA none other than Tony Hawk was there, and some NBA Basketball Player (apologies don’t know the name), I’m an Australian British Asian, so I only understand Football, AFL and Cricket.

None of these events would be fun without the people you attend with. So special shout out to the Chicken Man, Hans Bernhardt, and Luca Camarda. Two colleagues from the Livefire Team, who always make roadtrips enjoyable.

So if you are heading to Barcelona in November, for VMworld EU 2018, have fun, enjoy and get your geek on.

Bal Birdy on LinkedinBal Birdy on Twitter
Bal Birdy
Bal is an Open Group Certified IT Architect, and VCDX #269, specializing in the network and security arena, with over 15 years experience in enterprise level network/system technologies. His goal has always been to maintain a holistic view of the architecture allowing him to understand how various technology streams may impact the networking/infrastructure space.
Bal has a proven record of delivering on enterprise network designs, leading data center and site migrations as a result of business mergers and acquisitions, and vendor migrations e.g. Cisco to Checkpoint/Juniper. As part of this he worked across several business sectors: Utilities, Banking, Retail and Government, and can base designs around sector specific standards e.g. PCI-DSS, DSD and ISM. He is proficient in several technology areas including Cisco, Juniper, F5, VMware, Citrix and Microsoft. These skills are supported by non-technical certifications: Prince2 Project Management Practitioner, ITILv3, TOGAF 9.1 Certified and Open Group Certified IT Architect – Open CA.
In addition to supporting the Livefire Team, Bal leads several innovation efforts within the VMware WRACE organization, including projects investigating the use of Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality, AI/ML and Interactive 360, to support customer and partner enablement.

Certifications:
BSc (Hons) Computer Science
CCNP/CCDP
VCDX-NV #269
Open Group Certificated Architect
Member of the Associated of Enterprise Architects

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