Monthly Archives: August 2010

VMworld – why San Fran is the place to be (not Copenhagen)

The buzz is building, VMworld is coming!

Unfortunately (for me) my employer won’t pay for me to attend so I’m paying for myself. I’m excited to be going but when it’s my money I’m looking for serious value for money! I’ve not been to VMworld before so maybe I’m worrying about nothing but San Fran is a four day conference compared to only three days at Copenhagen so there are inevitable compromises;

  • Labs. VMware have put roughly 75,000 man hours into creating 30 self paced labs and (from the communities podcast on 11th August) I gather they’re timed to be roughly 60mins max per lab. I’m no mathematician but that makes 30 hours worth of labs. Copenhagen offers only 21 hours of lab time compared to 46 at San Fran. Labs don’t open until 11am and close again at 6pm – what’s up with that? I can get up before 11am (at least on special occasions!).
  • Sessions. Copenhagen offers 21 hours of sessions compared to 36 hours at San Fran. More importantly a significant number of sessions are only being run in SF (see further down for a full list).
  • Announcements/keynotes. With the SF conference being held a few weeks before Copenhagen I’m guessing most of the big announcements are going to be there. Not s show stopper but takes the edge off a bit – every techie likes shiny new toys…

The kicker? The conference ticket for Copenhagen actually costs more than the one for San Francisco! As the official VMware party at Copenhagen is four hours compared to three at SF that must be where they’re investing the extra.

If you register for either conference you’ll be able to watch all the sessions online at VMworld.com. The SF conference sessions are due to be online by mid-September so if you’re really keen you could watch them before hitting Copenhagen!

Sessions unique to Copenhagen;

  • BC8089 Using VMware Site Recovery Manager with EMC Replication Technologies for Application Disaster Recovery
  • BC8449 Using VMware Site Recovery Manager with Netapp
  • EA7828 SAP Migration from AIX/LPAR to RHEL 5/vSphere at Bayer Business Services
  • MA8027 Provisioning vApps on Vblock with VMware Cloud Director
  • TA8452 Designing Resilient IP Storage Networks for vSphere and NFS
  • TA8661 Deploying vSphere in a ROBO Environment
  • V17823 Virtualisation at Barclays Capital

Sessions unique to  San Francisco (rather a lot!);

  • BC6703 How to be successful with SRM implementations
  • BC7950 Shrinking RTO/RPO’s of VM Replication using WAN Optimization
  • BC8372 SRM Futures: Failback and More
  • BC8537 VMware Data Protection Roadmap
  • BC9017 SRM Customer Use Cases: Adventist Health System, Lone Star College, and Weyerhaeuser

Desktop Virtualisation

  • DV7706 View Composer – Technical Deep Dive & Best Practices
  • DV7778 Journey Through a 3000 Seat VMware View (VDI) Deployment Ensuring Business Continuance During Snowmageddon 2010
  • DV7841 The Methods and Benefits of Virtualizing the DOD Classroom
  • DV7959 The Benefits of VDI and Implementation Strategies for Education
  • DV8009 VMware on VMware: Delivering VMware View for R&D
  • DV8636 Put VMware Fusion to Work for Your Business
  • DV8641 Choosing the Right Desktop Virtualization Platform
  • DV8677 Stateless Desktops at The Bank Of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Ltd.
  • DV8695 Best Practices for Deploying Network Intensive Applications on VMware View
  • DV8861 Enabling the Cerner Instant Access Solution for the Physician’s Desktop with VMware View
  • DV9540 Case Study & Live Demo of View 4.x in an Enterprise Production Environment by Brown Shoe Company, with Lessons Learned on SAN, User Profiles, Folder Redirection, Etc.

Enterprise Architecture

  • EA8004 SAP Solutions on vSphere – Best Practices
  • EA8547 Disaster Recovery of Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, and Sharepoint Server
  • EA8700 Oracle on vSphere: Re-Platforming Tier 1 Oracle Databases from UNIX to vSphere at Indiana University
  • EA7829 Panel Discussion: Virtualization’s Impact on the Delivery of Healthcare IT Services

Private Cloud: Management

  • MA6580 Bridge the ESX/ESXi Management Gap Using the vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) – Tips & Tricks Included
  • MA8030 Saving Time with vCenter Orchestrator
  • MA8092 Cloud Futures: The Infrastructure Authority
  • MA8267 Building the Cloud at Los Alamos National Labs: Infrastructure On Demand
  • MA9121 Lab Automation Best Practices
  • MA9800 How To Get From A VMware Cluster To Cloud?
  • MA7777 How a Strategic Approach to Virtualization Helped IT Organizations in the Public Sector Build a Private Cloud

Hybrid and Public Cloud

  • PC7754 Leveraging an Enterprise-Ready vCloud Service to Regain IT Control Format
  • PC7877 Architectures for an Enterprise Virtual Data Center in Public Cloud Environments
  • PC8380 Making the Cloud Real: Best Practices for Integrating Cloud into the Current Application Environment
  • PC8632 Integrating Public Clouds
  • PC9920 Compliance in the Cloud: Managing Risks and Addressing Concerns
  • PC8539 Automate Application Deployment to vCloud Services

Private Cloud: Security

  • SE7813 vShield Edge & Application Protection – Architecure and Use Cases
  • SE8195 Managing Security Compliance for VMware Virtualization
  • SE9600 How to Attest Host Platform Security for Cloud Deployments: A Technology Preview from VMware, Intel, and RSA
  • SE8371 Securing Government Virtual Environments
  • SE8520 Panel Discussion – Private Cloud – Virtualization Security and Compliance, Meeting PCI Standards

Technology Partners/Sponsors

  • SP8053 How Application Virtualization Can Accelerate Virtual Desktop Adoption
  • SP8373 Getting Over ‘The Hump’ – How to Expand Your Stalled Virtualization Deployment
  • SP8542 How the Dallas Cowboys Kickoff Innovation with HP Converged Infrastructure
  • SP8543 Backup & Disaster Recovery – How to Protect Systems and Applications Across Physical, Virtual, and Cloud Environments
  • SP9638 Getting the MAX from Your Virtualization Investment
  • SP9641 The Chefs and The Soup: The Importance of Management in Workspace Virtualization
  • SP9642 Simplifying Scale-Out Storage Infrastructure for a Private Cloud
  • SP9643 Accelerating the Transformation to the Cloud
  • SP9644 Virtual Appliances: Simplifying Application Deployment and Accelerating Your Journey to the Cloud
  • SP9645 IDC Says, “Don’t Move to the Cloud”
  • SP9646 Application Deployment, Considerations, and Use Cases with Vblocks
  • SP9647 Enhanced Business Continuity with Application Mobility on Vblocks Across Datacenters
  • SP9648 Desktop Virtualization – The Next Big Thing
  • SP9650 A Prescriptive Approach for VM Protection Today and Strategies to Help You Migrate to the Cloud Tomorrow
  • SP9651 Parting the Clouds: Evaluating Clouds and Cloud Providers for the Enterprise
  • SP9652 Data Management in Modern Virtualization Environments
  • SP9653 Best Practices for Building an Advanced Operating Model for the Enterprise Cloud
  • SP9654 Migrating Mission Critical Applications to Virtualized IA at Eli Lilly Builds a Foundation for Cloud Use Cases
  • SP9656 Where is the ROI in Desktop Virtualization? How Can I Maximize It?
  • SP9657 Identifying and Measuring the TCO for VDI – A Customer Perspective
  • SP9658 Actual Clouds – Value On Demand
  • SP9659 Essential Storage for Cloud Infrastructures: Key Considerations for Enterprises and Service Providers
  • SP9662 Using Storage to Efficiently Scale and Manage Enterprise VMware Workloads
  • SP9663 Optimizing Virtualization Using Advance Memory and Storage Technology
  • SP9664 Architecting Solutions to Meet the Challenges of Scaling VMware Environments
  • SP9667 Virtual Data Warehousing – Improving the Time to Data Mine!
  • SP9668 Using Integrated Storage and vSphere Management to Improve Performance and Provide Ease-of-Use
  • SP9721 How to Use Virtual I/O to Provision and Manage Networks and Storage Resources in a Private Cloud
  • SP9740 How to Move to VMware View with Minimal User Impact
  • SP9743 VDI Unleashed: A Reference Architecture for Accelerating Adoption and Time to Value in VDI Deployments
  • SP9760 Dell’s Next Generation Datacenter and VMware
  • SP9761 Virtual Desktop Considerations with 10GbE, Solid State Disk Drives and vStorage Enhanced Deployments
  • SP9825 Bioware’s Quest: The Search for Business Continuity
  • SP9880 Agentless Anti-Virus with Seraph: A New Paradigm for Security in Virtual Environments

Technical Architecture

  • TA6841 Cisco Nexus 1000v: Architecture, Deployment, and Management
  • TA6862 vDS Deep Dive: Managing and Troubleshooting
  • TA7121 Next Generation VM Storage Solutions with vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)
  • TA7171 Performance Best Practices for vSphere
  • TA7743 ESX iSCSI News, Configuration, and Best Practices
  • TA8052 Strengthening Healthcare Information Systems with Pervasive Virtualization
  • TA8065 Storage Best Practices, Performance Tuning and Troubleshooting
  • TA8102 Tuning Linux for Virtual Machines
  • TA8158 Surviving VMware on Blades
  • TA8440 10Gb & FCoE Real World Design Considerations
  • TA8595 Virtual Networking Concepts and Best Practices
  • TA8900 vSphere Administration For The Average Admin
  • TA9655 EMC IT’s Journey to the Private Cloud and Enterprise Application Virtualization
  • TA8265 Cisco Nexus 1000V Customer Panel
  • TA8623 Storage Super-Heavyweight Challenge

Virtualisation 101

  • V17300 The VMware Competitive Advantage – A Comparison of Server Virtualization Offerings
  • V17737 How and Why Denton County Used vSphere To Go Completely Virtual
  • V18113 SandRidge Energy Increases IT Virtualization Efficiency
  • V18268 Deep Dive on Virtualization – How Stuff Works in Virtualization
  • V18328 Building an Affordable vSphere Environment for a Lab or Small Business
  • V18166 Virtualization 101: Best Practices on How to Manage Storage and Virtualized Environments

Super sessions

  • SS1000 Heineken Crafts High-Performance Data Center With Compellent and VMware
  • SS1001 Introducing SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for VMware
  • SS1002 Accelerating the Virtual Era with Dell
  • SS1003 Virtualization Transitions: The Journey to Enterprise Cloud Computing
  • SS1004 Infrastructure Technologies Purpose Built for the Private Cloud
  • SS1005 From 500 to 50,000: Building a VMware View 4.5 Deployment that Scales
  • SS1006 The Last Mile: Virtualizing Business-Critical Applications
  • SS1007 VMware View 4.5 – Delivering on the End User Computing Vision
  • SS1008 Cloud Client Computing: VDI Meets Clouds – Tales from the Real World. We Did It. Here’s How and What we Learned
  • SS1009 Business Transformation – The Silver Lining in the Cloud
  • SS1010 Scaling Data Center Fabrics with Secure Cloud Services
  • SS1011 How Cisco, EMC and VMware Are Changing the IT Landscape with Vblock Converged Infrastructure
  • SS1013 Fast Track Your Private Cloud Transformation with Converged Infrastructure
  • SS1055 Partner Track Super Session
  • SS1056 Public Cloud Computing Gets Real: Real Enterprises Using Services Today
  • SS1057 Building a Secure Private Cloud Today

Welcome to yet another technology blog…

With the upcoming VMworld conferences in San Francisco and Copenhagen I figured now was a good time to have a blog handy in case I wanted somewhere to air my thoughts and hopefully get some community feedback. The techie in me also wants to understand the technology behind blogs be it WordPress, widgets, CSS, or reverse proxying and as always the only way to learn is to jump in and get your hands dirty.

A post by VMware’s John Troyer a few months ago discussed what distinguished the people who were awarded the vExperts accolade. I’ve no illusions about becoming a vExpert or making the top 100 blogs – I support the internal http://premier-pharmacy.com/product-category/erectile-dysfunction/ infrastructure for a not-for-profit company and consequentyly don’t have the exposure that some have to new technologies and leading edge implementations. In my own words I’m a lurker – I love soaking up knowledge and I enjoy mentoring people but I don’t always think what I have to say is of interest to others (whether it is or not). I’m very happy that some people are so inclined however or I wouldn’t have anywhere to soak up knowledge from!

There are two points from John’s post which resonate with me. Invest a slice of time in yourself, and break out of your silo – sounds like good advice to me.