Justin Vashisht 
It’s hard to believe that a year has passed already since VMworld 2011 and when I look back at my previous post it made me realize how valuable last year’s conference was for me. Several of the goals I had set out for myself and for the firm’s Virtualization practice have been reached. In early 2011 our firm pretty much did no VMware business besides installing the free version of ESXi. At that time we were also just a registered partner. Fast forward to 2012, we are now an Enterprise Partner with VMware business well into the six figures. It’s amazing what a company can accomplish with a little bit of focus and consistency. I was also very happy to gain my VCP for version 5. I have always said that VMware tests are super hard and this one was no different. You literally have to know pretty much every aspect of vSphere to pass this exam. Our cloud business has also seen huge growth and we seem to be doing much more Private Cloud build outs. The nature of the Financial Services industry dictates this due to the ever growing number of regulations, intellectual data and applications, as well as maintaining investor confidentiality. The last thing you want is sensitive data like that floating around in a shared pool of public resources.
VMworld 2012 – US ended just a few days ago and some pretty exciting announcements have been made. A generous amount of well needed updates have been introduced to the vSphere. The removal of the vRAM entitlement license structure is one of the most satisfying for larger customers and partners. VMware has listened to their customers and moved back to strictly “per-physical processor” licensing. Other announcements that I am happy to see includes vMotion support for local storage, the ability to move a VM’s host and storage at the same time while the machine is powered on, built in VM level replication, and SRM 5.1 failback functionality when using native vSphere replication. With Microsoft’s Hyper-V product line really starting to get noticed and take shape VMware will constantly have to innovate and set the pace like it has been doing for years.
Back to VMworld. This year we had this crazy idea to splurge a little from the success of our Virtualization practice and set our sights on VMworld 2012, EMEA! This year it the vent will be held October 9-11 in the Gran Via at the heart of Barcelona, Spain. I have never been to Spain or any country near it so this should be an amazing experience for me. I do however see three downsides from skipping the San Francisco event. First, the normal group of people that I usually interact with online will most likely not be attending. Second, the event is for some reason one day shorter. Not sure why this is. And finally, several sessions that I really wanted to attend don’t seem to be taking place in Barcelona. I’m sure the event will still be great and this only opens me to up to meeting more people in the community across the globe.
When it comes to VMworld, I have always believed that the most valuable things I get out of the conference is the hands on labs, and meeting with the experts and other leaders in the community. I used to drive myself crazy when it came to narrowing down my choices from the 200+ sessions but they can all usually be watched on the VMworld website in the months after. I am going to make much more time for the hands on lab sessions which as simple incredible and give myself more time to walk the showcase floor. The amount of third part vendors working with VMware is incredible. You never know when you will find the next big solution for your client. Walking the floor and interacting with all the vendors is the way to pick the brains for people with an immense amount of knowledge.
I’ve posted my session schedule below. As you can see I have put much more time into virtual networking (VXLAN, Nicira, etc) since I firmly believe this is the next big thing in the industry. Looking forward to meeting many new people and learning some more about Spain! -Justin Vashisht (3cVguy)
| TUESDAY – 10/09/2012 | VXLAN Deep Dive |
| TUESDAY – 10/09/2012 | Backing Up Virtual Machines with VMware’s Next-Generation Backup and Recovery Solution – Everything You Need To Know |
| TUESDAY – 10/09/2012 | PowerCLI Best Practices: The Return! |
| TUESDAY – 10/09/2012 | Software-Defined Storage – VMware’s Storage Vision & Strategy |
| TUESDAY – 10/09/2012 | As Secure as a Swiss Bank: Swisscom Secures Its Virtual Environment |
| WEDNESDAY – 10/10/2012 | VMware Networking 2012: Enabling the Software Defined Network |
| WEDNESDAY – 10/10/2012 | VMware vSphere Replication: Technical Walk-Through with Engineering |
| WEDNESDAY – 10/10/2012 | Enabling Scalable Virtual Networks with VXLAN – Customer and Partner Scenarios |
| WEDNESDAY – 10/10/2012 | esxtop for Advanced Users |
| WEDNESDAY – 10/10/2012 | vSphere Performance Best Practices |
| THURSDAY – 10/11/2012 | Nicira and the Future of Software Defined Networking |
| THURSDAY – 10/11/2012 | The Automation of VMworld Labs: An Exercise in VMware Frameworks |
| THURSDAY – 10/11/2012 | Architecting and Operating a VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster |
| THURSDAY – 10/11/2012 | 5 Must Know Design Considerations for Planning Capacity When You are 50% or More Virtualized |
| THURSDAY – 10/11/2012 | Understanding VMware ESXi Security |
