VMware

This morning, very early I received the e-mail that I received the vExpert award. This was for me the 2nd time that I got this award. The first time I applied in December 2016 for the vExpert 2017 award, which I got. Last year I also succesful applied for the vExpert Cloud 2017, one of the three sub awards. Happy to be a part of the vCommunity and looking forward to again participate in the community and share information and knowlegde. Thanks to Corey Romero and his team for his efforts for making this possible. ...

Yesterday was the third and last day of VMworld 2017 Europe. I had two sessions scheduled. Both were VMware Cloud on AWS related. First session was: Protecting Virtual Machines in VMware Cloud on AWS. In this session, VMware and Dell EMC also presented their capabilities for this subject. Interesting solutions in which you see the added value of AWS as an endpoint for storing backups on S3 for instance. My second session was VMware Cloud on AWS: An Architectural and Operational Deep Dive. This session was about the architecture of the environment, the vCenter permissions of the customer and how the host remediation process on AWS works. After the sessions I had lunch and had a last quick walk over the solution exchange. Before I went to the airport I spend time on filling out the surveys that I had not processed. If I summarize my visit to VMworld 2017, I think it has been an interesting event. My focus in the sessions was mostly with VMware Cloud on AWS. I had some nice discussions with employees of VMware, peers and vendors and I have gotten a lot of useful info. For me the highlights were: ...

Today I decided to not go to the general session but instead follow it on the big screen in the VMvillage. This gives you the possibility to get coffee during the keynote :). The keynote started with Pat Gelsinger, Sanjay Poonen and Ray O’Farell answering questions that the VMworld attendees could submit yesterday. After that Ray O’Farrel, Chris Wolf and Purnima Padmanabhan went more into depth about VMware HCX, Wavefront, NSX-T, VMware Pulse IoT Center and Functions as a Service (FaaS). After the keynote I attended two sessions. Both were around VMware Cloud on AWS. The last two sessions, Service Overview for VMware Cloud on AWS and VMware Cloud on AWS: A Technical Deep Dive, were really interesting. The first session was focussed on service, the support and separation of the responsibilities between the customer and VMware. They also showed the online support that was available for this product and the automatic actions that VMware takes to keep the customer environment healthy. The second session showed in more detail the components that made the VMware Cloud on AWS product. The session touched on compute, storage, networking and security. After the sessions I went back to the solution exchange and visited several booths and also spent time on networking with the vendors, colleagues and other attendees. In the evening I went to the VMware Customer Appreciation Party featuring the Kaiser Chiefs. I think it was without a doubt the best band and the VMworld party.

For me VMworld already started on Monday with the Partner Exchange and the TAM day. It started today with the keynote by, amongst other speakers, Pat Gelsinger and Sanjay Poonen. They talked about the strategy for VMware. Pat was saying that tech was breaking out of tech. Alan Renouf was, together with Pat Gelsinger, a way of managing your environment via VR. Following announcements were done: VMware Integrated Open Stack 4.0 vSphere Integrated Containers 1.2 VMware HCX After the keynote I had no session scheduled so I made a short visit to the solution exchange. Lot of interesting vendors and of course also the usual suspects. Also got some of the swag from some vendors. ...

Today VMworld 2017 started for me. Yesterday I flew in to Barcelona and got my badge and the backpack with, amongst other things, the water bottle and the shirt. Today is the partner exchange and the tam day. I had only sessins in the partner track scheduled. My first two sessions were about VMware Cloud on AWS. The first session was less technical but the second session went into more depth about the technology behind VMware Cloud on AWS. After that I attended the general partner sessions. Amongst the speakers there were Pat Gelsinger, Maurizio Carli, Ross Brown and Brandon Sweeney. The told us about the strategy and the partner organisation. After the keynote it was time for lunch. While not everybody who will be attending VMworld was already there, it was still very crowded. ...

This year VMworld Europe will again be held in Barcelona, but unlike previous years it will not be in October but already in the second week of September. Just as last year, my employer made it possible for me to attend VMworld Europe. I have to finalize my schedule but as it available, I already started planning which sessions I would like to attend. When I have finalized my schedule I will also post it here. As my interest are shifting to the public cloud, I’m really looking forward to the session around VMware on AWS. So mostly my schedule will filled with that as there are many sessions around VMware on AWS. Next to that I’m still interested in devops and container related sessions. Interesting links: VMworld parties, gathering and events Sneak peek VMworld bag Content builder VMworld Europe First-Timer’s Guide to VMworld

Yesterday VMware published the list of vExperts for 2017. This is the first time that I applied for the VMware vExpert program and I’m honored to have been chosen as one of the few vExperts this year. What is the vExpert program? The VMware vExpert program is VMware’s global evangelism and advocacy program. The program is designed to put VMware’s marketing resources towards your advocacy efforts. Promotion of your articles, exposure at our global events, co-op advertising, traffic analysis, and early access to beta programs and VMware’s roadmap. The awards are for individuals, not companies, and last for one year. Employees of both customers and partners can receive the awards. In the application, we consider various community activities from the previous year as well as the current year’s (only for 2nd half applications) activities in determining who gets awards. We look to see that not only were you active but are still active in the path you chose to apply for. ...

Today is the last day of VMworld 2016 Europe. It has been an interesting congress with a lot of topics and also a lot of ways to get information. The last day of VMworld is always the Thursday and you see already of the attendees leaving as they travel back home. The venue gets quieter by the hour. This last days I had three interesting sessions scheduled: Your Open-Source Datacenter VM’s and Containers: Extending Docker to vCloud Air Introducing VMware Cloud Foundation Your Open-Source Datacenter, was a session given by two enthusiastic guys, David Lloyd and Ramon Tarnavski. They talked about the advantages of Source: ...

Today is the first day of VMworld 2016. The day starts with the general keynote session. First speaker during the general session was Jean-Pierre Brulard, general manager EMEA. He started with some statistics. This VMworld there are 10k attendees, 300 sessions. This is the first time that VMworld and a AirWatch connect are held together. The second speaker was Pat Gelsinger,CEO. Pat spoke about the world in which you control nothing but are in charge. This is a good base for the hybrid cloud. Pat talked about Digital transformation, which is according to him the new buzzword. He said he rather used Digital Business as also legacy applications are still there. Pat also announced vSphere 6.5 and VSAN 6.5. After that Pat talked about the cross cloud architecture. Part of it is the cross cloud service consisting of two parts, Cloud Foundation and a set of SAAS applications which will become available in 2017. These SAAS applications will offer you cloud control over your cross cloud environment. Pat also addressed the AWS announcement. More details below in this post and other posts to come. After the general session I did a quick walk around at the Solution Exchange which also openend today. After that I went for an early lunch because I didn’t want to miss the session VMware Cloud on AWS. Last week AWS and VMware announced this new partnership. This partnership was also mentioned during the keynote and also yesterday during Partner sessions. VMware Cloud on AWS gives customers the possibility to run their workloads in the cloud with a lot of the benefits that AWS has to offer. One of the benefits is elastic drs, which causes in times of shortage of resources to automatic provision an extra host. This includes cpu, memory and storage. VMware Cloud is based on vSphere 6.5, NSX and VSAN.VMware Cloud will be managed and operated by VMware people on AWS hardware. This new service will be available mid 2017 starting with the Oregon location. After that all other AWS locations will follow. Not all information is yet public available but more information will follow in the coming months. I think this offering helps a lot of customer in their decision for moving forward with their current environment to the cloud. For more information about VMware Cloud, you can also visit http://www.mindjudo.nl. The last session of the day is From Zero to VMware Photon Platform. VMware also made announcements around Photon Platform. Photon Platform now supports Kubernetes next to Cloud foundry. Photon Platform also support now VSAN and NSX. VSAN is not required as local storage is needed. Shared storage is only needed for storing of the images that are used by the environment. Photon Platform uses vSphere as a base but doesn’t use functionality like drs and ha.This kind of functionality should be taken care of by the application itself. Photon is primarily a command line driven environment but there is also a basic guide available. If you want to try Photon Platform you can download it here .

Today was the second day of VMworld, which started with the general session. First speaker was Sanjay Poonen. Sanjay talked about the digital transformation that is already happening in healthcare and education and how the vision of VMware fits in this. After that Sanjay spoke about Workspace One. VMware Workspace ONE is a simple and secure enterprise platform that delivers and manages any app on any device by integrating identity, application and enterprise mobility management. It is available as a cloud service or for on-premises deployment. Ray ‘o Farrel was the second speaker on stage. His main topic was SDDC and the components it consists of within VMware, vSphere, VSAN, NSX and vRealize . He focused first on vSphere 6.5 and all the new features it offers. More info can be found here. Yan Bing Lee came on stage to talk about VSAN 6.5 and the new features it offers but also what was in the beta for successor of the just released version. More information on what is new in VSAN 6.5 can be found here and on the site of Duncan Epping. After Yan Bing, Rajiv Ramaswami came on stage to talk about NSX and the challenges that NSX helps to address. These challenges are around security, automation and application continuity. Last speaker of the general session was Kit Colbert. Kit talked about Photon Platform. Photon Platform delivers core IaaS capabilities including VMs, Networks, and Persistent Disks on-demand to developers. Resources are provisioned quickly and reliably, supporting the needs of devops tools that programmatically allocate resources at scale. Photon Platform enables you to deliver Kubernetes as a Service to multiple tenants from a single shared pool of hardware. Each tenant gets access to API, CLI and GUI tools which allow them to provision dedicated Kubernetes clusters on the fly. Users get a dedicated kubernetes cluster with strong isolation from other tenants. Photon Platform automates the provisioning and high availability of these clusters, automatically replacing failed nodes with no human intervention.The Kubernetes service will become available in Q4 of 2016. VMware will offer end to end support for Kubernetes running on Photon Platform. I will post more on Cloud Native Applications and specific Photon Platform in other post. After the general session I attended two other session. First session was VMware Cloud on AWS - a Closer Look . In this session the technical background behind VMware Cloud on AWS. Important takeaways of this sessions are: ...