VMworld sessions

VMworld 2015 Europe – Plans & My Session Schedule

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I’ve been fortunate enough to attend the VMworld Europe event for the past 3 years running, and as it turned out, I will be attending this years event too in lovely & lively Barcelona. So I thought I’d do a quick blog post to share my plans for this years VMworld Europe, in case anyone’s interested in knowing or wanting to meet up while I’m there, you know where I am when. Also, I will list my session schedule along with why I thought I should attend each session, just in case anyone’s interested.

As I work for a VMware platinum partner, I’m planning to attend the Partner Exchange Day (PEX) on Monday which is not open to general public. Therefore, I will be travelling on Sunday afternoon from Manchester to Barcelona with a view to collecting my registration pass on Sunday evening itself (they usually have the registration desk open on Sunday till about 6-7pm if I remember correct) which will hopefully save me from having to queue up on Monday morning. I will be staying at hotel Torre Catalunya throughout the week with few other colleagues of mine and some customers that will be joining us there.

  • On Monday (PEX day), I have the following sessions booked to attend.
    • 9am – 10am:  PAR6413 – VMware Virtual SAN Architecture Deep Dive for Partners
      • VSAN has now come of age (its a version 3 product now which means its quite mature) and has turned out to be a really nice, complementary solution to vSphere that work well with most if not all storage use cases. The customer adoption of VSAN for hosting production workload has been beyond belief. I am fairly conversant about VSAN and its technical and business benefits as well as its sizing, architectural side of set up and the implementation details. But by attending this session, I’m aiming to learn a bit more about the All flash VSAN configuration, the new generation snapshot capability (available soon I hear) and the performance enhancements introduced in the most recent 6.1 release.
    • 11am – 12:30 am: Virtual SAN Partner Advisory Roundtable
      • This was an invited event for VMware partners to interactively discuss & debate and share experience about what worked well and where the partners need more support from VMware to successfully implement VSAN solutions for customers. I’m hoping to meet a number of EMEA and Global product management staff responsible for VSAN as well as key people from the Storage business unit within VMware during the event. I already have a number of questions & requests on behalf of my customers to the VMware VSAN team and am looking forward to attending this event.
    • 12am – 1pm: PAR6411 PSE: SDDC Assess, Design and Deploy 2.0 – Whats New?
      • Ok, I know the starting time is clashing with the finishing time of the previous session my I’m planning to bail early from the previous one to attend this one on time. This is a partner only session with the VMware Professional Services Engineering team to discuss the professional services delivery kit these guys put together, especially in light of the vSphere 6 and other related new versions.
    • 2:30pm – 15:30pm: PAR6090 60 Desktops in 60 Minutes: How to Deploy Horizon View with vGPU for a Quick POC
      • I’m not heavy in to VDI side of things, but I was genuinely interested in the vSphere 6 introduced vGPU feature as I’ve seen the demo’s of this in the last years VMworld and it looked totally awesome for graphics performance for VDI. So, naturally wanted to find out more about the deployment tricks and what it takes to do quick POC as no doubt I’d have to be doing this few times for my customers in the future (demand for VDI finally seems to be increasing.
    • 4pm – 5:30pm: Executive Roundtable with NSBU Executives: Martin Casado and Milin Desai
      • Ok, this is personally my most eagerly awaited session for the day. Again, an invited partner event to discuss the NSX and its roadmap with none other than the man who invented it himself (Martin Casado) and also Milin Desai from the VMwae NSX team. This could be epic…!! (The event is NOT taking place at VMworld venue but only at a separate hotel in Barcelona). Hopefully I will be able to get more of an understanding of where NSX is heading as a solution and some roadmap info which would be invaluable for my customers.
    • 5:30pm – 7pm: Gym.
      • Yes, it may be VMworld, but keeping your calorie burn / fitness is equally important (says the man hopefully 🙂 )
    • Evening: Meeting with other Insight (my employer) colleagues and customers to plan the rest of the week and perhaps few beers & food at the hotel.
      • Do come and say hello if you are there….. 🙂

 

  • On Tuesday (1st day of the general event open for all), I’ve got the following sessions planned
    • 10am – 11am: MGT5956 The New vRealize Converged Blueprints: Driving Automation and DevOps
      • Names says it all right? vRA has been of really keen interest to me and planning to find out more about the latest version and NSX integration as well as Application service integration in to a  single blueprint here from the horse’s mouth. if you are in to Automation and Orchestration, this should be a really important session to attend
    • 11:30am – 3pm: Solutions Exchange browsing and talking to as many vendors as possible about the their solution offerings.
      • Often, this is something that many VMworld attendees don’t prepare for, especially 1st timers as they’d inundate their diary with back to back breakout sessions (which after all, will be available as videos / presentation slides post VMworld). Attending breakout sessions are important yes, but I’d say its far more important to look at the solutions exchange and see what vendors are there and what they have to offer. In my previous attendances, I’ve come away with some really unique vendors with some really cool, unique and useful technology offerings to complement VMware tech that you can position to customers when the come to you with requirements that are not mainstream. Trust me on this one….!!
    • 2:30pm – 3:30pm: INF4945 vCenter Server 6 High Availability
      • While I have a decent understanding of the vCenter / vCSA high availability options available with vSphere v6.0, finding out more should not harm.
    • 4pm – 5pm: SDDC5440 VMware Validated Designs – An Architecture for the SDDC
      • I work with many SDDC offerings for my customers and its aleays good to get more information from VMware about how they’d recommend you design and deploy their SDDC software together such as vSphere, NSX, vRA and vROPS.
    • 5:30pm – 7pm: Gym.
      • Yes, it may be VMworld, but keeping your calorie burn / fitness is equally important (says the man hopefully 🙂 )
    • 8pm – late: Veeam party / VMware UK&I reception party
      • Unsure which one I’ll end up joining but probably try both. Veeam party was a knock out last year and defo worth attending, and I say that not because of the free drinks, but because of the networking element with like minded peers. Its awfully useful to meet with other like minded people and talk tech (most of the time)

 

 

 

  • Friday morning: Travel back home.

 

There you have it. I will aim to be tweeting (@s_chan_ek) and blogging while I’m there too subject to time constraints…etc. but please do come and say hello if you are interested in meeting up to discuss something or simply to have a chat (even if its to tell me my blog is rubbish….:-) )

Enjoy VMworld Europe 2015….!!

Cheers

Chan