And the free VMworld ticket goes to…

After reading all comments each of us independently made a top-3 and after combining each of them it was quite obvious who won…. Jason C! Read his justification below, but first let me Congratulate Jason! Well done and enjoy the ride!

In simple terms the list below is why I need to go to VMworld.

BC6703 How To Be Successful with SRM Implementations
BC7773 VMware Site Recovery Manager: Misconceptions and Misconfigurations
BC7803 Planning and Designing an HA Cluster that Maximizes Virtual Machine Uptime
DV8044 Server-Hosted Virtual Desktops: What the Vendors Aren’t Telling You
DV8324 VDI Performance Benchmarking and Best Practices
EA7726 Virtual Machines Outperforming Physical Machines–Crossing the Performance Barrier
EA7849 Design, Deploy and Optimize Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 on vSphere
EA8660 Virtualizing Tier 1 Applications: Leveragethe vSphere Private Cloud as a Better Platformfor Apps
MA7528 VMware vCenter Server: Operational Best Practices in the Datacenter
SP8373 Getting Over ‘the Hump’–How to Expand Your Stalled Virtualization Deployment
SP9820 Getting the Most Out of Your Storage Infrastructure with Client and Server Virtualization
TA6720 Troubleshooting using ESXTOP for Advanced Users
TA7171 Performance Best Practices for vSphere
TA8129 A Beginner’s Guide to Performance Troubleshooting with vSphere
TA8133 Best Practices to Increase Availability and Throughput for VMware
TA8245 ESXi Internals: Better Understanding for Better Management and Troubleshooting
LAB11 VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager—Basic Install & Config
LAB12 VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager— Extended Config & Troubleshooting
LAB23 VMware ESXi Remote Management Utilities
LAB24 VMware vSphere™ Performance & Tuning
LAB25 VMware vSphere™ Troubleshooting*

I know it looks a bit random but a bit about me I work for a UK local council, Who have no money now and after the spending review may have even less. We have 20 ESXi boxes in 2 sites. In the spirit of trying to do more with less trying to virtualise as much as possible. Though everything is configured and appears to be working well. Will be hoping to be able to improve performance and tune the setup allowing more business critical apps to be virtualised especially Exchange 2010. As more will be expected of the virtual infrastructure I expect to have to troubleshoot more than i do now (which is not alot) and provide proven availability.

Along with this we have just started to implement SRM, using the one good book on the subject and some online sources for configuration. I’d be looking to use the lab time to build confidence in SRM. VDI sneaks in as we are looking to procure a solution in March the reason I have not put more View items in is that in the POC it was the easiest thing I have ever set up.

I do not have a blog but would be more than happy to write about my experience at VMworld and knowledge gained as guest articles if I can find a blogger to publish them. There will be two people in my team eager to learn as much from me on my return.

I hope by applying the knowledge I gain from VMworld in the workplace and beyond. I can show that for next year a ticket is a worthwhile expenditure for someone.

(The above list only covers 21 hours of things i need to see out of the 3 days there seems to be so much more to see and do maybe VMworld europe Needs another day)

Thanks for your consideration.
Jason

Thanks everyone for making this a succes, and Jason I expect one hell of a blog post from you of course.