Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Various

Changes – Joining Office of CTO

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Almost 2 years ago I joined Integration Engineering (R&D) within VMware. As part of that role within Integration Engineering I was very fortunate to work on a very exciting project called “MARVIN”, as most of you know MARVIN became EVO:RAIL, which is what was my primary focus for the last 18 months or so. EVO:RAIL evolved in to a team after a successful prototype and came “out of stealth” at VMworld when it is was announced by Pat Gelsinger. Very exciting project, great opportunity and an experience I would not have wanted to miss out on. Truly unique to be one of the three founding members and see it grow from a couple of sketches and ideas to a solution. I want to thank Mornay for providing me the opportunity to be part of the MARVIN rollercoaster ride, and the EVO:RAIL team for the ride / experience / discussions etc!

Over the last months I have been thinking about where I wanted to go next and today I am humbled and proud to announce that I am joining VMware’s Office of CTO (OCTO as they refer to it within VMware) as a Chief Technologist. I’ve been with VMware little over 6 years, and started out as a Senior Consultant within PSO… I never imagined, not even in my wildest dreams, that one day I would have the opportunity to join a team like this. Very honoured, and looking forward to what is ahead. I am sure I will be placed in many uncomfortable situations, but I know from experience that that is needed in order to grow. I don’t expect much to change on my blog, I will keep writing about products / features / vendors / solutions I am passionate about. That definitely was Virtual SAN in 2014, and could be Virtual Volumes or NSX in 2015… who knows!

Go OCTO!

Top 5 VMworld EMEA recommended deep dive geek sessions

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I’ve been watching a bunch of the VMworld US session recordings. A couple of sessions were real gems and contain a lot of deep dive info, if you are a geek and like deep technical info make sure to register for the following sessions. These sessions are all by VMware employees who work on the actual product as a developer or technical product manager, so if you have a deep deep question don’t be afraid to ask.

Of course there are many many more deep dive sessions, but these are the ones I enjoyed watching and as my time is limited I may not have watched that one ultra deep geek tech session you presented. If you feel a deep dive session is missing. Please leave a comment!

last minute bonus, just watched this session and it was brilliant, especially for those interested in stretched clusters:

Liking the VMware EVO:RAIL look? How about a desktop / phone wallpaper?

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Dave Shanley (lead engineer for VMware EVO:RAIL) dropped me an email with an awesome looking wallpaper for desktops and smart phones. I asked him if I could share with the world and I guess it is needless to say what the answer was. Grab ’em below while they are still hot :). Thanks Dave! Note, that each pic below links (so click it) to Flickr with various resolutions available!

Desktop wallpaper:

evo:rail desktop wallpaper

Smart phone (optimized for iPhone 5s):

evo:rail smartphone wallpaper

Day 2 #VMworld Report

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Day at VMworld, today was going the be the first of 2 EVO:RAIL sessions for me… but before we get there first the keynote. The keynote was great in my opinion. It felt a bit more loosened up than last year and it looked like they were having fun up on stage and that seemed to resonate well with the crowd. There were a couple of things which stood out to me: CloudVolumes, Project Fargo (VMFork), EVO:RAIL and of course the awesome integration of vCAC an NSX / VVOL / VSAN.

After the keynote I had to go straight to my session on EVO:RAIL. I presented with Dave Shanley, the lead engineer, and the room was packed. This session was a repeat which unfortunately ended up being scheduled in a room which was way too small. They managed though to let 50 extra people in, standing room only! However, there were still people waiting in the hallway all the way too the end and around the corner. I hope that those who did not get in will be able to make the session today in Salon 7 in the Marriott at 11:30 as it fits way more people. It was a good session in my opinion and we received some excellent feedback. The best feedback came from two of our direct competitors who both acknowledged they loved the user experience and the simplicity that EVO:RAIL offers.

After my session I went straight to the EVO ZONE. Wow, that place is packed every minute of the day, and when I say packed I mean packed. Great interest from customers and partners around what it is, what it does, and how they can buy one. Some awesome conversations with a customer who had a use case for ROBO deployments, 1500 sites, he said: No longer will I need skilled IT people to manage those site because of the simplicity of this interface but also the deployment mechanism. You inject a “JSON files” with all configuration attributes and then click “just go” and you are done in minutes.

At the end of my booth visit I walked around the solutions exchange and met a lot of great folks. After that it was time for the Office of CTO party. It was great to see a lot of people at the party I had not seen at the event yet. It was definitely a well organized event, with great food, music and people.

Day 1 #VMworld Report

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It is Monday evening and this morning the madness started, VMworld 2014. Pat Gelsinger’s keynote was of course up first and the highlight for me was definitely the unveiling of the project (EVO:RAIL) I worked on for the last 18 months or so. It is just amazing to see everything come together, a huge engineering effort, the architectural aspects, business development and alliances work etc etc. So many things going, a truly unique experience to take a something from conception to release. I am glad I was provided the opportunity to have this experience and be part of this team. What I personally found interesting about the keynote, and also Carl’s talk, was the customer angle. Many different testimonies from customers who have been deploying SDDC in their datacenters with explanations of how it simplified their life. Also the vCloud Air announcements were interesting, that is definitely a space I will be watching in the future. I can’t wait for Ben Fathi’s keynote tomorrow, as we will get more tech detail and cool demos. I am hoping I will have a wifi connection tomorrow, so I can do some tweeting or life blogging etc.

After the keynote I had my first session… Well not really “my session” but a nice collaborative effort of many people, but the father of it all was Vaughn Steward. Vaughn invited me to be part of the VMware team on a Gameshow. The gameshow was a bit chaotic to be honest, there were some challenges with the slidedeck which is a shame, still I hope people enjoyed it though. I thought it was entertaining, but there is definitely room for improvement.

Second session of the day was with fellow bloggers/vExperts: Rick Scheerer, Chad Sakac, William Lam, Scott Lowe and I. As expected a fair amount of questions on NSX and EVO:RAIL. If you weren’t there, Derek Seaman managed to write down most questions and answers, thanks Derek! I always like these sessions as you do not know what people will ask and it is always a mix of technical to even personal questions. Early scores of this session are off the charts! I hope our repeat Wednesday will just be as good!

I am still heavily jetlagged, looking forward to tomorrow though, although I hope I will get a couple hours of sleep at least today.