Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Various

Virtual Events, my thoughts.

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Over the past 9 months, I have done more “zoom” sessions / “virtual events” than I have in the past 5 years. I have seen all the complaints from regular presenters (and attendees) about virtual events, and the flood storm of Zoom requests many have been getting, but personally I seem to be part of the other side of the spectrum as I thoroughly enjoy the virtual events. First and foremost, it helped to relieve stress. To the point where my family noticed a significant change in my mental state/wellbeing, not just the mental aspect, also the physical aspect. It is much easier to have a consistent diet and training regime when you don’t need to hop on a flight to go to an event every other week.

But not only that, I just like the virtual event format. Well, the format which Cormac, Frank, and I developed for our Virtual VMUG Roadshow. Also, the format of the Virtual TAM Roundtable sessions which Cormac and I have been presenting has worked really well. Now, don’t get me wrong. I always enjoyed going to events, having dinner with (new) friends, and talking to people at/during the event… but is it sustainable when you do 20+ events per year as a presenter? And is this model sustainable for attendees when employers are expecting more with less? Not really in my opinion, hence my preference for this virtual world. But that doesn’t answer the question of why I think it has worked for us very well, while it hasn’t worked as well for some others? [Read more…] about Virtual Events, my thoughts.

Alan Renouf, and his family, need your help. Please support/donate!

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Some of you may have spotted a tweet by Alan Renouf earlier this week, most of you have probably heard about the wildfires in California. If you haven’t, just do a google search… Or take a look at this devastating picture of Alan Renouf’s home:

Yes, on the left is the lovely house Alan and his family owned, on the right is what is left after he and the family had been evacuated due to the wildfires. Unfortunately, as you can see, the only thing that is left is ashes. As they were evacuated, in a rush, at the middle of the night they could barely take anything with them. This means they will need to buy a lot of stuff. You name it, they need it. And yes, of course they have insurance, but as we all know these things will take a significant amount of time and will not cover everything.

Now, we have probably all used some of Alan’s work at some point. His PowerCLI scripts (vCheck etc) have made all of our life’s easier, and if there’s ever a time to give back, this would be it.

One of the Renouf’s friends just created a Go Fund Me page, please consider donating, please share this blog and/or the Go Fund Me page!

Top 15 VMworld 2020 sessions to attend

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VMworld 2020 is coming, which means I get to create a list of sessions again which I feel are worth attending. My focus will primarily be on sessions that are hosted by folks of the VMware Cloud Platform Business Unit, which means that the list will be dominated by sessions on the topic of vSAN, vSphere, VCF etc. The key reason for it being of course is that I know most of the speakers on those sessions, and I have attended many of those sessions in the past, so I know what to expect.

I have two sessions accepted this year. The two sessions are:

  • vSAN 7.0: A Platform for both Virtual Machine and Containerized Workloads [HCI1814] – Duncan Epping & Cormac Hogan
  • Change Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone: My Take 3 Journey [ETPD1043] – Duncan Epping

Make sure to attend these sessions, and if you have any questions, feel free to drop me a note on twitter! When it comes to my top 15 sessions, please note that these are in random order, and also note that if your (or a) session is not listed it doesn’t mean I feel your session isn’t going to be great, it simply means I had too many great sessions to pick from and I somehow had to limit the list. Here we go:

  1. Fast Forward to Future-Ready Infrastructure [HCI3074] by John Gilmartin
    In this BU showcase, John Gilmartin will be discussing where HCI stands today, but more importantly, which direction we are heading towards!
  2. 60 Minutes of NUMA [HCP2453] by Frank Denneman
    Do you want to know everything you ever need to know about NUMA when it comes to vSphere? Make sure to watch this session, it was an instant classic last year, and I am sure it will be again this year!
  3. Storage and Availability Vision [HCP3073] by Vijay Ramachandran and Jayanta Dey
    This is the session where futures are discussed! Vijay and Jayanta will be sharing with you which concepts and functionality VMware is exploring for future releases of our HCI products. Definitely worth attending if you want to get a hint of our roadmap.
  4. The Datacenter of the Future [HCP3004] by Kit Colbert and Pere Monclus
    In this session Kit and Pere are going to discuss the future of the Datacenter. Both Kit and Pere are a CTO for the business unit they work for, so you can expect this session to be forward-looking and discuss the trends VMware is seeing and technologies they expect to become mainstream in the upcoming years.
  5. Datrium-based DRaaS Deep Dive: The What, Why, How of the new VMware DRaaS [HCI2886] by Nabil Quadri and Sazzala Reddy
    As most of you know, VMware recently acquired Datrium. In this session, Nabil and Sazzala are going to dive deep into what their DR as a Service solution brings, how it works, and why you should be watching this space closely!
  6. Extreme Performance Series: vSphere Compute and Memory Schedulers [HCP2583] by Xunjia Lu and Qasim Ali
    I always try to watch 2 or 3 sessions in the Extreme Performance Series, these sessions are always very educational. I have learned something new every single time I’ve attended, or watched, one of these. Do note, this is a deep (as in DEEP) dive typically.
  7. vSAN Technical Deep Dive [HCI1069] by Rakesh Radhakrishnan and Matt Amdur
    Technical deep dives host by engineering and product management are always worth attending in my eyes, and both Rakesh and Matt will for sure deliver what you would expect a deep dive to be.
  8. vSphere Virtual Volumes (vVols): Modernize Your External Storage [HCI1692] by Cody Hosterman and Jason Massae
    If I had to pick two people to tell me all about vVols it would probably be Cody and Jason, these guys understand core storage and vVols inside out, and on top of that understand very well how, and why, customers are implementing it!
  9. The Future of Networking with VMware NSX [VCNC1555] by Bruce Davie and Marcos Hernandez
    A lot has changed in the world of networking the past decade or so, and with IoT and 5G around the corner, it is important to understand how VMware can help you moving into this new era.
  10. vCenter Server 7 Deconstructed [HCP2328] by Emad Younis and Niels Hagoort
    In this session Emad and Niels will be discussing the internals of vCenter Server. How did VMware integrate the Kubernetes effort? How does Lifecycle Manager help you manage your cluster?
  11. HCI Management: Current and Future [HCI1514] by Junchi Zhang
    In this session Junchi will be discussing the future of HCI management. In the last couple of years, this session has always been packed with demos of future functionality, and it has been my favorite the past couple of years for sure!
  12. What’s New in Site Recovery Manager and vSphere Replication [HCI1452] by Cato Grace and Velina Krasteva
    A lot has changed for Site Recovery Manager in the past year, definitely worth getting a better understanding by watching this session!
  13. Deep Dive: Storage for VMware Cloud Foundation [HCI2362] by Kevin Tebear and Ron Scott-Adams
    The question of which storage platform to use with VCF comes up frequently, and in this session Kevin and Ron are going to discuss all the supported protocols and architectures, and they will be providing guidance and best practices around what to use and when/where.
  14. Innovations in vSphere 7 vMotion: Architecture and Performance [HCP1508] by Sreekanth Setty and Yanlei Zhao
    I watched this session last year, and it was very interesting, a lot of in-depth info around the changes introduced and the changes that will be introduced in the future, to further improve the vMotion process!
  15. Inside xLabs and Off-Roadmap Innovation in the VMware Office of the CTO [OCTO2406] by Daniel Beveridge and Chris Wolf
    In the past couple of years Daniel and Chris have been hosting some very interesting sessions, some very fascinating ideas, concepts, and trends were shared, along with potential solutions for these.

Update on the Kidspire fundraiser!

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About 10 days ago I posted a blog about my 12 year milestone at VMware. In the post, I asked for people in the VMware/Virtualization/Cloud community to consider sharing my request and/or consider donating even. VMware provided me the opportunity to donate ~3100 to a charity of choice. As mentioned, I added a personal donation and asked if people would consider contributing. I think it is fair to say it was a huge success. I would like to thank everyone for sharing my blog and tweets, and especially thank everyone who took the time to donate whatever they could. Whether it is 5 dollars or 500 dollars, every single contribution is much appreciated by the Kidspire team and myself.

So what was the result?

Yes, a total combined of 10k+ across the three efforts. (My grant and donation, Gofundme, Brightfunds.) This means that Kidspire can buy ~45 new Chromebooks for 3 orphanages, which is amazing. Again, thanks to everyone for contributing, it is much appreciated, and I will make sure to share some pictures when Kidspire visits Vietnam again to deliver the Chromebooks and sets up the new classrooms. If you haven’t gotten around to it, the fundraising campaigns are still open. I will close them at the end of the month, so there’s still time left to donate if you want. Thanks!

vCenter 7.0 stating “New vCenter server updates are available” while there are no updates?

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I have seen this issue reported on the VMware Community Forum a few times, when you run vCenter 7.0 you will receive a message in the vSphere Client stating the following “New vCenter server updates are available”. When you then click “View Updates” however you will notice that there are no updates available for vCenter Server and you are indeed running the latest and greatest version. We (Cormac and I) actually encountered the issue in our lab as well, which is demonstrated in the screenshot below.

Pretty confusing indeed. Please note that this is a known issue, there’s no need to report this to VMware. Soon a patch will be released for vCenter Server which will fix this problem.

The issue is fixed in 7.0b as documented in the release notes!