Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

sessions

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.

My recommended sessions for VMworld Europe 2019!

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I created a list of recommended sessions for VMworld US, so I figured I would do the same for VMworld Europe. I am limiting it to 15 sessions for Europe and removed some of the sessions I had listed for the US and added some others for EMEA. I personally have 2 sessions scheduled at the moment, and they filled up rather fast in the US, so make sure to register early: HCI1870BE and HBI2186BE.

Okay, here’s my top 15 list, please note that this is pretty much in random order:

  • 60 Minutes of Non-Uniform Memory Architecture [HBI2278BE] by Frank Denneman
    This session got raving reviews in the US, I attended it personally and I can highly recommend it. That is if you think your brain can handle it… it is deep!
  • PowerCLI Deep Dive [HBI1729BE] by Luc Dekens and Kyle Ruddy
    What can I say? These guys speak PowerCLI. They know it inside out, just make sure you are ready to go deep!
  • VMware Cloud Foundation Deep Dive [HBI2044BE] by Jason Shaw
    I am a big fan of full-stack HCI solutions, and in this session, Jason talks about what VMware Cloud Foundation brings to the table.
  • HCI Management: Current and Future [HCI1207BE] by JunChi Zhang and Christian Dickmann
    Every year these guys bring some really cool demos and they expect you to provide feedback at the end of the session. So if you want to have a chance to influence vSAN/vSphere, attend this one!
  • Project Pacific Technical Overview: Unifying vSphere and Kubernetes [HBI4500BE] by Michael West and Jared Rosoff
    There was a lot of buzz surrounding the announcement of Project Pacific. I managed to sit in one or two sessions in the US, and knowing Jared was the lead engineering on this project I suspect that this session may even go deeper than the ones I attended in the US.
  • The Virtually Speaking Podcast Live: The Future of Storage [HCI1894PE] by Pete Flecha, John Nicholson, and guests
    I was a guest on the US in this session, it was a lot of fun. A lively discussion, and great questions from the audience on top of that. Plus, it is amazing to see Pete Flecha do the intro and outro live, I always thought that was pre-recorded!
  • The Cloud Backbone Network: A Paradigm Shift in Corporate WAN [OCTO1911BE] by Israel Cidon
    I have seen a session on this topic by Israel at an internal conference and it was nothing short of mind-blowing. I would highly recommend attending this if you want to learn more about how we could potentially improve corporate WANs in the future by leveraging SD-WAN technology. Mind, this session is foreward looking!
  • Showcase Keynote: HCI – The Foundation for your Future-proof Infrastructure [HCI3551KE] by Cormac Hogan and John Gilmartin
    I presented this session in the US with John, Cormac will be presenting it in Europe with John. I am sure it will be filled with great demos once again, and I will definitely try to attend this one in person
  • Leveraging the Latest Server Technologies in vSphere [HBI2362BE] by Niels Hagoort
    This session wasn’t on my list for the US, but after watching the recording I feel it is worth attending in person! A good overview of what we are doing with the latest HW technologist in vSphere.
  • vSphere Virtual Volumes: Technical Deep Dive [HBI2853BE] by Jason Massae and Thiruvengada Govinda Thirumal
    The adoption of vVols is growing fast, and it is for a good reason. Jason and Thiruvengada will explain in-depth what vVols is and how it works, and of course what the benefits are of adopting it.
  • Tech Preview of Site Recovery Manager with Virtual Volumes [HCI2894BE] by Stefan Tsonev and Velina Krasteva
    The tech preview of SRM for vVols has been discussed various times, but in this session by Stefan and Velina it is also demonstrated. So if you are interested in disaster recovery solutions in combination with vVols then this is one to attend!
  • Meet the [ML] Driver of the Self-Driving Datacenter [MLA1904BE] by Jad El-Zein and Arun Annavarapu
    At VMworld US Project Magna was unveiled, VMware’s effort to deliver the self-driving datacenter. A very interesting concept, which is explained in this session by Jad and Arun. I’ve seen some of the work, and it has a lot of potential, highly recommend attending this session!
  • Technical Deep Dive on Cloud Native Storage 1.0 [HCI2763BE] by Cormac Hogan and Myles Gray
    Cormac and Myles are the Cloud Native experts in our business unit, and I can guarantee that this will be a great session filled with cool demos.
  • Optimizing vSAN for Performance [HCI1757BE] by Paudie ORiordan
    If anyone can explain how to optimize vSAN, how to do benchmarking, and what to avoid… it is Paudie. On top of that, he is a great speaker and you can basically ask him anything on the topic of storage. Must see!
  • Innovations in vMotion: Features, Performance, and Best Practices [HBI1421BE] by Sreekanth Setty and Arunachalam Ramanathan
    I watched this session in the US, it provides an excellent overview of the enhancements introduced for vMotion to improve vMotion (and switch over) times. They also talk about some enhancements coming in the near future. Very interesting stuff.

Scheduling opens up tomorrow (24th of September), so make sure to hit the portal early. I guarantee that many of the sessions above will be full in a matter of days. So don’t say I did not warn you in advance!

Top 25 VMworld US 2019 sessions to attend (or watch online)

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I do this every year, list my favorite 25 VMworld sessions which you definitely should try to attend in person. Or if you are not going, watch online. Most of these sessions are by folks I know, or folks I have seen presenting, or topics which I find interesting for various reasons. Make sure to register for these sessions as soon as possible, as these are the sessions which tend to fill up extremely fast. I also have couple of sessions, 3 to be precise, make sure to register for those as well. You can find them through this link. HCI1870BU is the HA best practices for vSAN customers, HBI2186BU is the vSphere HA and DRS Hybrid Cloud Deep Dive which I will be presenting with Frank, and HCI3551KU is the HCI Keynote.

Now that I got that out of the way, let’s take a stab at my top 25, these are in random order! if your session is not on the list it is not because I think it was not good enough to be on there, it is because there are simply too many awesome sessions to select from. Here we go!

  1. 60 Minutes of Non-Uniform Memory Architecture [HBI2278BU] by Frank Denneman
    I am sure this session will go extremely deep, everything you always wanted to know (and more) about NUMA and vSphere. I don’t think I need to say much more.
  2. A Practitioner’s Guide to vCenter Server Architecture [HBI2227BU] by  Emad Younis and Sandeep Byreddy
    Of course, you don’t need to understand the vCenter Architecture to use vSphere, but we are all geeks, right? So this is probably the perfect session to understand more about the internals, services, modules etc.
  3. HCI Management: Current and Future [HCI1207BU] by Junchi Zhang and Christian Dickmann
    This is a great session where product management and engineering talk (and demo) new HCI management features. It typically contains at least 2-3 cool demos, and I watched the session previous years and it was well worth it.
  4. “If This Then That” for vSphere – The Power of Event-Driven Automation [HCI1379CU] by William Lam and Michael Gasch
    I found the abstract of this session very interesting, event-driven automation is definitely something that should of interest for most of you. And when it happens to have William and Michael speaking, you know you will be in for something good.
  5. Hyperconverged Infrastructure: Present and Future [HCI2733BU] by Vijay Ramachandran
    Another forward-looking session, this one by the VP of Product Management, and a bit more generic than the HCI Management session. Previous editions of this session showcased vSAN Data Protection for instance. So expect insights of what the future holds for vSAN/HCI.
  6. VMware CTO Panel: What’s Over the Horizon? [OCTO2899PU] by Ray O’Farrell, Pere Monclus, Greg Lavender and Christos Karamanolis
    The CTO panel has always been interesting, typically they will start with a discussion about where VMware stands and where VMware is going, followed by audience questions and deep (forward-looking) answers/statements. Very entertaining and worth the time!
  7. The Virtually Speaking Podcast Live: The Future of Storage [HCI1894PU] by Pete Flecha, John Nicholson, and Ken Werneburg
    A VMworld session which at the same time will be a live podcast, by your favorite podcast team. Not only are all three great speakers, I suspect they will have some amazing guests and I suspect it will be very entertaining at the same time.
  8. PowerCLI Deep Dive [HBI1729BU] by Kyle Ruddy and Luc Dekens
    These guys are the PowerCLI guru’s, if you want to get your mind blown and learn more about PowerCLI and automation, then this is the session to attend. I can guarantee that you will walk out with new ideas and knowledge.
  9. vSphere Virtual Volumes: Technical Deep Dive [HBI2853BU] by Jason Massae and Thiruvengada Govindan Thirumal
    Adoption of VVols is going up fast, and there’s a good reason for it. Find out what is so special about VVols and why you should consider it. Jason and Thiruvengada are experts on the topic, and will be able to go deep!
  10. VMware Cloud on AWS: SDDC Availability Deep Dive [HBI1924BU] by Jeremiah Megie and Glenn Sizemore
    VMware Cloud on AWS has some very appealing availability features which you won’t find anywhere else. Want to understand how VMware and AWS are working together to improve your uptime and resource availability? Make sure to attend this one by Glenn and Jeremiah!
  11. Zero to DR in 60 Minutes: VMware Site Recovery DRaaS Technical Deep Dive [HBI1229BU] by Stefan Tsonev and Cato Grace
    One of the use cases for public cloud, of course, is disaster recovery, in this session, Stefan and Cato will do a deep dive on the VMware DR as a Service solution.
  12. Extreme Performance Series
    Yes, I am cheating as this is actually 5 separate sessions, but these are simply a must attend/watch! I’ve learned a lot about vSphere internals over the past years by watching these sessions, they cover things like persistent memory, schedulers, best practices etc.
  13. How GPU-Assisted ML for Medical Research Proved to Be a Force for Good [HBI1546BU] by Niels Hagoort and Johan van Amersfoort
    Very interesting use case explained by Johan and Niels. They will discuss how a vSphere environment is used machine learning and deep learning. Worth attending!
  14. One Storage Platform for Thousands of Cloud Providers [HBI2537PU] by Ari Paul, Rawlinson Rivera, and John Toor
    In this session, they will discuss the availability of S3 compatible object storage in vCloud Director based platforms and the use cases. It will feature Rawlinson from Cohesity and John from Cloudian. Hosted by Ari Paul from VMware.
  15. Core Storage Best Practices: Ensuring Your Storage Is Reliable [HBI2751BU] by Jason Massae and Cody Hosterman
    This session has been in the top VMworld sessions for the past couple of years. Jason and Cody have a wealth of knowledge to share with you on the topic of core storage (VMFS, NFS, VAAI etc)
  16. Optimizing vSAN for Performance [HCI1757BU] by Paudie O’Riordan
    Paudie is one of the most technical guys in our team, if anyone understands vSAN (and performance) inside out it is him. Make sure to attend this one to get a good understanding of how to tweak vSAN to get the best performance out of it.
  17. Showcase Keynote: Hybrid Cloud Architecture – The New Standard from the Data Center [HYB3544KU] by Kit Colbert, Raghu Raghuram and Mark Lohmeyer
    I always enjoy these showcases as they discuss what we have today, but more importantly what is coming in the future. Kit, Raghu and Mark are excellently equipped to bring you up to speed!
  18. vSphere Networking in the Data-Centric Future [HBI2136BU] by Sudhansu Jain and Disha Chopra
    I am not a networking guy, but this sounds very interesting as in this session the future of networking will be discussed. What are the current trends, where is the market moving towards?
  19. Innovations in vMotion: Features, Performance, and Best Practices [HBI1421BU] by Sreekanth Setty and Arunachalam Ramanathan
    vMotion is the most used vSphere feature, and it continues to evolve. Over the years the vMotion innovations/futures session has always been very interesting, and I suspect it will be again this year!
  20. VMware Cloud on Dell EMC: Technical Deep Dive [HBI1975BU] by Mike Hall and Sridevi Ravuri
    This session will provide a deep dive on what was formerly called Project Dimension. A very interesting concept where VMware and Dell will join forces to deliver and manage an SDDC as a Service on premises.
  21. Encrypting VMs on Standalone Hosts: Tech Preview [HBI1947BU] by Mike Foley and Samyuktha Subramanian
    A session title with “tech preview” always has my interest! In this session they will also be discussing very interesting use cases for this potential future feature.
  22. Diversity and Inclusion Tech Panel: You Can Drive Success for Women in Tech [PD2632U] by Jodi Shely
    An interesting topic, and an important topic as well, definitely one I will be attending or watching!
  23. Accelerating Intra-Host PVRDMA Storage Traffic in a Future Dell AMD Server [OCTO2718BU] by Richard Brunner and Shyamkumar Iyer
    I’ve attended various sessions by Richard, and they are always excellent and very deep and typically forward-looking. I know this one will also be, and I am sure they will go deep fast!
  24. Edge Computing Innovations in Office of the CTO and Dell Technologies [EIOT2715BU] by Chris Wolf and Daniel Beveridge
    This session was one of my favorite sessions last year, although the title has slightly changed, I am sure it will be packed with cool demos, industry insights, and futures!
  25. How to Become the Platform Engineer of the Future [PD2248U] by Martijn Baecke and Matthew Steiner
    The last session on this list and I think it is an important one. How do you evolve as an IT practitioner, what kind of opportunities are out there and what types of skills would you need for those opportunities? Martijn and Matt will guide you through a fast evolving IT world.

That was it for now, enjoy the show. (Early bird tickets will end the 21st of June, so get them now!)

CTO3509BU: Embracing the Edge: Automation, Analytics, and Real-Time Business

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This is the last post in this VMworld Sessions series. Although the title lists “CTO3509BU: Embracing the Edge: Automation, Analytics, and Real-Time Business” which is by Chris Wolf and Daniel Beveridge, I would also highly recommend watching Daniel’s other session titled “CTO2161BU Smart Placement of Workloads in Tomorrow’s Distributed Cloud“. Both sessions discuss a similar topic and this Edge vs Cloud and where workloads and data should be placed. Both very interesting topics if you ask me, and definitely topics I am starting to explore more.

Chris discussed the various use cases around Edge Computing and the Technology Drivers, some of these very obvious but some of them not so much. What often is skipped is the business continuity aspect of edge but also things like network costs, limitations, and even data gravity. It is good to see that Chris addressed these. Some people still seem to be under the impression that every workload can run in the cloud, but in many cases it simply isn’t possible to send data to the cloud. Could be that the volume is too high, could be that the time it takes to transfer and analyze is too long (transaction execution time), or maybe it is physically impossible. It could also be that the application is mission-critical, meaning that the service can’t rely on a connection to the internet.

As a company, VMware is aiming to provide a solution for Edge and IoT, yet work closely with the very rich partner ecosystem and the main focus is providing a “native experience” for developers. Which provides customers choice as it avoids lock-in. Now I don’t want to start a lock-in discussion here as one could claim that it is difficult to migrate between platforms, and this is always the case, if not only because of the operational aspects (tooling/processes). A diagram which explains the different initiatives was then presented, and I like this diagram a lot as it differentiates between “device edge” and “compute edge”, on top of that it shows a differentiation between the device edge focussed on things vs people (big difference).

Next discussed is IoT management, Chris explains how Pulse 2.0 will be capable of managing up to 500 million managed objects. Pulse provides central management across different IoT device manufacturers. Instead of having a point solution for each manufacturer we introduced an abstraction layer and automate things like updates etc. (Sounds familiar?) Then ESXi for ARM is briefly touched upon, as Christ mentioned this is not for general purpose intended. VMware is looking for very specific use cases, if you are one of those partners/customers that has a use case for ESXi on ARM then please reach out to us and let’s discuss the use case and opportunity!

First, a new project is introduced by Daniel, it is called Project Nebula. Nebula brings an IoT marketplace, in this marketplace you can select various IoT services (which come in the form of containers), which are then sent to the IoT gateways. It looks pretty cool, as Daniel shows how he simply pushed various IoT services down to capable IoT gateways. So there’s a validation there if the edge services can run on the specific devices. On top of that, a connection to specific cloud services can also be provided so that certain metrics can be send up and analyzed when needed. Pretty smooth, I also like the fact that it provides monitoring, even down to the sensor and individual service as shown in the second screenshot below.

Next, it is briefly discussed why vSphere/VMware is the right platform, and then they jump into the momentum there is around cloud services and edge computing today. A brief overview of Amazon RDS on VMware is given and more importantly why this is a valuable solution, especially the replication of instances from on-premises to cloud and across regions. Of course, AWS Greengrass is mentioned, VMware also has a story in this space. You can run Greengrass on-premises in a highly available manner and it is dead simple to implement. For those who have not seen the announcements around that, read up here. Next Chris and Daniel go over various use cases, I guess Daniel likes wine as he explains how a Winery leverages AWS Lamba and Greengrass to analyze data coming from sensors which then drives control systems. On top of that, based on customer (and sommelier) ratings of wine, leveraging the data provided by sensors and matching that with customer behavior the winery can predict which barrels will score higher and most likely sell better etc. Very interesting story.

Compute edge is discussed next, this is where project dimension comes in to play, however first Chris defines the difference between the different option people have for consuming certain services. When does Cloud, Compute or Device Edge make sense? It is all about “time” or “latency”, how fast do you or the process need a response from the system? Transaction time window within 500ms and latency lower than 5ms? Well then you need to process at “device edge layer”, if a transaction time of below 1s is acceptable and latency of around 20ms then the “compute edge would work. Is a transaction time of larger than 1s okay and latency of higher than 20ms, then the cloud may be an option. As I said, it all revolves around how long you can wait.

Project Dimension delivers a compute edge solution which runs on-premises but is managed by VMware and delivered as a service. What I also liked is that the “micro” and “nano” data center is discussed, meaning that there potentially will be an option in the future to buy small form factor solutions which allow you to run a handful of VMs. More importantly, these solutions will consume less power and require less cooling. These things can make a big difference, especially as many Edge locations don’t have a data center room. Again ESXi for ARM is mentioned, this sounds very interesting, would be interesting to see if there are plans to mix this with Project Dimension over time, but that is just me thinking out loud.

From a networking perspective of course VeloCloud is discussed, and some very cool projects where cloud networks can be utilized and per traffic type certain routes can be used based on availability and performance (I probably should say QoS).

That was it for now as I don’t want to type out the whole session verbatim, for more specifics please watch the two sessions, worth your time, TO3509BU: Embracing the Edge: Automation, Analytics, and Real-Time Business” and/or “CTO2161BU Smart Placement of Workloads in Tomorrow’s Distributed Cloud“.

Want to watch a VMworld 2016 session?

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I had a long discussion with the VMworld team about this the past editions and I am happy to say that ALL sessions have been made available to the public straight after the event. VMware made all VMworld 2016 session available to the public. You can find them here: http://www.vmworld.com/en/sessions/2016.html. And also, if you want a more “limited” list, you can go for the top ranked sessions. You can find the top-10 session of each VMworld day here: http://www.vmworld.com/en/sessions/top-10-us.html.

There is one session I want to call out, I wasn’t able to do a live blog on it, mainly because it went deep, and it went deep fast. Ravi R. is one of the best deep tech speakers I have seen: INF8108 – Extreme Performance Series: vCenter Performance Deep Dive.

Thanks VMworld team for doing this. Time for some binge watching 🙂