vmware explore

My favorite VMware Explore 2026 sessions!

Duncan Epping · Jun 26, 2026 · Leave a Comment

The VMware Explore 2026 catalog was just published, so it is time again to make a list of my favorite sessions and speakers at the event. This year the Plenary Session (keynote) is at 16:00 on a Monday, so that is worth adding to you agenda already, as it is a big change from previous years. Sessions will be held from Monday morning until Wednesday late afternoon, but the certification center is also still open on Thursday. So if you want to do a few exams, that may be a nice option.

I created a targeted agenda for your convience here. I know there are some overlaps/clashes, so you have to pick.

I have 2 sessions approved:

Four Breakthroughs Powering VMware Cloud Foundation 9 Unified AI Storage and Data Platform [INVB1090LV] with Rakesh
Four Production-Ready Storage Capabilities Every VMware Cloud Foundation Admin Needs to Know [CLOB1085LV] with Pete

Make sure to favorite those session and register as soon as you can, as they both filled up fast in previous years! When it comes to sessions I personally am excited about, these are the ones I favorited and am hoping to attend. I listed them in no particular order:

A Look into the New Features for Memory Tiering in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1 [INVB1153LV] with Arvind and Dave
Tips and Tricks for Running VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1 in Lab/PoC [CLOB1613LV] with Alan and William
Disaster Recovery Deep Dive: Going Beyond Site Recovery [CLOB1215LV] with Emad and Michael
Models in Minutes: A Deep Dive into VMware Private AI Model Runtime [INVB1227LV] with Frank and Shawn
Design & Architect: Building Scalable Platforms in a Multi-Tenant Private Cloud [CLOB1143LV] with Shree and Jeff
Trust No One: Confidential Computing and Security Inside VMware ESX [CLOB1154LV] with Nick
Baked-in Protection for Your Kubernetes Applications in VMware Cloud Foundation [CLOB1727LV] with Jatin
VMware Cloud Foundation Networking: Future Vision and Strategy [INVB1103LV] with Jerome
Living on the Edge: What’s New with VCF Edge [CLOB1260LV] with Rick, David, and Pete

Make sure to add these to your list of favorites as well, and register for them as soon as you can, as most are guaranteed to fill up.

#102 – Explore on Tour featuring Joe Baguley and friends!

Duncan Epping · Sep 8, 2025 · Leave a Comment

We just finished Explore in Las Vegas, and the various local ⁠Explore On Tour events⁠ are literally around the corner. I will most likely be in London, Frankfurt, and potentially Paris myself. It looks like Joe Baguley will also be at all of those events delivering the keynote! Why should you go? Well, listen to the episode to find out. We start out with a brief conversation with Joe, and then have Frank Denneman, Martin Hosken, and Lars Fiechtner joining to provide their insights! My call to action, if you are planning on attending, register as soon as registration is open as London sold out fast, and so did the UK VMUG the day after! Listen to the episode on Spotify (bit.ly/3VEnWLw), Apple (bit.ly/4pawc3l), or via the embedded player below or your podcast app of choice!

My favorite VMware Explore 2025 sessions!

Duncan Epping · Jul 3, 2025 · Leave a Comment

Yes, it is that time of the year again… VMware Explore season! As I write this, I am in the middle of developing the content for Explore, as I have two sessions approved myself. I created a so-called targeted agenda, so if you want to attend any of the below sessions, just go here.

The two sessions I am presenting can be found here. But for those who don’t want to click, they are:

Three Times the Performance, Half the Latency: VMware vSAN Express Storage Architecture Deep Dive for VMware Geeks [CLOB1067LV] Featuring Pete Koehler and Duncan Epping
Six Innovations Redefining Storage and Disaster Recovery for VMware Cloud Foundation [CLOB1028LV] Featuring Rakesh Radhakrishnan and Duncan Epping

If you are attending Explore, and are planning on attending those sessions, make sure to register as soon as you can as they were “sold out” in previous years!

Now, for the rest of the content catalog, these are the sessions I hope to be able to attend:

Deploying Minimal VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Lab [CLOB1201LV] hosted by Alan Renouf and William Lam
The Isolated Clean Room Blueprint for On-Premises Based Cyber Recoveries [CLOB1267LV] hosted by Michael McLaughlin
A Deep Dive into Memory Tiering with NVMe [CLOB1122LV] hosted by Dave Morera
Bridging the Gap: Managing Virtual Machines in a Kubernetes World [CLOB1938LV] hosted by Kat Brookfield
Design and Architect: Multi-cluster Management for Kubernetes at Scale with VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 [CLOB1471LV] hosted by Kris Inglis and Hugo Phan
10 Amazing New Things with VMware Live Recovery [CLOB1943LV] hosted by Jatin Jindal and Nabil Quadri
Building Secure Private AI Deep Dive [INVB1432LV] hosted by Chris McCain
5 Key Capabilities of Next-Gen Data Protection and Ransomware Recovery with vSAN for All VCF Workloads [CLOB1265LV] hosted by Rakesh Radhakrishnan and Sazzala Reddy
Design and Architect: Best Practices for Deploying VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 [CLOB1427LV] hosted by Prak Kalra and Sushil Suvarna
Design and Architect: Managing and Operating at Scale with VCF 9.0 [CLOB1487LV] hosted by Ivaylo Ivanov and Michael Kolos
Real-World Lessons in Rightsizing VMware Cloud Foundation for On-Premises AI Workloads [INVB1300LV] hosted by Frank Denneman and Johan van Amersfoort

If you feel that a session is missing, feel free to leave a comment!

VMware Explore 2024 Las Vegas, my top sessions!

Duncan Epping · Jun 19, 2024 ·

I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember, creating a list of my personal favorite sessions for our yearly event, VMware Explore. Of course, I created one for 2024 in Las Vegas as well. Typically these are the sessions I am going to try to attend personally, that is if they are not full. Yes, the list is focussed on areas I am interested in, and is not necessarily a representation of the broad diversity in terms of topics discussed at the event. But I am sure a few others will produce a similar list at some point, which may (or may not) be more balanced.

Normally I would have a list of sessions on my page, but the cool thing is that on the Explore website, I was now able to create a “targeted agenda”, so that you can simply go there and favorite those sessions from your account straight away. This makes things a lot easier than previous years where I actually had to copy and paste all the details, create the links, and then have you go back and forth between the various pages to favorite what you also find interesting. So if you are going to Explore, and you are a bit geeky like I am, the sessions in the following link may be of interest to you!

https://myevents.vmware.com/widget/vmware/explore2024lv/1718781547715001Ezh2

VMware Explore 2023, my personal top recommended sessions!

Duncan Epping · Jul 13, 2023 ·

This year I wasn’t planning on creating a list with my personal favorite sessions at Explore, it just takes so much time to go through the agenda, read the outlines and then pick what I feel would be interesting for me personally. However, this week I had a handful of people asking if I was going to post a list again as they typically share the list with their customers. So I figured that I would go through the exercise again. First, let me share the three sessions that I will be part of:

Tech Deep Dive: vSAN 8 ESA–Performance and Resilience Without Compromise [CEIB1101LV]
Pete Koehler and I will be diving deep into all things vSAN 8 ESA, and will make sure to bring some demos as well to this 45 minute break out session. This just may include some details of … well I can’t talk about that really.
Increasing Availability and Resilience with VMware vSAN Stretched Clusters [CEIB1099LV]
Vivek Pamadi and I won the People’s Choice Award, and as such we get to present on the topic of vSAN Stretched Clusters at Explore, and in this session we will not only cover the current, but we will also reveal some potential future capabilities which will make your life as a stretched cluster customer easier!
Career Advancement Panel Discussion: Tips for Success from Tech Leaders [VIB2845LV]
I submitted a personal/career development session, but as the number of speaking slots is limited I was asked to join this panel session to talk about my experiences within the IT industry.

Those are the three sessions I will be part of, and hopefully, you will sign up for these. The vSAN sessions historically have been packed, usually repeated, so sign up early before they fill up!

Now, let’s list some of the sessions I am going to try to attend personally, that is if they are not full. Yes the list is focussed on areas I am interested in, and is not necessarily a representation of the broad diversity in terms of topics discussed at the event. But I am sure a few others will produce a similar list at some point.

Technology Innovation Showcase [K2906LV]
This was one of my favorite sessions in 2022, Kit Colbert and Chris Wolf will be talking futures/innovation and VMware. This means they will be sharing insights on what our R&D teams are currently working on and exploring. In my opinion, this is a must see!
State of Alaska: Rapid Cloud Migration from the Last Frontier [CEIB2447LV]
I do not know this speaker, Niel Smith, but the first sentence of the abstract just caught my interest: “If you think you can’t use public cloud because of latency, old applications, storage performance, network constructs, firewall policies, and backups, think again.” And I love to hear good customer stories.
State of Union for VMware Home Labs [CODEB2757LV]
William Lam will be talking for 45 minutes extremely fast on the topic of Home Labs. You all know his name, you all know his blog, and you all know his passion for home labs. This will be good, and I would encourage all the lab geeks to join this one!
Cloud Data Infrastructure: Strategy and Product Portfolio [VIB1643LV]
My former manager, Christos Karamanolis, is hosting this session and talking about the Cloud Data Infrastructure strategy. Last year they introduced Project Moneta, will be interesting to see what we can expect in the upcoming year(s)
Cyber Secure Storage and Data: VMware’s Next Storage Frontier? [CEIB2594LV]
I am very intrigued by the title, cyber secure storage and data, hosted by Sazzala Reddy and Vijay Ramachandran. I’ve seen some previews of the content, I suspect that this will be one of my favorite sessions this year. I am very excited about what is going to be shared.
Scaling and Deploying ESXi at the Edge with Desired State Management and GitOps [VIB2169LV]
Last year Project Keswick was introduced by Alan Renouf (listen to the UT podcast on this topic), it seems that this session is the follow-up to that, how to deploy ESXi at the edge at scale. Alan Renouf will be hosting this session with Sadaat Malik and Elliott Davis
Unleashing vSAN ESA – An Exploration of HCI and dHCI Deployment Options [CEIB1777LV]
Kris and Kalyan are diving deep into the world of disaggregated HCI in this session, with a focus on how vSAN ESA has evolved this space for VMware, and will continue to evolve.
NSX Security Mindset: The Architect’s Forum Part 1 and 2
Chris McCain (and friends) is hosting a two-part workshop where they will be talking about securing your environment and how to respond to attacks. This is on top of mind for many organizations out there, and although these sessions are lengthy (90 minutes each), I highly encourage to attend these.
Balancing Risk and Performance for Sustainable ICT Networks [CEIB2839LV]
Sustainability is on the radar of most CIOs and CTOs these days, but what can YOU as an architect or administrator contribute? Frank and Valentin are going to be discussing exactly that!
45 Minutes of NUMA – A CPU Is Not a CPU Anymore [CODEB2761LV]
This session has been a top-rated session for years, and for a good reason, Frank Denneman and Yu Wang will dive deep into CPU architectures and discuss how you can get the most out of your infrastructure by understanding the CPU architecture and NUMA topology!