Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

vmworld

VMware Explore 2024 Las Vegas, my top sessions!

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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!

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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:

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.

Five VMware Explore Recordings worth watching! (Deep Dive’s mainly)

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I was going over the content I recommended before the event, and of course, there were a bunch of sessions I did not get to see live. I’ve been catching up on those sessions this week and I figured I would share my five favorite sessions with you that have deep technical content. There are loads of great sessions in the Explore Catalog, so I may have missed a few on this list, but these are the sessions that I felt were deep and useful! I recommend watching these.

  1. CEIB1576US – Project Monterey Behind the Scenes: A Technical Deep Dive
    This session goes over what the vSphere Distributed Services Engine is, how it has been implemented, and what the benefits are. It also provides some insights on what to expect in the near future of this feature.
  2. INDB2406USD – Deconstructing vSAN – A Deep Dive into the Internals of vSAN
    This session goes over the vSAN internals and shows the data path, the emphasis here is mainly on the new Express Storage Architecture (ESA).

  3. CEIB1236US – Vision for Data Protection and Ransomware Recovery as a Service
    I attended this session live, and it basically previews an upcoming solution for recovery from a ransomware attack. I loved how it shows you where the attack potentially occurred, and I love that there is a next-gen anti-virus scanner integrated to scan the snapshots on restores so that you don’t go back to an infected “point in time”.
  4. CEIB2325US – VMware Edge Compute Stack Reference Architecture Deep Dive
    This session goes over the VMware Edge Compute Stack 2.0 which was mentioned in various keynotes at the event.
  5. CEIB1432-3-4-USD – Tech Deep Dive into Azure VMware Solution / Google Cloud VMware Engine / Oracle Cloud VMware Solution
    Yes, I am cheating again, but I can’t just list one when there are sessions on each of the offerings. I feel it is important to understand the details before you decide on which platform works for your multi-cloud implementation.

Top 15 VMware Explore Sessions to attend!

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Every year over the past decade or so I have done this “Top 15/20 VMworld Sessions to attend” post, although VMworld no longer exists and VMware created this new event called VMware Explore, I feel that this tradition does need to live on! I went over the full catalog and picked the 15 sessions I feel are “must-watch” content. Now, to be clear, this is my opinion and you may not agree, and that is fine! If you feel a session is missing, just drop a note in the comment section so people can see what else they should consider watching/attending!

Before we start the list, I do want to mention that Frank Denneman, William Lam, and I will be part of a panel session hosted by Pete Flecha and John Nichsolson, aka the Virtually Speaking Podcast crew. The Title of the session is: “60 Minutes of Virtually Speaking Live: Accelerating Cloud Transformation [MCLB2804US]“. Make sure to register as soon as you can, as I am sure that this one will fill up fast!

Here we go, please note that this is a mix of “live/in-person” and “on-demand” sessions, and the sessions are in no particular order!

  • Project Monterey Behind the Scenes: A Technical Deep Dive [CEIB1576US] by Dave Morera and Meghana Badrinath (In-Person)
  • Deconstructing vSAN – A Deep Dive into the Internals of vSAN [INDB2406USD] by Pete Koehler and John Nicholson (On-Demand)
  • Get to Know the Next-Generation of vSAN Architecture [CEIB2172US] by Rakesh Radhakrishnan and Wenguang Wang (In-Person)
  • Core Storage Best Practice Deep Dive [CEIB1382USD] by Cody Hosterman and Jason Massae (On-Demand)
  • How Your Future Server Purchase Should Be Ready for Tiered Memory [VIB1390US] by Richard Brunner (In-Person)
  • Project Capitola – Vision for a Disaggregated Memory World – Addressing Capacity and Cost Challenges for Business-Critical Applications [CEIB1268USD] by Sudhir Balasubramanian, Sridhar Kayathi, Arvind Jagannath (On-Demand)
  • A Technical Deep Dive into Container Security [SECB2366USD] by Haim Helman and Stephane List (On-Demand)
  • VMware Edge Compute Stack Reference Architecture Deep Dive [CEIB2325US] by Ken Guo and Michael Wright (In-Person)
  • Architecting Multi-Cloud Horizon [EUSB2088USD] by Hilko Lantinga and Richard Terlep (On-Demand)
  • Designing a Secure Multi-Cloud Infrastructure with VMware and Google [SECB2398US] by Wade Holmes and Chris McCain (In-Person)
  • Tanzu Application Platform – A Deeper Dive for Developers [CNAB2045USD] by Ben Wilcock and Alex Barbato (On-Demand)
  • Advanced Networking and Security for VMware Cloud on AWS [NETB2287US] by Sandeep Sharma and Jeremy Anderson (In-Person)
  • Tanzu Platform for Kubernetes and the Multi-Cloud Journey [KUBB1940US] by Kendrick Coleman, Scott Rosenberg, Katarina Brookfield (In-Person)
  • Technical Architecture and Advantages of VMware Cloud for Your Workloads [CEIB1429USD] by Niels Hagoort and Oleg Ulyanov (On-Demand)
  • Vision for Data Protection as a Service and What’s New in VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery [CEIB1236US] by Nabil Quadri and Yoomi Yong (In-Person)

My recommended sessions for VMworld 2021!

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It is that time of the year again, the VMworld content catalog has been posted online! Like every year I am going to provide a list of sessions that I highly recommend watching. There are many great sessions, and I can’t list them all, so I am going to limit it to 15 sessions again. If you feel there’s a great session missing, feel free to leave a comment of course! Oh and before I forget, I suspect that at the first day of the event multiple sessions will be added (new products/features/versions etc), so keep checking the content catalog during the event as well!

I have a session with Cormac titled: “VMware vSAN – Dynamic Volumes for Traditional and Modern Applications [MCL1084]”. We will be discussing how to use vSAN for VMs and Containers. Find it here.

In no particular order:

  • Project Monterey: Present, Future and Beyond [MCL1401] by Sudhanshu Jain and Simer Singh
    SmartNICs and DPUs have been talked about a lot at last years VMworld, and slowly we are starting to see more and more uptake of it amongst customers. If you are interested in what these accelerators can do for you today and tomorrow, make sure to check this session!
  • VMware’s Vision for Storage and Data in a Multi-Cloud World [MCL2505] by Marc Fleischmann and Vijay Ramachandran
    This has traditionally always been one of my favorite sessions about the future of Storage and Data. Why? Well, in this session Marc and Vijay will give insights into what you can expect from VMware in the near (and long term) future. Who doesn’t enjoy a roadmap!
  • Make Sustainable Choices for Product Innovation, Operations: What Can I Do? [IC2794] by Joe Baguley and Adrian Cockcroft
    Two powerhouses have teamed up, Adrian Cockcroft and Joe Baguley. Not just for this session, but they have another session around sustainability (IC2792). Not only an intriguing subject, but also something which is on top of many C-level execs today.
  • Core Storage Best Practices Deep Dive [MCL2071] by Jason Massae and Cody Hosterman
    This is a VMworld top 10 session literally every year for a reason. It has great content, it is deep technical, and it is delivered by great speakers. Must see!
  • Security Deep Dive and Emerging Capabilities in VMware Cloud on AWS [SEC1362] by Ron Fuller
    I haven’t seen any sessions by Ron just yet, but the title and the description just interest me. I think that security is still overlooked, and I think that for everyone it would be useful to learn about how security offerings are implemented in public cloud environments!
  • VEBA Revolutions – Unleashing the Power of Event-Driven Automation [CODE2773] by Michael Gasch and William Lam
    It took me a while to see where VEBA would be useful, but after it clicked I have recommended various folks to check out this event-driven way of automation to solve certain problems they were experiencing. Plus, Michael Gasch and William Lam means it will be deep and excellent!
  • VDI Nerdfest 2021: Demos That Make Admins Drool [EUS1289] by Johan van Amersfoort and Jon Towles
    This session last year was packed with great demos, this alone for me is a reason to watch it again this year. I always appreciate a great demo, something that has you thinking “how did they do that?”…
  • Extreme Performance Series: Performance best practices [MCL1635] by Mark A and Valentin Bondzio
    This one comes as both a session as well as a boot camp (MCL2033). This session will provide you the tools you need to do performance troubleshooting, or simply will provide you with a better understanding of all the different parts of the stack and where potential choking points could be.
  • 60 Minutes of Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) 3rd Edition [MCL1853] by Frank Denneman
    Never attended this session and you call yourself a geek? SHAME!
  • Best Practices for Running AI Workloads in VMs on VMware vSphere [VI1459] by Justin Murray and Andrew Liu
    Justin delivered one of the best sessions in 2020 if you ask me, also on the topic of AI and GPUs, and I expect a lot of this joint session with NVIDIA’s Andrew Liu.
  • The Future of VM Provisioning – Enabling VM Lifecycle Through Kubernetes [APP1564] by Myles Gray and Nikitha Suryadevara
    Kubernetes is all about containerized apps! Could it be used for provisioning VMs? Myles and Nikitha will tell you all about it in this session. Interesting concept!
  • The Evolution of Intelligent Edge and Electrical Grid Modernization [VI1455] by Daniel Beveridge, Alan Renouf, and Prithpal Khajuria
    Daniel and Alan are part of the Office of CTO, and more specifically the innovation labs. That is why this session stood out. Combine it with the buzzwords “intelligent edge” and a co-speaker from Intel (Prithpal), and I am sure this session will spark conversations!
  • Upskill Your Workforce with Augmented and Virtual Reality and VMware [VI1596] by Alan Renouf and Matt Coppinger
    I worked on a project at the start of 2020 with Alan and Matt around virtualizing VR and AR workloads, very interesting stuff. Also interesting to hear about these different AR and VR use cases that enterprises have these days. Reminds me, I still need to pick up an Oculus Quest 2.
  • Automating Ransomware Remediation with the VMware Carbon Black Cloud SDK [CODE2782] by Alex van Brunt and Emanuela Mitreva
    Open up any website that discusses IT and you will most likely see one or two articles on the topic of ransomware. There’s a long list of sessions discussing what Carbon Black is at VMworld, but this one stood out to me as it discussed automating the remediation, which should be a crucial part of your plan to defend against attacks!
  • Migration in Action with Google Cloud VMware Engine [MCL1764] by Emad Younis and Simon Long
    Emad has a few sessions on the topic of multi-cloud workload migration and management, I had to pick one, so I picked this one where the migration to Google Cloud is discussed. Sounds like an interesting session, and both Emad and Simon are great presenters, so it should be good!
  • That was it for now, if more sessions are added to the catalog I may just do an update, probably after VMworld after I watched some of them. Anyway, now it is time to sign up for VMworld 2021! Let’s hope we can all attend “in-person” again next year.