Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

vmworld

Win a VMworld Party VIP ticket!

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Are you attending VMworld and are you a big fan of Neon Trees and/or Alabama Shakes? The VMworld team was kindly enough to provide me with a VIP ticket with the opportunity to meet Neon Trees and Alabama Shakes at the VMworld Party in the AT&T Park. Awesome location and great bands. I was thinking about it, and I figured that one of my readers / followers must be a huge fan of both bands or either of the bands and would go wild even thinking about the opportunity to meet them, so why not give the tickets away! So here is your chance to win a “meet and greet” with the band. Here’s how to win and some rules as I want to make sure it is a customer or partner winning this:

  1. You need to be attending VMworld, with a ticket valid to enter the party (paid attendee)
  2. Leave a comment and explain to me how big of a fan you are of either of the two bands and why YOU deserve to meet your heroes!
  3. Make sure you leave a valid email address in the email field!

I will select a winner on the 1st of August.

I will see you at VMworld 2015!

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Just got the word that I am going to be part of three sessions at VMworld this year, and still waiting on news about the quick talks I submitted. So if you are going to VMworld 2015 make sure to note down these session IDs:

  • SDDC5027 – VCDX Unwrapped – Everything You Wanted to Know About VCDX (US only)
    The VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) program is growing every year. More and more people are interested in what it takes to become a VCDX. This moderated talk-show style panel session made up of a VCDX from each of the four tracks, (DCV, NV, DTM, CMA) will help potential candidates understand the value of getting their VCDX. It will also be a no-holds barred open discussion on what it takes to achieve this premier VMware certification. Hear from these experts on their journey and the incredible value that comes with becoming a VCDX yourself. This session will also feature live Q&A from the audience so come prepared with your own questions! This is the place to find out everything you ever wanted to know about becoming a VCDX, from live VCDX holders in a lively interactive session. Featuring: Chris Colotti, Simon Long, Jason Nash and Matt Vandenbeld.
  • SDDC4593 – Ask the Expert vBloggers (US only)
    Back on stage with Rick Scherer, Chad Sakac, Scott Lowe and for me the first time with Chris Wahl! 8th year at VMworld, awesome panel of the industries top bloggers. In this session there are no powerpoints, no sales pitches and no rules! Experts in the industry are here to answer the audiences questions while having some fun in the process. Bring your topic, anything from Software-Defined Data Center, End-User Computing to Hybrid Cloud… Storage, Networking, Security. No questions are off limits.
  • INF4535 – 5 Functions of Software Defined Availability (US and EMEA)
    Together with my friend Frank Denneman… Long time since I’ve been up on stage with Frank, and this VMworld we will be looking at Software Defined Availability. We will discuss 5 functions of Software Defined Availability, which are part of vSphere 6.0. For each of these functions certain scenarios will be discussed to explain how vSphere can help improving availability of your workloads. This ranges from “how Site Recovery Manager and Storage DRS are loosely coupled but tightly integrated” with vSphere 6.0 to “how vSphere HA responds in the case of a certain failure”. Be prepared to get in to the trenches of workload availability…

Not submitted a VMworld session yet? How about a “quick talk”?

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I was submitting some VMworld sessions and noticed there was a new type of session called a quick talk. It is something new so I started digging and found the following in the VMworld CFP Q&A:

Quick Talk – 30 minutes (NEW!)
Quick Talks are abridged breakouts focused on non-technical topics. More consumable, the Quick Talk will take the traditional business topic and whittle it down to essential messages, information and clarity in a targeted half-hour. These presentations do not have Q&A, but can be scheduled in tandem with Group Discussions and/or Meet the Experts appointments.

I reached out to the VMworld team as I felt that “non-technical” and “business topic” was a missed opportunity. 30 minute talks can be excellent as well for a deepdive on a specific feature or on a specific aspect of a product. The VMworld team told me that the Quick Talks are indeed not going to be limited to non-technical or business, but that (deep) technical will also be accepted when the content is appropriate for VMworld. These sessions will all be held on a Monday in the US and EMEA is still under discussion.

I submitted a couple with Lee Dilworth. I figured I would share an example of what we proposed for this quick talk, just to give you an idea and hopefully we will see many of these types of sessions, don’t steal our idea though 😉

  • Five common customer use cases for Virtual SAN
    • In this quick talk Lee Dilworth and Duncan Epping will discuss the five most common use cases seen within the Virtual SAN install base. This session will not just focus on the use case but also include some common hardware configuration details to provide a better understanding of the flexibility which Virtual SAN offers.

VMworld attendees: Give Back!

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Always wanted to give back to the community but can’t find the time? How about VMware help you with that? If you are attending VMworld Europe you can simply do this by going to the hangspace and throw a paper airplane as far as you can. The VMware Foundation did the same thing in the US and it was a big success, I am hoping we can repeat that! The amount that will be donated will depend on where your airplane lands. It could be as little as 15 dollars, but also easily a 1000. I just went to the hangspace and threw a paper airplane  with my friend Jessica from the VMware Foundation and and former colleague but now EMC, Paul Manning.

Take the time, go to the hangspace… it literally only takes 2 minutes and give back!

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: