Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

vmworld

VMworld first sessions unofficially announced…

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VMworld 2009 – August 31 -Sept 3. | The Moscone Center, San Francisco

I opened up tweetdeck this morning and noticed that some of the first VMworld 2009 sessions have been approved and unofficially announced. I was really surprised to find an email this morning that my session had been approved, I totally forgot about the fact that Rick(VMwaretips.com) submitted a session and that I was listed as one of the presenters. As you can see below Rick, Scott Lowe and myself will be doing a session on Virtualization Design. It’s an interactive session so we will need you guys to participate!

Of course Eric Sloof aka Mr Scoop broke the news:

TA2650 “Take PowerShell and the VI Toolkit to the Next Level” @LucD22 and @halr9000
TA2259 “Ask the Experts – Virtualization Design” @rick_vmwaretips, @depping and @scott_lowe
TA2262 “vSphere Enterprise Stability – It’s all in the Design” @rick_vmwaretips

And of course @cshanklin is one of the lucky ones. I think his session will have to do something with the vSphere PowerCLI. I didn’t hear anything about my submission though. I will keep a close watch on my inbox.

Update more unofficial announcements:
VM3040 “High performance VI Operations Checklist” @stevie_chambers
VM3041 “Integrating Virtualization with Capacity Management” @stevie_chambers
VM3743 “Automating Continuous Software Integration Testing for SaaS on VMware” @mcowger
VM2648 “Managing Compliance in Virtual Environments” @daveshackleford

VMworld Europe 2009 sessions available

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The VMworld team has worked around the clock to get the sessions up on the website as soon as humanly possible. Thanks for the hard work, I’ve missed out on most of the sessions but will most definitely start catching up by reading, listening and watching the sessions.

The General Sessions/Keynotes are free for the public, but to view any of the sessions or labs, you must have been a registered attendee of VMworld Europe 2009 or have a VMworld.com Subscription. I usually download every single PDF and use google desktop to index them, should be standard equipment of your VMware toolkit imho!

VMworld, the wrap-up

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VMworld Europe 2009 came to an end on Thursday. I finally traveled back on Friday, after a 5 hour delay.

I’m sorry I haven’t been able to write any technical content but you can’t imagine how busy I’ve been. I’ve gathered all useful links and added them to this post. But just to give you an idea what I was up to during VMworld:

Arrived on Sunday at 15:00, dropped luggage at hotel and went to the Hands-on Labs. Started unpacking the thin-clients and helping with the lab environment till 20:00. Changed clothes and went to the Veeam party.

Monday, 08:30. Preparing the labs again. Testing lab manuals, setting up thin clients and solving SAN issues. Finished at 21:00 and went directly to the Dutch VMUG Meet and Greet.

Tuesday, 08:30. Back to the labs again and do some final testing. At 10:30 first people entered the labs and I had Community Booth duty the rest of the day till 19:30. Quickly changed clothes and back to the VMware Benelux party.

Wednesday, 08:30. Watched the keynotes and hurried off to the community booth again. Helped a couple of minutes at the labs but mainly booth duty. Went to the hotel at 18:30 to change clothes for the VMworld Party Cloud9.

Thursday, 08:30. Lab duty for the first couple op hours. Booth duty the rest of the day. Couldn’t feel my feet anymore after a couple of hours. When the solution exchange closed at 16:00 we needed to put everything in the original boxes again. All thin-clients / monitors / keyboards etc. 19:30, done, change clothes and went out for a decent meal… actually the first decent meal this week.

This, was just a quick write-up. But you can imagine that most VMware employees have been running around all day long, no time to eat / drink / sit down. Talking to people all day long, answering questions or just random chit-chat, there’s even no time to reflect and digest all the announcements. Keep in mind that even weeks before VMworld people are doing preparations. For instance the VI-Toolkit lab had been tested by at least 6 people two week before VMworld. When I visited VMworld as an “attendee” last year I honestly didn’t have a clue how much work an event like this really is.

For the Hands-on Labs: At least 1000 attendees visited each day. Yes a THOUSAND at least. I really loved the format of the labs, the open floor instead of the closed lab sections was also a great idea! I would have never expected that there would have been queues, but there were… Sometimes even over 20 people were waiting just to get in. Definitely a big compliment to all Hands-on Labs staff, they/we did a great job.

And let’s not forget the team that organized this event, great job! Thanks!!!

I hope I will be able to attend VMworld 2009 in San Francisco. Over 15.000 attendees are expected at the Moscone Center:

VMworld 2009 Europe Linkage

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Because I haven’t been able to write as much as I would have liked I created this link list. I didn’t include all VMworld articles, just the ones I think are worth reading.

I want to highlight these 4 blogs cause they covered VMworld by far the best in my opinion and deserve some more exposure. Martijn, Simon and Jason wrote a couple of outstanding articles. And Eric Sloof video coverage was top notch again. Here are the links:

Keynote Day 1 and wrap-ups:

Keynote Day 2 and wrap-ups:

Announcements:

Hands-on Labs:

Sessions:

Various:

VMworld Swag…

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One of my former colleagues held a “Swag competition” with a friend from South Africa….
South Africa 0, Netherlands 1.

(ps: this picture doesn’t include Thursdays harvest.)