I am here sitting here at the blogger table on Day-0 (Partner Day) of VMworld in Barcelona, and it is time to close some technical debt (well not really technical but it would be better to call it blogging debt).

If there is one thing that VMware have been doing a great job over the years is abstracting resources, and by that I mean making it easier and easier for end users to use the underlying resources in your infrastructure.

Let’s start with the basic VM concept. Instead of buying a network card, a disk, a CPU etc. that process is abstracted with a GUI (or an API if you that is your thing) which makes adding any of the the above resources a snap.

Networking next. Portgroups – abstract the underlying physical network which makes as easy as one-two-three to connect a VM to a network port and hey-presto – you have a pingable IP.

Virtual desktops (is it the year of the virtual desktop yet?). Abstraction of a pool of resources behind a portal that allows you to get a desktop with a click of a mouse button.

I will dare to say that up until now this have been targeted at making the lives of the end users as easy as possible.

Let me say that again.

“..up until now this have been targeted at making the lives of the end users as easy as possible.”

But what about those poor people that have put all that infrastructure in place? Those poor admins.

• Installing ESXi Hosts
• Configuring Networking
• Storage
• Templates
• etc…
• etc…

Over the years we have developed tools, written our own code, our own scripts to deploy the infrastructure as fast as possible, and in as much of a standard way as possible.

Of course VMware has given us some tools over the years to alleviate these pan points. It started with kickstart scripted installs, Host Profiles, AutoDeploy. Over the years it has evolved, but there has never really been a proper focus on the administrators who have been installing, maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure.

Of course there were different levels of abstraction introduced over the years, I mean vCloud itself is one huge level of abstraction in itself, and again I think this is mainly for the end user. Of course there is stuff in there for the administrators at each and every level, but still you had to install vCenter, and the ESXi Hosts, and configure all the bits.

Until Now.

VMware announced EVO:RAIL (Duncan has a great collection of resources here) at VMworld US just over a month ago. For the first time – VMware is abstracting again, and this time it is solely for the Administrators. EVO:RAIL, and the future EVO:RACK will do just that. EVO:RAIL for the smaller scale and EVO:RACK for hyper scale

As far as I know there is nothing in the EVO family that is actually for the end users, it all about the underlying infrastructure. Configuration of the Servers, the Network, the Storage, vSphere, vCenter, VSAN the VMware software lifecycle. None of that is of any interest to the end user – but it is of huge interest to the people that build infrastructure. (of course there is a GUI there to see VM’s but I do not see that being massively adopted).

A lot of talk has been going on around if VMware has entered the hardware market yes/no – and they are continuously stressing that they are NOT – that is a whole different discussion. This aspect of abstraction is something that I have not seen mentioned before.

The infrastructure people are no less of an important market – no less of an important customer for VMware, and with this release – I think this is a welcomed change in direction, and hopefully this will continue and evolve in the future.

Please feel free to leave your thought and comments in the box below.

I am sure you have all been reading the numerous amount of posts recapping VMworld and their experiences. My RSS feed has been overflowing and it has taken a while to get through it all. This will not be my only VMworld post, but one with which I would like give you all my personal perspective of how I went through VMworld, but not from a technical perspective, but from a personal one just before we start with VMworld 2014 Europe.

Forgive me if this has nothing to do with technology, virtualization or cloud, but as you are all aware, religion is a substantial part of my life, and as a result this has an effect on practically everything I do, including attending technical conferences.

Travel

Shabbat – or as you might know it as the Sabbath. Shabbat is typically from sunset on Friday afternoon until when 3 stars are visible in the night sky on Saturday evening. During that period – for me this is a day of rest. I will not go into every single detail of what the laws are but basically this means:

• no travelling
  • not by car,
  • not by bicycle
  • no public transport
  • not by boat, plane, train, air balloon or space ship for that matter

There are even certain restrictions on how far you can actually walk on Shabbat.

Because of these restrictions, my travel to and from a remote location has to be either before Shabbat or after Shabbat finishes. In the case of VMworld, my travel to San Francisco could not commence before Saturday night, and therefore I would arrive on Sunday morning.

The same with travel back, if a conference finishes late in the week and if there is any chance of my flight back not arriving back in time for me to get home before Shabbat, then I will delay my flights until the following Sunday.

I do my research and see if there is a Jewish community in the city I am visiting, and if there is a synagogue close to the location I will be staying, if not – I will probably move to another hotel towards the weekend closer to the Jewish community.

Food

Kosher dietary laws are very specific, and again I will not go into the specifics but for me it boils down to the following.

I do not eat food that has not been prepared under local rabbinical supervision – either by a caterer, or restaurant, or by a company that has their food under local rabbinical supervision, or at a home prepared by another orthodox religious family, which I can rely on.

I will not eat at any establishment in the city where I am, usually there are a number of places that do adhere to these laws. I usually do my research before hand and if there are any Kosher restaurants in the vicinity of my destination.

If not, (and this does happen) I will have to will bring food with me from home, living on “rations for my duration” something I have done before, when I visited India a while back.

Drinks are a little bit easier, water is fine everywhere – as long as it does not have additional flavoring. Coke, Sprite, all the big brand names are fine, but alcohol is not (not that I drink anyway) but still only certain alcoholic beverages are allowed, again under rabbinical supervision.

For VMworld, this was pretty easy, there was one Kosher restaurant (yes, only one) in San Francisco where I had dinner every evening, and the VMworld event team organized special Kosher meals for all those who requested this in advance (most big conferences are willing to cater with special Kosher food, if it is available locally. Lucky me).

Shabbat

I try as much as possible, not to be out of Israel for Shabbat, but unfortunately that does not always work. I prefer to be in the vicinity of a local Jewish community, but then again, there is not always a community everywhere in the world (almost everywhere, but not always). The wonderful thing is that people are usually very welcoming and hospitable and are willing to welcome a fellow Jewish traveller – the same as I do at home for those in need of a place for Shabbat. Usually you know someone who knows someone else who will be able to help you out.

In the event of me not being able to be in the vicinity of a Jewish community, I need to stay at a the hotel, which is my last preference, because of all the electronics and technology, starting with electronic keys, light sensors and so forth, this becomes a challenge and sometimes a very hard one. There are workarounds that for some of the problems, for example -  climbing 21 flights of stairs instead of using the elevator is no fun, but doable, but a challenge nonetheless.

I do not do sight seeing, shopping, or anything much else on Shabbat, it is a day of rest, so it is not really a holiday but more of a necessity to be there so I can continue on my journey the on Sunday.

I know there are limitations – some of you might feel that I might be crazy, but I would not live my life any other way. Being a observant religious Jew, has its upsides as well. There are challenges, many of them, which I face every day, but I embrace them with open arms and welcome whatever comes my way.

I hope this post was somewhat informative, provided some insight into my way of life, showed some of the considerations I have to take into account when travelling – and how I deal with them.

If you or any other Kosher, Jewish or religious traveller (or anyone else for that matter) would like some more details about what can be done to make Kosher travel easier, please feel free to reach out to me either through Twitter, or the through the contact form on my blog and I will be happy to help out if I can.

As always if you would like to leave a comment, feedback or have any questions, please feel free to do so below.

The event was organized by the VMUnderground crew.

The idea here was to have an activity – community driven – to give people who were interested in something to do on the day before VMworld – Sunday. Yes you could mess around and go sightseeing – all of that is fun – but most of us are techies at heart – and we need our tech fix, so unless you were part of Partner Day or TAM day, there was not much you could do today. So many of you turned up at the City View at Metreon where there were 6 sessions you could choose from, all with panelists.

I volunteered to act as a panelist on the Architecture and Design – the panelists were

• Matt Liebowitz (@mattliebowitz) moderator
• Melissa Palmer (@vmiss33)
• Phoummala Schmitt (@exchangegoddess)
• Mike Preston (@mwpreston)
• John Arrasjid (@vcdx001)
• And little old me - @maishsk

So of course there was an incentive for people to come – because they wanted to get in on the best party WUPaaS (Warm Up party as a Service) a tradition over many a VMworld. If you ask anyone they will say that this is most probably one of the best evening events throughout the week, again I think because it is community driven. Yes there are sponsors, quite a number of them actually, but the event is not driven by any single vendor. And of course – it is for the community. Cost is minimal (yes you have to pay to get in) but I personally do not mind spending those $10 to support the wonderful people of our community
(I am thankful that the majority of the costs are covered by the sponsors – so we can continue to enjoy this event)

We were the third and last session on the roster, so I assume that the crowd had warmed up with asking questions and interacting with the previous panels, so they were not shy.

Question were asked, it was a great flowing discussion and as always I learned a lot (and I hope the audience did as well).

Embedded below is the session recording and the full playlist of all the sessions can be found here.

More VMworld posts to follow.

Today I am releasing the latest version my VMware Visio stencil set (version 4).

This version contains all the previous icons with the addition of new NSX icons.

The new stencil includes ~90 new objects (some are just different colors of the same object).

I am assuming this is just what people will be looking for after the announcements from VMworld – which I think will have some NSX in it.

The new stencil can be found on my VMware Visio Stencils page.

Hope you all enjoy VMworld!

 

VMworld is almost upon us. I am personally looking forward mostly to the social networking part and of course also delivering my first VMworld presentation (NET3160-SPO).

I wrote a summary post last year VMworld 2013 has Come and Gone where I described my experience from last year.

Today I would like to touch on a slightly sensitive topic – because it is a two edged sword (so bear with me please).

VMworld is the place where everyone comes to – it is the VMware show of the year, attendance grows each and every year and sometimes it makes me wonder if something new –0 something that has not yet been done before – will happen at this years show. Any and every vendor that is connected with VMware in some way will probably be there.

Have you ever noticed how many people change companies after VMworld? It is not something that I have performed a scientific study on – I do not have exact numbers.

It dawned on me – after a few conversations in the hang space last year - that several people were there to look how to advance their career. Some of them had specifically set up meetings during the show in order to interview candidates or to apply for a position.

And that is quite natural. I think that many of the vendors at the show are looking to recruit talent, talent that they have the option to meet in person, get to know them and see if they are a “match made in heaven”.

I will not be naming any names (of companies or individuals), but I distinctly remember at least two vendors that had recruiting agents at their booths, on the Solutions Exchange floor.

One individual (who asked to remain anonymous) answered my question.

Q: Do you know of any other people who changed companies as a result of attending VMworld?

A: Not specifically because of VMworld. I think the changes were already underway, or people were already thinking about it before VMworld. It just happens that a lot of key people end up being at VMworld. So I think it's more a result of everyone being together at one place that helps make things happen.I'm sure the other big trade shows are the same as well.

Matthew Brender also got back to me with this answer (and he was so kind to offer that you contact him if you have additional questions)

Q: Did you change companies as a result of an offer you got during / after VMworld?

A: My job shift didn't have to do with VMworld directly, but is a direct result from attending for the last few years. It's connected me into the pieces of the tech community that lead me down a path. I began looking at VMworld and received incredible mentorship there.

.. I'm not sure of anyone who can trace their transition right back to VMworld. What I appreciate about that point is something I think you believe as well: your social good will does not come to a climax at VMworld. Success in our space is about *continually showing up.* Dots are connected at shows, though bonds are built over time. You can't leapfrog the required effort.

I do think it opens up possibilities, quite a few – but that does not mean that just because you attend VMworld you will get a great job somewhere else. It does take time, a lot of effort and patience to build those relationships, maintain them and sometimes those connections will advance you personally and professionally – but perhaps not.

Why I mentioned the double edged sword before – is because it might be possible that when a manager would read this post they might say,

“I don’t want to send my employees to VMworld – they will get snatched away”.

This could be a valid concern. I would like to stress that this is not the purpose of this post and also why this concern should not affect your decision to send members of your team to VMworld.

1. If you are afraid that you might lose your staff as a result of them being snatched up – then they were not yours to begin with. A satisfied employee will stay where he is – and this usually means they are happy with what they do, have security, are compensated well and have a career path in the company. If this is not the case – then they would probably leave sometime – so VMworld was just an opportunity that presented itself – and not the reason.
2. Your employees will learn SO MUCH at the show, which I think outweighs (by a ton) the concern that they might go somewhere else. The benefits you will gain from them attending, the benefits your business will gain, the personal benefits your employees will gain from attending are well worth, the satisfaction, the energy, the motivation to try new things learned at the show, outweigh your concerns.

So for those attending VMworld this year – my advice to you would be go out there – and meet people, talk to people, eat lunch (if its edible) with people, chat with others even if you do not know them, you never how the person next to you help you advance your career.

Please feel free to leave your thoughts and comments below!

And yeah, one more thing. Stop playing the whole time with your phone!

See you all in 10 days!!

Yep, that is 21 days. I do not think there is any need to introduce VMworld to the readers of my blog.

I would like to share with you some (and by no means a comprehensive list) of the activities I will be partaking in during VMworld.

Opening Acts 2014 — Panel Agenda - Sunday August 24th

I will be a panelist in the Architecture & Infrastructure Panel.

Opening Acts will be a series of group/panel discussions over the course of a few hours on Sunday afternoon. Whiteboards will be present, but no slides or PowerPoint.

It is an honor to give back something to the VMunderground crew!

vBrownbag – vExpert Daily Live Podcast – with Michael Letschin

I be on the live podcast on Monday and Wednesday morning at 10:30. This will be a live discussion about the announcements of the day, the vibe and what is happening at the show.

And last but not least my speaker debut at VMworld…

Automating Host, Guest and Application Deployment in the Software Defined Datacenter with Cisco - NET3160-SPO

Automation is an essential component of the Software Defined Datacenter, without an automation solution this is destined for failure. We want to automate it all, from the deployment of the hardware, the hypervisor, the operating systems, and the application. This session will go through a customer story inside Cisco where an automation solution was implemented using PowerUCS, PowerCLI, Razor and Puppet to ensure a successful deployment from end to end. The session is technical, will provide a detailed architecture and methodology used in this customer, and how the solution reduced the deployment time from a number of days to a matter of hours.

You can expect a deep dive session here on Wednesday afternoon at 14:00-15:00. I will be one of only 4 Cisco sessions at the show with demos and some awesome integration between a great number of technologies.

I can’t wait!

You all know what VMCI stands for – don’t you? Well if you ever looked at VMware solutions – then you would recognize it - VMCI Overview.

The Virtual Machine Communication Interface (VMCI) is an infrastructure that provides fast and efficient communication between a virtual machine and the host operating system and between two or more virtual machines on the same host. The VMCI SDK facilitates development of applications that use the VMCI infrastructure. Without VMCI, virtual machines communicate with the host using the network layer. Using the network layer adds overhead to the communication. With VMCI communication overhead is minimal and different tasks that require that communication can be optimized. An internal network can transmit an average of slightly over 2Gbit/s using vmxnet3, VMCI can go up to nearly 10Gbit/s with 128k sized Queue pairs.

In my 10 years (I think it has been 10) of using VMware products – I personally have never seen any public implementation of VMCI, even though it is in theory an interesting concept.

It seems though that VMware are looking to re-brand the acronym into something else, which is connected with something that a number of rumors have been flying around about a converged infrastructure offering to be announced by VMware.

The rumors started a while back and the whole story became apparent in these articles.

Project Mystic's Potential Competitors To VMware: Bring It On

So, Mystic Joe Tucci: Is a hyper-converged tool in EMC's future?

VMware Teaser Gets Tweeted: 'Marvin' Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Appliance

VMware to offer converged compute and storage hardware

What is VMware’s Mystic Marvin Project?

Pure Speculation Post: Some more Marvin Speculation

Spotted Marvin on VMware campus during a break this morning "first hyperconverged infrastructure appliance" pic.twitter.com/1iIPocjREX

— Fletcher Cocquyt (@Cocquyt) June 7, 2014

I was going over the Content catalog for VMworld and noticed something.
*(by the way if you ever want to find out what is going to happen at VMworld – then I can assure you that you will find it in the content catalog)

I am talking about the following VMworld session.

SDDC1767 - Simplify / Automate IaaS Workload Deployment with VMware-Powered Converged Infrastructure (VMCI)

Thirumalesh Reddy - Sr Director, SDDC R&D, VMware Inc

Raj Yavatkar - Chief Achitect, Converged Infrastructure, Vmware

As data center operators struggle to make many pieces of the infrastructure (storage, computing, and networking) work together to offer cost-effective and agile service, Converged Infrastructure (CI) solutions promise to eliminate the challenges by offering customers a set of products that work together easily with minimal installation and operations overhead.
The CI products include a pre-integrated and optimized bundle of hardware and software across networking, compute servers, and storage typically combined with virtualization, management, and other software (DR, load balancing, etc). However, integration of different components from different vendors (across compute, storage, and networking) leads a complex environment consisting of disparate tools for management, provisioning, and deployment.
The session will outline the VMware view of the CI requirements and an architecture inspired by the SDDC suite augmented by software components.

One way to simplify the CI environments is via a VMware-powered Converged Infrastructure solution (VMCI) that ties together hardware and software components under a single virtualization umbrella to offer a single point of-entry for a Software Define Data Center (SDDC). We will tie together VMware (and partner) assets spanning virtualization (compute/storage/networking), management (vCenter, VCAC), and operations/analytics (vCOPS, vCAC, etc) with hardware management, to offer a single point of SDDC entry with a tightly integrated automation for SDDC.
(The highlighting was added by me)

We will offer benefits of reduced cost, faster time-to-value, and operational ease when it comes to SDDC instantiation, workload provisioning, deployment, and operations. This session focuses on Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and provides an in-depth description of a simplified, automated approach to IaaS workload provisioning and deployment using VMCI.

Attached below id the screenshot of the session.

So ladies and gents – there you have it - VMCI – VMware-Powered Converged Infrastructure. This will open up a whole new market for VMware – and of course a number of new co-opetition relationships with VMware’s current partners as well.

I expect that this will be one of the major announcements at VMworld.

Stay tuned.

Disclaimer:

This is based on public information that is currently available on the links above – and has not yet been confirmed by VMware (I doubt it ever will be).

VMworld has come and gone. A whirlwind of a week.

I only was in the US for 4 days, and in transit for another two, and it was worth every single second and cent.

First thank you's.

I would like to thank Corey Romero, and John Troyer for the blogger pass to VMworld.

I would like to thank Amy Lewis for her assistance in getting me to VMworld as part of the Social Media effort for Cisco.

Now to the show and my highlights and thoughts.

The People

Social networking is a major part of the conference. I met more than one person who told me that they did not even sign up for the sessions. They came to meet customers, speak with vendors, and use the power of social networking that is in full force.

The blogger lounge was a great place to be. As I said in my Ultimate Bloggers Guide to VMworld post I did not go into the General Session Hall, I sat at the blogger tables.

I do think that the location of the blogger lounge this year was just as good as last year's with one major exception. There was not single video screen that could be seen from the blogger's tables. Something that I do not understand how no-one noticed when they planned the layout of the Hangspace. I hope that it is something that will be corrected for next year.

The atmosphere at the show provides you with an energy, it is hard to define. I feel it brings out the best in me, making me want to continue what I do, contribute ever more to the community, because you see how vibrant and great this community really is.

The Location

I know that there are people do not like San Francisco, I personally will never get used to the number of homeless people roaming the street (not that I have anything against them - just not something I am used to seeing where I come from). I find the location great. Not overcrowded, and for me the option of getting outside and getting a fresh breath of air and some sunshine a few times a day, beats Las Vegas every time!

The food halls were set up much better this time and you had a place to park yourself at a table and chair and eat as a normal person, contrary to last year.

I cannot comment on the regular food, but the kosher food was much better this year (they switched caterers) although I found the portions extremely small.

Drinks and snacks throughout the conference were perfect.

Solutions Exchange

So busy!! So much to see!! I made a point of walking the entire floor at least twice.  There were several vendors that provided some nice vEXPERT swag

Tintri - with the vExpert Shirts 
Nutanix - with the vExpert Pint glasses
Simplivity - with the vExpert Raspberry Pi

I did notice that some of the vendors were getting outride rude and "stealing" peoples badges for a scan, I personally pulled my badge away at least once from someone who tried to scan it without asking permission.

Message to vendors If you comes up to me and says "would you like to win a <X>" I will leave. I only want to hear about your technology

— Maish Saidel-Keesing (@maishsk) August 27, 2013

And I mean what I said here in the tweet above. There are people who are interested in your products, not the silly t-shirts or pens you are giving away. Your job as a vendor and a marketing person is to identify which person is there for the SWAG and who is there for your product - and how to get your message across effectively.

There are several vendors and solutions that I plan to get more detailed information about their offerings. You can expect some blog posts in the future.

VCDX Bootcamp

I have been to the VCDX sessions given last year by John Arrasid, I have gone over the bootcamp that was held on the vBrownbag Bootcamp sessions, but I have not done this in person. Many a VCDX candidate has stated, that this bootcamp was a great help in helping them to get past their defense. This is something I have tried to join last year, but it did not work out.

Unfortunately, due to personal reasons, I will not be able to complete my submission in time for the last opportunity to defend this year in Singapore, but I will be aiming for the (most probably) upcoming dates during PEX in 2014 (submissions are due before the holidays in December (official dates to be announced).

The session was extremely useful, not that there was a huge amount of information that was new to me, but what I really enjoyed, was the questions that were raised (and answered), the feedback from the VCDX's that were there. There was a substantial number of them. And most importantly - hearing the thoughts of other candidates, and how they tackle a design decision provides much food for thought.

There were some familiar faces, some I have not seen, and some I came to have a number of discussions during the show.

All in all a great experience, and highly recommended!

Sessions

I did not attend that many frontal sessions, there were several that I did, and I must say that all of them were excellent. It could be I know how to choose them, but I think it was because of the level of the presenters.

I will post follow ups on some of the sessions in future blog posts.

Group Discussions

If the only sessions you attend at VMworld are the Group discussions - it will be the best thing you do. All at Moscone West #vmworld

— Maish Saidel-Keesing (@maishsk) August 27, 2013

That was 100% true. A great number of the group discussions were booked solid. I noticed though that they were not full. Never. In light of that I decided I would gate crash the remaining Group Discussions that I could not register for.

I think I joined 5/6 of these group discussions. All of them were great. Also personal. All with SME's. All small groups of people who know what they are talking about.

A few comments to the VMworld crew though.

1. These sessions should be recorded. I know it is not easy to financially justify recording a session with a crew for only 40 people. But as an attendee - they are invaluable - and I think that they would be very popular if they would be made public.
2. The location was on Moscone West - 2nd floor in a semi-walled off area along the aisle. Yes it great that there is a huge amount of sunlight there - because it is right along the outer windows. But… Because of the noise of the people entering and exiting sessions in the hallway - it becomes extremely difficult to hear at times because of the background noise. If you could find a better location - it would be great!

Announcements

vSphere 5.5 and vCloud 5.5 was announced. I think that Chris Wahl did an amazing job of providing a series of all a good majority of the Improvements in vSphere 5.5. Go and read his posts. Not to say that the others did not have good in depth articles, there is a huge amount of information out there regarding the releases.

My RSS feed sort of exploded during VMworld (usually I have 20-30 a day), it jumped to 4 times that amount after the opening keynote, and went up to over 300 by the end of the conference.

NSX was a major point at the conference, huge! Also the highly visible lack of Cisco being part of the solution - also a point that generated lots of discussion. This is something that I will have to expand on in a future post.

vCloud Director seems to be going away. VMware splits vCloud Director into vCenter, vCloud Automation Center. I heard this first hand from a well known VMware employee during a conversation I had with him at the show. So the rumors are true, and I assume we will hear more from VMware on their direction in the near future.

Community

vBrownbag TechTalks

Again an amazing job by the whole crew! I don't want to put any names here because I am afraid I will forget someone.

It was a damn shame that the vBrownbags were pushed all the way into a tiny area in the back of the hangspace. It seems that the space was only allocated for video recording - but no place for people to actually come and listen live. It was also far to loud to hear anything unless you were hooked onto a microphone directly into the feed.

I have no idea why this was done, and I sincerely hope that lessons are learned - and this can be corrected for Barcelona and next year!

Blogger Tables

Well done! You make our job a lot easier..

The only complaint I have was that the chairs were really uncomfortable….

Events

VMunderground!! I need say no more..

Sitting next to @maishsk in the #VMworld Hang Space - this was us last night at #vmunderground. Good times! pic.twitter.com/INNREfeGES

— Calvin Zito (@HPStorageGuy) August 26, 2013

vBacon - a picture is better than a thousand words (even though it still is not kosher..)

Tomorrow is the beginning of the new Jewish year - Rosh Hashanah. A time for me to reflect what has been this past year, what will happen in the next, and how to make it even better.

VMworld was definitely one the highlights of my year!

Hope to see you all again next year at VMworld 2014.

There are a number of posts out there on the WWW with great guides on how to make the most of your time at VMworld, two of them are mentioned here below:

• The Ultimate Guide to attending #VMworld 2013 – AND ON A BUDGET!
• Where to hang out, eat during VMworld 2013 – San Francisco

These are great resources.

I would like to share with you, some advice of how I would make good use of my time, AS A BLOGGER, while at VMworld.

This year I will be part of the Cisco Social Media effort at the conference.

Get Social with Cisco at VMworld 2013 (Your Ticket to Community Activity)

Why would attending VMworld be any different than for a regular attendee?

For a number of reasons.

1. As a blogger, this is the Virtualization conference of the year, and being there not only provides a huge amount of energy for you and your blog but also a huge amount of material for you to write about.
2. You have your view, that most of the attendees do not, sometimes positive, other times not so. Your interests will be different from those of the regular customer, the regular attendee.
3. You are at an advantage, because being part of the media (albeit not the traditional kind), people want to talk to you, hear your opinion, and get your feedback. It is important to them.

It was stated perfectly in the song Class of 99..

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '99 '13
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.
The long term benefits of sunscreen attending VMworld have been proved by scientists
whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering
experience...

I will dispense this advice now.

Don't attend too many sessions

Why? I thought that was the reason that we were coming to VMworld, wasn't it? Well Yes and No. All the sessions are recorded, and are available afterwards for your offline viewing.

The only exception to this rule (IMHO) are the group discussions (the sessions that are marked as GDxxx). The reason being here is that they are not recorded, you have a (relatively) small intimate group of usually highly technical people with direct access to the SME on that particular subject who is interested in hearing your feedback, and will be providing some really good information on the subject.

These sessions are not recorded (or at least they have not been in previous years) so if you miss it, then that's it.

HOL (Hands on Labs)

This used to be a must on my list, but not any more. VMware has stated that the labs will be available for consumption after the show, and I am pretty sure that as an attendee, you will have access. I would find a quiet time to go and do a single lab, something that really interests you, and that can write something about. Remember, you are going there to have fun, but your ulterior motive should be to create content.

General Sessions

Bloggers will get special treatment as part of the Press with a "good seat" and perhaps access to a table and media Wi-Fi. Assuming that is if you go into the main hall to attend the session.

I would advise against it.

There will be thousands of people in the session. Yes, you will have the whole splashed in you face with these huge screens. Yes, you will get to see Stephen Herrod Pat Gelsinger on stage.

Ok.. And…

I prefer to this from the comfort of the hangspace.

• The screen is more than big enough.
• There is place at the blogger tables, usually with better internet.
• You will be able to exchange your views with other bloggers and like-minded people who are sitting next to you.
  

Bloggers Table

Make time in your schedule to go and sit at the the bloggers tables in the Hangspace area. At any time of the day, you will always find a familiar face, to talk, chat and just have a good laugh. We are all going to VMworld to work, but also to have a good time.

The area is big enough , but not too large, which gives you enough quiet to get some writing done and catch up on the huge amount of news that will be coming out of the conference.

vBrownbag

The vBrownbag Techtalks were a great success last year. Personally, I think one of the highlights of the conference. This year's schedule is no less spectacular.

Speaking to the presenters, the vendors who are there, and the people who just come to listen/watch. That is what it is all about.

Social Parties

This is one with mixed feelings for me. There are so many different gatherings and meetups, and so many of them are overlapping one another, that it will be impossible to attend them all. Not enough time in the day night.

Solutions Exchange

Do you homework beforehand. Go over the list of vendors that will be at the conference and pick out those that interest you, and that you would like to go and speak to.

My list for this year is as follows:

• Skyera
• MAXTA
• Xceedium
• Vormetric
• Maginatics
• Metacloud
• Scality
• ElasticBox
• Cloudpassage
• Asigra
• Actifio
• AirVM
• Cloudbyte
• Parasoft
• PlumGrid
• TwinStrata
• Zadara
• Kaminario

Usually - these companies will not be in the middle isles - where of course it costs a lot more to have a booth. They are on the sidelines, go at seek them out, and speak with them.

Reach out to the companies beforehand and ask if they can set up some time with you during the show, to get a more detailed overview of the product, or perhaps even a small briefing before the show. VMworld is a mad house. From a vendor standpoint they would like to get their message across to as many potential customers as possible, so your time can be limited, and perhaps a detailed meeting would not be best at the show.

Go and introduce yourself, and if need be get the name of the person you would like to speak after the show.

It is always beneficial both to your blog, and to the vendor, to get an deep dive into their product.

Twitter

Say no more!

Blog Posts

This one might come as a shocker to most of you, but here goes.

Do not expect that content you publish during the show will get the amount of publicity you expect, and let me explain why.

The amount of posts that will be going out during the week of VMworld, will be at least 5 times the usual. Why because everyone is there, there are going to be so many announcements made (hint, hint) that will make your head spin.

People cannot read it all. It is physically not possible. Your post will be one of 20 that will say the same, "VMware has announced…. ", "VMware plans to dominate the world …."

Several bloggers are already privy to information beforehand, due to them being part of certain focus programs, and they have already put together a batch of blog posts on X, Y or Z beforehand.

My advice would be to prepare your content, gather the material, gather your thoughts and get your inspiration from the conference.

Tweet as much as you like, Share, interact, but if you want your post to get the exposure you are hoping for, do not post it during the conference.

I would suggest letting the hype die down slightly, and then get your message out there.

Live Blogging

I know very few people who can actually live blog a session, Scott Lowe is one of those few.

If you are good at this - and are able to portray the message from a session - then go for it. Your audience will thank you.

And last but not least…

But trust me on the sunscreen...

So the onslaught of "vote for my sessions" has begun.

I like numbers and the interesting information that can be interpreted from those numbers.
VMworld Call for Papers Voting is no exception.

So let's start.

But before that, I would like to stress something. These numbers are what I have extracted from what is publicly available - it could be that the numbers presented below do not make up a full picture (they probably don't) - because there are sessions that could already have been accepted and we know nothing about it.
My thoughts only…

The number of sessions currently up for public voting - 954. Last year there were 1222 - that is a drop of 28%.

My thoughts - either there were less submissions this year, or VMware weeded out more stuff before the voting started this year, or there are many other sessions that have content relating to upcoming features that they were not publicized in the voting process. In any event - it is still impossible to go through a list of ~1000 sessions.

Vendors

To which company do the potential speakers belong?  (and here I took only the Diamond sponsors)

 

My thoughts - very much expected - although I would have expected that Cisco would have put in more sessions (let the conspiracy theories begin..)

Tracks

The number of sessions in each sub-track of the Infrastructure track are as follows

My thoughts - Cloud and EUC will continue to be a major part of the conference this year and is every year...

Some other interesting little tidbits..

My thoughts - Automation has become a major concern as environments are growing bigger and more complex - you can see that from the numbers above.
Orchestrator - is at least on par if not starting to overtake PowerCLI as the preferred tool for automating - that is why there are so many sessions.
Puppet is still the tool of choice for most VMware professionals - strange though that Chef did not even submit anything - is this the direction for the future - maybe??
And of course vCAC, the new kid on the block - will have to prove itself.

What about Cloud?

My thoughts - Cloud cloud … cloud cloud cloud!! One of the terms that will be used too much at VMworld. But hey… it's VMworld people!!
Hybrid is definitely popular - and that also could be because that is what VMware has named their Public cloud offering. Are you confused yet???
Openstack - is something that VMware are trying to embrace - but is quite a different animal than what VMware is trying to sell as their management layer - it will be interesting to see how this evolves, still to early to say if you ask me.
And the AWS sessions - will be not be Amazon friendly..

Software Defined <insert your term here>..

My thoughts - Software Defined ..<blah>.. is the new buzzword, everyone wants it, everyone is trying to sell it and it will be present in full force at VMworld.
VMware is trying to push NSX - and it shows - just look at the number of sessions, SDS (software defined storage) is also in there - I just did not single it out

Others

My thoughts - Oracle and business critical applications - VMware are continuing to put the emphasis on how well these work on vSphere, an interesting fact though is that most of the presenters for the Business Critical Apps are not VMware people they are customers - which shows it is working and being used.
I would have expected more monitoring/vCOPS sessions.
Maybe finally there will be something new in the Active Directory sessions with the new virtualization features for domain controllers in Windows 2012 - because if not this topic has already been beaten to death….

I would say go out vote (and if you really want, I have a 3 sessions that you can click on) but I am skeptic about how much, if any influence your vote will actually have on which sessions will get in.

The FAQ states..

 

Influence how? By how much? As long as the process is not transparent - then we will never know.

As a wise man once said … "We are all influentials ! "

(Oops that was individuals - My bad! :) )

It is around that time of the year again, when VMware puts out the announcement that the Call for Papers for VMworld 2013 and will be open, and then people will start to submit their sessions to get their hour of glory at the biggest virtualization show of the year.

VMworld will be in San Francisco between August 26-29, 2013 in the Moscone Center.

Last year there were 1222 separate sessions up for voting - yes I counted them. VMware started with public voting for VMworld sessions 3 years ago with VMworld 2010

Before that there was only a committee that decided which speakers would have the honor of presenting a session at VMworld.

This post actually is the continuation of a dinner conversation I had with Mike Laverick, Edward Haletky, Gabrie van Zanten, Harold Simon and Larry Orloff and Michael Webster on the last day of VMworld 2012 in San Francisco.

Here are my thoughts. VMware has the right to decide what content it would like to have in its flagship conference, it only happens once a year and of course the show is not only there for the benefit of the attendees. There are sponsorships, partners that need to be taken care of - and I am sure there are a huge number of things I am not mentioning that have to be taken into account as well when deciding on content.

In the end there is a finite amount of sessions that can be offered. There are all sorts of considerations that will come into account, whether a session will take place (at least this is the way I would do it):

1. Partner commitment - I assume that VMware guarantee a number of sessions to its main partners, that would be a courtesy.
2. Sponsorship commitment - again I would assume that would part of the agreement with the bigger sponsors.
3. New technologies - VMware will definitely want sessions out there for the new announcements and features that will be coming out during that period.
4. Hot speakers - there are several speakers who are very good, they present almost every year, and their sessions are packed.
5. VMware employees - Yes there is a decent chance that they are the SME's on their topic (I mean they are the ones who design the product)
6. Hot topics - a topic that is likely to get high attendance because that is what people are looking to learn more about.

So what does that leave available?

• Customer stories.
• Interesting sessions
• Stuff that has to be there

The number of sessions that are actually submitted is growing every single year. The reason behind is enough for a whole different blog post. If my memory does not betray me - there were ~3000 sessions submitted for VMworld 2012.

Back to the voting process. VMware announces that the voting is open, and the Wrath of Khan is unleashed.. Everything is fair game, Twitter, Facebook, blog posts - the works. Vote for session …
I voted for ………… 's session badabing, badaboom…

And then what - the voting is closed - votes are counted and then a few weeks later - the Session catalog is announced.

But isn't something missing?

Why does VMware even allow voting? One would assume - to see which sessions get the most number of votes - and allow those sessions to "get all the glory".

A voting system or electoral system is a method by which voters make a choice between options, often in an election or on a policy referendum.

A voting system enforces rules to ensure valid voting, and how votes are counted and aggregated to yield a final result.

Source Wikipedia

• You are given a choice
• You vote
• The results are published - so you know who won.

And here we come down to what we spoke over dinner that evening. Voting is open for 1, 2 or maybe even three weeks. There is a lot of lobbying, people vote. And then the catalog is published.

But who received the most votes? Were the sessions that got into the catalog the ones that received the most votes? Did they get in for other reasons? If so what were they?

The mundane answer that most of those who submitted a paper receive, is not enough…
(and yes, this is the exact text from 2010, 2011, and 2012)

Dear Maish,

Thank you for your interest in speaking at VMworld 2010. Unfortunately, we are not able to accept your session proposal:
Session ID: MA6662
Session ID: MA6840
Session ID: V18364

We received a record number of submissions this year and were only able to accept ~20% of them to be presented at VMworld. Following is a list of the most common reasons why sessions were declined:

• The submission was too basic, not enough information was provided in the abstract.
• The session was too single vendor product focused and likely to have a commercial nature.
• The submission topic did not fit within the selected track.
• There were too many submissions with similar topics.

Dear Maish,

Thank you for your interest in speaking at VMworld 2011. We received a record number of submissions this year and were only able to accept ~15%.  Unfortunately, we are not able to accept your session proposal, but we greatly appreciate and value the time and effort you took to submit a session proposal, and we hope that you will participate in the VMworld 2012 Call for Papers.

Session ID: 1843

Here is a list of the most common reasons why sessions were declined:

• The submission was too basic, not enough information was provided in the abstract.
• The session was too single vendor product focused and likely to have a commercial nature.
• The submission topic did not fit within the selected track.
• There were too many submissions with similar topics.

Dear Maish,

Thank you for your interest in speaking at VMworld 2012. We received a record number of submissions this year and were only able to accept ~12%.  Unfortunately, we are not able to accept your session proposal, but we greatly appreciate and value the time and effort you took to submit and we hope you will participate in the VMworld 2013 Call for Papers.

Session ID: 1996

Here is a list of the most common reasons why sessions were declined:

• There were too many submissions with similar topics.
• The submission was too basic, not enough information was provided in the abstract.
• The session was too single vendor product focused and likely to have a commercial nature.

A pattern? Anyone?

VMware have the right to accept or reject any of the submitted sessions according to VMware's best interests, it is their conference. I am completely fine with that.

But I feel (and I am 100% that I am not the only one) that the voting process is not really transparent enough at all. No one actually knows what sessions were accepted based on the voting, what sessions were accepted in spite of the voting and which sessions were accepted - even without the voting.

My public request to VMware for this year's Call for Papers…..

Voting has a beginning a middle and an end. At the moment - that last part - is not being transmitted back to those who participated in the process.

It should - it must - otherwise the voting process is nothing much more than lip service.

If you agree (or disagree) please leave your comment or thoughts below.

A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum Solutions Exchange floor (forgive me for the corny humor…)

In previous years the Solutions Exchange floor usually opened with a the Hall Crawl which was at the end of the first day (i.e. Monday). This year it opened on Sunday afternoon and was open until the end of Wednesday.

I have not been able to find out what the rationale was behind this, and it depends on who you ask this was either a good / a bad thing.

The Good

1. People at the show on Sunday – could already get on the floor to speak to Vendors.
2. The mad rush for giveaways for SWAG was not on Thursday afternoon – which means the vendors closed up shop early – and they could make it home back in time for the end of the week.
3. Sessions on Thursday – actually had people in them. I have never seen so many people in sessions on the last day of the show – they had nowhere else to go..
4. It was quiet – you could hear yourself.
5. It was less crowded – because people had already gone back home.

The Bad

1. Vendors had to arrive before Sunday to set everything up – I guess that some of them were already there on Saturday or Friday.
2. I did not count the hours – to see if they had more or less show floor hours than previous years.If there were less hours then it was not good for the vendors.
3. It was less crowded – that means people did not stay for the last day.
4. As a participant, to get full use of the session floor – you needed to be there on Sunday.

It would be interested in hearing why this change was made, and what the attendees, VMware and the vendors think about it.

Please feel free to add your comments below.

I appreciated the quiet on Thursday and happy to see so many people – even at the last scheduled sessions on Thursday.

One of the things I continuously heard from a decent number of people during VMworld is that they are constantly running after the technology.

I actually put out a question on Twitter with the following poll:

How many of you are still running ESXi 4.X in your environment?

The results were actually a confirmation of what I heard at the show. Over 70% of those who replied said they were running the previous version. In fact there were a few who actually said they still had customers or knew customers who were still running on 3.X!! (heaven forbid)

The obvious question that might come out of this is why? Why are people still running on older versions? Why not upgrade to the latest and greatest? The incentive is so compelling, the new features that are added with each new version are so enticing - it should actually be hard to resist! And it is!
I guess that is what any software vendor would like. Use the new version, we have fixed up the bugs. We have listened to our customers, improved based upon the client's feedback, added the latest and greatest

• How often do you upgrade your storage?
  • When was the last time you upgraded your storage firmware to a new major version, or a minor one for that matter?
• When did you flash the IOS on your Cisco switches to a new major version?
  • Would you do it once a year?
  • Once every two?
  • Three?

I will try and get a live blog update for the First General session

Started with a Disclaimer – which was strange for a keynote.

Stomp kicked off the keynote beating on VMworld 2012 with drumpads in each of the letters

Rick Jackson (Chief Marketing Officer) took the stage to welcome over 20,000 participants of VMworld with another 10,000 online. He promised that a number of announcements that will come out of the conference this week. Rick continued with the upcoming sessions expected during the conference. There will be a best on-stage demo contest between the partners tomorrow, which will happen tomorrow with interactive feedback from the audience. A nice shout out for VMUG with a large presence of the green t-shirts.

He now is welcoming Paul Maritz onto the stage.

Paul Maritz reminded us that in 2008 25% of the workloads were virtualized today – it is at 60%. He thanked all the VCP’s that have implemented the technology today 25,000 in 2008 and now at 125,000. In 2008 cloud was an idea today it is a reality. He continued with the Drivers of change were processes have been moved from manual and labor intensive work to automated, paperless and optimized workflows. Paul continued about how the workplace is changing to an environment where people want to consume information everywhere on whatever device they want and he thinks that this will have a huge impact on the workforce in the next 4 years. For this to happen IT will have to transition to Tomorrow’s IT.

This can be done in 3 categories. In the infrastructure from physical to virtual. On top of that the applications and data are changing to accommodate scale. The last part is the access – on how the users are moving from a PC dominated world to a multi-device world.

Paul now introduced Pat Gelsinger and formally handed over the scepter.

Pat Gelsinger took the stage and thanked Paul for his work and Paul received a standing ovation from the crowd. Pat started to explain what he sees what his role will be in the upcoming years. He mentioned that he comes from the hardware side and now is excited to complete the journey and move over to the software side. Today we only have those extraordinary workloads which are not virtualized, provisioning has gone down from weeks in 2008 to days/hours today and looking to the future – he would like to see it happen within seconds.

He now continued about the Software Defined Datacenter(SDC). He went back to 2007 where he said that VMware had the opportunity to create the Datacenter Operating system – this is the Software Defined Datacenter. It is time to abstract it pool it and automate it – this can be done with the SDC. Pat then went onto the vCloud Suite.

He then when onto announce vSphere 5.1. Over 50% over x86 workloads are running on VMware. He then went onto the changes in licensing – and have announced the death of vRAM – which was introduced with the release of vSphere 5.0 – and making it simpler with no core limitations either.

He then went onto the Cloud OPs – with IT business management tools, best practices and services to help the enterprise navigate this change. He then announces the Cloud Ops forum.

Pat then went on to the acceptance of VMware of the fact that there is a need to address the Multi-Cloud world – with Cloud Foundry, DynamicOps and Nicira. He welcomed Nicira to the VMware family.

The transition from PC to any device received a slide with the mention of View/Mirage (Wanova) and Project Horizon.

Pat summed up his part on how VMware is making this transition possible. Before he left the stage he wanted to thank the partners and the VMware ecosystem. He then welcomed Steve Herrod onto the stage.

Steve Herrod started to go into details about SDN. It is more than being a hypervisor – it pulling all the components and making them into a virtual datacenter. He compared this to a co-location service – the Suite will be the same and even provide multi-tenancy.

Now that 60% off applications are now virtualized VMware is now focusing on the the Business Critical applications – using all the knowledge and whitepapers available.

He now moved to the new Monster VM which now supports 64 vCPU’s and over 1 million IOPs per host. He went on to a example from a company named Epic who have migrated from non-x86 hardware – to Linux virtualized workloads running on vSphere. He now went into islands and silos. The abilities to run Unified communications on vSphere. vFabric that is tuned and optimized to run on vSphere.

Big data – (the little elephant) – Hadoop. People thought that it should not run on vSphere – and he brought up Project Serengeti an open source solution to deploy Hadoop with a demo on the stage.

On to storage and availability. There was Storage pools and SDRS released with 5.0 and the work with 5.1 is the integration. Enhanced vMotion – vMotion without shared storage – multiple arrays this will be useful in the SDN. Virtual volumes are next – vVols to pair the the virtual machine with the array.

Virtual Flash will become a first class citizen that will allow better control and lastly the Virtual SAN that will abstract the storage.

He then went onto the the improvements in the dvSwitch (backup and restore, health check and others). He then went over to the vXLAN ecosystem (notice the small v). A lot of partners were mentioned with the networking partners and improvements.

And a demo of VMware vCloud Director on stage. Steve then went onto the integration of the partners into the new vSphere web client released with 5.1. He then went onto the vCloud API and the enhancements where users are building new interfaces on top of the underlying API allowing them to provide additional services such as Backup As A Service.

Next was the applications – with vFabric Application Director.

Then onto Cloud Ops, and here comes in VCOPs. vCloud Connector will become a more substantial part in the Cloud suite.

Now onto a demo on stage of vCloud director with the integration of vXLAN built into the interface and a demo of vFabric Application Director for deploying a multi-tier application directly into a vCloud environment. Next was vCloud Connector with its capabilities.

Three flavors of the vCloud suite. Enterprise customers get a free upgrade to the new suite.

Addressing multi-cloud world. A demo of Nicira to bridge the gap between the Physical and virtual world. Steve then went on to demo CloudFoundry online. Ravi went to demonstrate a very nice integration of SocialCast with vSphere and how you can use it for notifications and analytics.

Thanks for reading up till now if you are still with me.

To summarize the main points – as I see them from this keynote.

1. vSphere 5.1 announces – with multiple new features.
2. No more vRAM – licensing becomes much more simple.
3. vCloud Suite – which I will need to get more information to understand
4. The integration of Socialcast and vSphere – looks like a very nice idea – which I would like to see developed further.