Tag: vmworld


Sep
2015

VMworld 2015 in the books

categories: Uncategorized

I’m coming off another vmworld and this one was pretty good. This year, we were back in San Fransisco at the Moscone Center. There were plenty great sessions, engaging speakers, opportunities to meet up with folks from past vmworld’s, networking, vendor parties and the party in AT&T park was the icing on the cake. The VWoman session was really enlightening as usual, but it was the same time as the hall crawl and it was not easy to blow that off. I really don’t like that they put both up against each other. It’s like they wanted the men to have the hall crawl all to themselves. #fail

One key highlight was seeing a woman I met at VMworld 2 years ago present a session this year. Sonya Ryherd from Cox Automotive did a session with her colleague, Chris Nakagaki, called, Introduction to Monitoring the Public Cloud with vRealize Operations Manager. They did a great job. It was one of those sessions where you walked away knowing something you didn’t know before. I was very intrigued and learned even more about what vRealize Operations could do. I’m installing it ASAP!

It’s very invigorating to walk away from the conferences with a renewed sense of direction and passion in what I do. Along with finding out about the new technologies and direction they’re headed, you discover features, flings, tips and tools that you’ve never knew existed. That’s like finding the prize in the cracker jack box. You knew it was there, but you didn’t know what that little gem would be.

The 1st things I’ll do when I get back to the office.

  • Plan for the upgrade to vSphere 6.0.
  • Upgrade tools to v10 before the sphere upgrade.
  • Deploy my ESXi lab in the cloud using Ravello & get ready for the VCP6 exam in 2016.
  • Install our newly purchased vRealize Operations

All in all,  a really good time this year, dare I say the best VMworld yet for me.  I ate at a number of wonderful restaurants:

  • The Cavalier
  • Flour + Water
  • Shalimar
  • Brenda’s Soul Food
  • Green Papaya (not wonderful, but I got my sushi fix)
  • Chipotle (like, who doesn’t eat here when at VMworld?)
  • Scoma’s
  • Ghirardelli’s

I won some cool swag:

  • Signed Tour de France jersey
  • $40 VMworld store gift card
  • 2 Starbuck’s gift cards
  • FitBit HR

And got plenty of t-shirts and swag to drag back to the east coast.

I have a ton of photos, but I’ll post just one.

A great way to end a day at VMworld

One sad note about the conference….I’m sad that It’ll be in Las Vegas next year, but I’ll try to be there. I’m not a woman that likes Hades very much.

See you next year (maybe)!


Sep
2014

Coming down off my VMworld high

categories: vmware

This is my 3rd year attending VMworld and each time I walk away with a renewed focus and energy for my virtual infrastructure and what I can do to better manage and improve it. As I’m writing this post, I’m scrolling through my tweets and notes from VMworld and what stands out is that for my organization, VMware has the tools an SMB needs to deploy, monitor, upgrade, backup, administer, BD/DR, and grow its virtual infrastructure with ease.

My schedule was filled with sessions that covered just the things I needed to hear and to use day-one when I’m back in the office. Using the schedule builder as soon as it was available gave me time to make smarter choices and decide where my time should be spent in a more efficient manner. The VMworld app was a life saver! I knew right where I was suppose to be with notification turned on. The social media section keep me abreast of all the #vmworld tweets easily.

Here are my 3 favorite sessions. The sessions that made me want to roll up my sleeves the minute I had a WiFi connection to VPN back into the office and ‘test’ something out.

Here are my top 3 all-around favs from VMworld 2014:

  • The Solutions Exchange Welcome Reception
    • I got to spend a lot of time looking at what vendors are bringing to the virtualization space. Software, products and services that are moving VMware forward as the leader.
    • The Games at the CDW booth were more fun than I expected to have on opening day. The trivia questions were thought provoking and the ‘game show host’ and his assistant really kept us laughing.
    • Free beer & wine.
  • Winning a scooter (razor type) from Ravello and terrorizing the Moscone Center.
  • Taking a selfie with my SRM mentor, Mike Laverick of VMware.
Me and Mike Laverick of VMware
Me and Mike Laverick of VMware

Here are a few things I would change for next year:

  • The volume of the music at the Monday General Session was deafening. I really didn’t understand why the AV people didn’t rectify that by the end of the keynote. I promised myself I wouldn’t listen to another GS in the Hall D. The hang space was just fine.
  • I was in just ONE session with a woman speaker and I think she was a vendor. ‘Nuff said.
  • I know they’re trying to accommodate those with dietary restrictions, but vegetarians do need protein too.

Now that I’m back in the office, I’m ready to, upgrade to vSphere 5.5, tweak SRM  and  test out the vSphere 6.0 beta. I can’t talk about it (NDA), but you can find out more about it here.

Looking forward to next year.

 

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