VMworld 2014

VMworld 2014 – Day 2

dvdmorera VMworld 2014 , , ,

Day 2

It is a little funny to see people moving a bit slower today, I should say a lot slower. That just shows you how busy this conference is. Lots of great stuff.

Day 2 started with a recap of day one during the keynote about EVO, vCloud Air (VCHS), vRealize, NSX, etc, and of course the liquid business models that Pat talked about yesterday.

End user computing was reviewed a bit, in particular the new underlying architecture. Also the acquisition of CloudVolumes was re-visited to highlight the delivery of applications. Along with EUC and mobility, it made sense for VMware to acquire AirWatch, which in my opinion it was a very smart move and a much needed piece to the mobility puzzle.

There were some really great demos about CloudVolumes, and especially EVO:RAIL. EVO:Rail has 4 independent nodes in each physical box, migrated VMs in/out automatically while upgrading a node. It not only has built-in redundancy but it utilizes VSAN technology and comes with Log Insight already installed. This is a really cool solution, and the UI is very intuitive and fast. Yes, a Web UI from VMware that is actually fast.

vSphere 6.0 beta enhancements were introduced such as FT for VMs with up to 4 vCPUs. Cross datacenter vMotion is another one of the new features of 6.0. These are some really great enhancements, along with the noticeable faster and overall better Web Client.

VMworld 2014 – Day 1

dvdmorera VMworld 2014 , , , , ,

Day 1

Today marks the official start of VMworld 2014. People are still rolling in to register and collects their VMworld swag. People I talked to are anxiously waiting to hear the announcements today, most of them revolve around the Web UI.

The major announcements revolved around the following topics:

  • SDDC – Software Defined Data Center
    • Virtualize everything
    • NSX
    • VSAN
    • Automationv
    • Sphere 6 Beta
    • VVOLs
    • VSAN 2.0 Beta
    • vCloud 5.8
    • OpenStack + VMware
    • Containers (Docker, Pivotal, etc)
    • Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
      • Simpler deployment
      • EVO
        • EVO:RACK (Cloud Scale)
        • EVO:RAIL
  • End User Computing
    • Workspace Suite
    • AirWatch
    • Content Locker
  • Hybrid Cloud
    • vCloud Air (re-branded VCHS)
      • DevOps Services
      • Database as a service
      • Object Storage (EMC Vipr)
      • Mobility Services
      • Cloud Management (vRealize Air Automation)
      • vCloud Air on dmand

Other topics that are worth mentioning is the giveback foundation where VMworld is giving up to $250,000 to a charity of the choice of the attendees. Now that is pretty cool.

VMUG is a must, so if you do not belong to a VMUG group, find one near your area and join in. It is worth not only for the networking opportunities but also to help you keep up with all the products.

SDDC was arguably the main point at the keynote. Pat reinforced the need of micro-segmentation through NSX, along with the need to virtualize “everything” in order to meet business goals.

VMworld 2014

dvdmorera VMworld 2014 , , , , , ,

DAY 0

There are a lot of new things that will be announced this week, that I can’t wait to talk about. We started VMworld week with a nice 6.0 earthquake in the area. I guess VMworld is rocking San Francisco.

Starting the day with the VMworld 5K charity event followed by VMunderground sessions and meeting fellow vExperts and fellow geeks.

More info to come. Got to run (literally).

…Run was a lot of fun, many people showed up for a good cause.

VMworld 5k Fun Run
VMworld 5k Fun Run

The sessions for VMunderground/vBrownBag were pretty good. There were a lot of good questions, some that may be answered this week after the big announcements are made. I had the pleasure of meeting a lot of fellow vExperts and geeks at the VMunderground party. Great event.

The main take away was the up and coming Hyper-converged strategy that is not only coming from different vendors but also VMware with their announcement of EVO:RAIL (more on EVO:RAIL here). For those not familiar with Hyper-Converged, it is (in simple terms) the combination of storage, networking and compute resources into one single box, but allowing for scalability by adding more nodes. More on Hyper-converged later.

Had a chance to stop and talk to several exhibitors, not only because they were giving some really nice vExpert swag, but I was interested in learning about their solutions. Coho has an interesting approach to storage and really liked the performance UI they put together, that has always been a tough one with storage. Simplivity also has a decent hyper-converged solution that also includes backup and de-duplication technology for both storage and backup. Ravello systems also has a nice solution for use cases such as test/dev. I will talk more about them post VMworld.