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Saturday I slept through most of the day and Sunday I put all of our video material on my computer. I created a video which will show you all our highligts of VMworld Europe 2009 in 10 minutes. Enjoy and thanks again for the support.
Some of our colleagues ask us what we do in Cannes all day long. It’s easy to explain what the sessions are, presentations sometimes supported by a product demo. But with the Solution Exchange and Hands-on-Labs some still have huge question marks on their faces. Maybe they don’t understand the term or the setup so we created a video compilation to give you an idea. Maybe now you will understand why we, at some days, didn’t follow any sessions because we were ‘stuck’ at level -1 of the Palais des Festivals.
Yesterday there was a session called VMware ‘unplugged’, here you could ask all kinds of questions to a panel of VMware CxOs. The panel constisted of Steve Herrod, Paul Maritz, Mauricio Carli and Tod Nielsen. Anne Jan posted an article on this yesterday and now we have a video with the highlights of this ‘unplugged’ session.
Yesterday Scott Herold gave us a demo of VESI, a free VI toolkit from Vizioncore based on PowerShell. With this toolkit it is very easy to automate task in your virtual infrastructure without any knowledge of powershell. Just browse the tool, select the desired actions and build a powershell script. The free toolkit will be available at the end of March and can be downloaded at the VESI website.
It was an excellent party again. Just look at all the pictures already published by various people. You could hardly tell that there were that many people in the Palais to party.
Like someone said “VMware engineers know how to party” (If you own this line, please contact me, I totally forgot who it was and I can’t find it anymore. Perhaps I should have gone to bed a little earlier). Here’s the link to the gallery with a couple of pictures.
This year the VMworld organization organized a ‘VMworld Unplugged’. The idea was to let the attendees ask questions to a panel. The members of this panel were: Paul Maritz, Maritizio Carli, Tod Nielsen and Steve Herrod. You could ask questions by microphone or send them before the session.
There were a couple of very interesting questions. Below is small selection of those questions.
VMware uses the name vSphere for their Virtualisation Infrastructure product also known as ESX. Here in Cannes in the hands on labs I have used the new interface and some of its nifty features. You have to get used to the new interface, but when you are used to it it works nicely and you can find your way around quickly. Did you have to search for some deep hidden options in the VI3 suite, here with the new look and feel around vSphere its almost effortless.
Yesterday I tried out the VMware vCenter Data Recovery Appliance in a hands on lab. It’s a disk-based backup and recovery solution that enables quick, simple and complete data protection for virtual machines. I didn’t have to load an agent on the virtual machines since vCenter Data Recovery has no knowledge of the guest operating system itself. After selecting a LUN as a destination for the backups, I marked some running virtual machines to be back upped.
Veeam sure knows how to promote their backup product. They had a magician doing all kinds of tricks at their booth. Check out the video for a great performance from Robert Strong.
Duncan Epping was a bit disappointed with the number of people who turned up at the VMTN meet & greet at the Community Lounge. So as a incentive he will give a free t-shirt to everyone that comes and drops a question to the Experts or even starts a discussion!
Duncan wrote:
If you’re scared to asks question just head over and vote for the best of the VMworld show poll, we will also be giving away shirts for that during the day. Just come and visit the booth during the day or during the VMTN Experts Session / Meet and Greet… who doesn’t want to have a cool looking VMworld Community shirt? I know I want one so I might just ask the famous Tom Howarth a question!
In addition to our post this morning hereby the highlight of this session in a video.
Today after the Keynote we descended to level -1 of the Palais des Festivals, better known as the VMware Solution Exchange. We knew that this was not a good idea as this is the level you will never leave. The Solution Exchange is a large exposition with over 100 VMware technology partners, from AMD to Xsigo and from BT to Veeam. Even the competition is welcome as Microsoft and Citrix have their own booth.
Today we did our first Hands-on-Lab. Last year these labs were fully booked so we decided to hit the lab early this year.
This lab was based around the Cisco Nexus 1000v virtual switch, which brings back network administration to network administrators.
Erik did the Cisco Nexus 1000v lab today. Since we didn’t receive any beta material yet this is our first real experience with the new virtual switch by Cisco.The switch is based on NX-OS so network administrators can use it just like they configure their other switches.
Maritzio Carli, GM for EMEA, opened the keynote today. He gave a lot of figures to reflect the grow in virtualization despite the hard economic times. These figures show that virtualization, and VMware in specific, is here to stay and invests heavily in people and resources.
Hello all! I noticed a dramatic increase in the website’s traffic yesterday! That is a very good sign! It seems that you out there, like what we present here and that motivates us to keep up the flow of news and inside info’s.
Let’s see what the boys @ VMworld bring us today!
We already wrote about it but here are the highlights of the 2009 Partner Day @ Cannes on video.
The process of blogging is through several means from making notes during the session the old fashioned way or by using new technology. (Got the laptop charging again). Also lots of photos or video are shot during the process and we will have to run through them all to filter out the high lights and the remarkable things we noticed. Also seeing my collegues hard @ work translating the handwriting to a nice blog post feels good. The first day is running into the late afternoon and after several sessions today we have picked up lots of new ideas and opportunities for 2009. The head is spinning already but its worth it. SO stay tuned.
Today VMware announced a new team member for the EMEA region for the fastest growing market world wide, his name is Maurizio Carli. Carli has more than twenty years of experience in the technology industry, including five years at Business Objects where he was Senior VP and General Manager for EMEA. Prior, Carli was with IBM where he rose to VP of the EMEA Software Group. He was snatched from the position of EMEA Managing Director for Google Enterprise were he worked before joining VMware. He choose to come over to VMware because he believes its the place to be for the next coming years with virtualization growing rapidly and shifting the way the IT operates completely.
We @ VMGuru.nl welcome Carli and wish him luck in his new position.
We just enjoyed the General Session for Partner day 2009 and the message is ‘the virtualization business is still growing’, ‘2009 is all about client virtualization’ and ‘get up, register opportunities, close deal, dig deap’.
The keynote was presented to us by Paul Maritz, CEO of VMware. He stated that we can achieve change by two means, evolution and revolution and that evolution is the best as it tends to stay longer. VMware is the platform to achieve this evolution. He revealed a few public secrets, VMware vSphere, vShield zones and VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat. VMware vSphere is the new name for ESX but we knew, and blogged on that, already. VMware vShield zones a security initiative based on VMware Safe. VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat is VMware’s new feature to create a high available vCenter Server, mostly for implementations where vCenter is still on a physical server.
After a short night it all begins, VMWorld Europe 2009! Today we start with Partner Day, a day where VMware shows the latest partner programs, sales and training programs and marketing initiatives. Partner Day is the place for all partners (including Centric) to:
• Hear from the senior VMware management team about the vision for our partner community;
• Get the inside scoop on new partner programs and training roadmap;
• Learn about new sales and marketing tools;
• Network with your peers and the VMware team.
This is the chance to hear Paul Maritz, (VMware CEO) and Carl Eschenbach (Executive Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations) share their vision for the partner community. And maybe, just maybe, VMGuru gets a chance to interview Paul Maritz. We will see, come back soon to hear the latest news.
