Day 2 pt. 2

Sorry about the short post last night, I was REALLY tired.  I think I’m finally adjusted to West Coast time and I even woke-up at a decent hour, felt pretty good.

Ok, time for the recap!

Yesterday was focused mostly on virtualization and current technologies.  Since today VMWare is having a huge keynote and unveiling their newest and hottest stuff, yesterday ended up being a good recap of the virtualization world as we know it today. 

My first session was into to Virtualization and VMWare cheerleading aside, it was a pretty good intro into exactly what Virtualization is and how many companies today are using it.  I kind of feel like a bit of a spy since we use Hyper-V in our environment, but it is nice to see what else is out there.

The next session was more focused on the storage aspect of Virtualization and what pains and problems you can run into in that process.  Again, lots of good info, with some suggestions of various monitoring tools currently available on the market to help IT departments manage their virtual environment.   The other big talking point here was VM Sprawl vs. VM stall, while no one on the panel could give a good definition of what VM stall is (according to the panel this is a term created just for this session.) VM Sprawl is a very real issue in the IT world.  The idea behind VM sprawl is that an IT department starts small with only one or two VM’s and then one day they look down and they have 500 VM’s and no real idea where they all came from or how they all got there.  This can cause a massive strain on resources, both on the IT staff and on the hardware.  For me this drove a very good point home, especially in our environment where we have 3 virtual host servers and the only tool we have to manage them is the Hyper-V management tool which is limited at best.  This is something I fully plan on looking into once I get home.

The final session of the day was the first future looking session I attended and it showed off a number of the features that are being talked about in today’s keynote.  The session was called Virtual Desktop Cloud: The future vision of End-User Computing.  A lot of this hit very close to home for me since I could see many of my users wanting to bring many of these technologies into our environment.  The main point behind this was moving away from the old IT thoughts of one workstation per user with a corporate image loaded on it and when a user goes home they leave that workstation with them. In today’s world, everyone wants smartphones, iPads, laptops, tablets, etc. and they want to be able to access their work from their personal devices.  The concept of employee BYOPC was introduced, and it had some merit.  With a lot of the current and new VDI technology out there it’s becoming possible for users to run just on thin clients, tablets, smartphones, etc. while a majority of their data and storage is done in the cloud.  Basically the way VMWare views the future of end-user computing is not so much more powerful desktops and laptops for users, instead desktop computing is done in the cloud, while the end-user is getting less and less powerful systems, but being able to do the same amount work and have access to the exact same environment no matter what device they are connecting with or where they are.  Truly mobile computing! 

So yeah, that about sums up day one sessions.  Like I said, lots of good info with plenty of VMWare cheerleading mixed in :P

Time to get ready for Day 2 of VMWorld, should have recap up this evening since there are no evening events scheduled tonight.

~C

Day 2 wrap-up (kind of)

I have a great, long, very detailed blog post in mind, but the day got away from me and I’m really tired, so there’s not going to be much of a post tonight…sorry.

The conference is awesome, learned a lot of great information today and had some really good discussions with a few of the vendors in the exhibition hall (more on this later.)

I’m off to bed, more later on!

~C

Day 2 in San Fran

So I woke up this morning about 3:30am since I feel asleep about 7pm last night due to pure exhaustion, so I was treated to something quite nice, the sunrise in San Francisco.  While you really can’t see the sun proper, it is kind of nice to see the sky getting slowly brighter and brighter, just a nice start to the morning.

Also found a Starbucks pretty close to the hotel so I went there this morning to grab a coffee and I ended up getting a Chocolate Croissant, so yummy! 

Today is the first day of VMWorld 2010, and it promises to be pretty packed!  They just released the mobile app to help you keep track of your schedule and other events you want to attend which is a very nice touch, it’s a great app too, totally web based so they didn’t have to worry about going the sometimes long and always confusing apple approval process for all us Geeks that have iPhones. 

Ok, that’s about it for the morning, I should have more this afternoon!

~C

Arrived in San Francisco

So I’ve arrived at my hotel and am all checked in and now settled in.  It’s about a 1 block and a half from from the VMWorld convention, so it’s a nice short walk. 

The best thing so far, is that during check-in, after we got our badges (which weighs about 3 pounds around my neck), we got had to go downstairs to get our materials, when you first got in line there were people standing there handing out water and soda, and then as you went through the line, they were handing out beer, that’s right, a professional convention was handing out beer…awesome sauce!

When we finally got into the room, we got a bunch of VMWorld2010/VMWare swag (backpack, t-shirt, water bottle, etc.)  All nice stuff!

While I was there I managed to steal a quick glimpse into the exhibition hall and all I saw was a massive Dell sign, I felt right at home! 

Well, it’s about 6pm local time so I think this is going to be it for me today, I’ll try and post a few more posts while I’m here, but we’ll see!

~C

Leaving on a Jet Plane

That’s right, I said it!  I’m currently sitting at the Richmond Airport waiting on my 7am(!) flight to Boston and then a further flight to San Francisco. 

Now why in the world would I have woken up at 3am to drag my happy butt to Richmond to get a flight to San Francisco…let’s see…oh yeah, it’s VMWorld!!!!  For those who don’t know what VMWorld is, check This Out.  Basically if you’re into Virtualization this is the place to be.  All the major players from the Virtualization world will be there, including, Dell, VMWare, Microsoft, Citrix, HP, etc.  The convention runs Monday through Thursday and each day is packed with tons of talks and labs and hands-on experiences of the newest and hottest VM Technology out there…excuse me while I wipe the drool from my mouth!

Most of the convention is centered around VMWare and their line of products, which my company doesn’t really use, opting instead for Microsoft’s Hyper-V technology.  The main point to me going to this event is to learn the ideas and theories behind implementation of some of the technology in a VMWare environment and then I get to go back to work and figure out how to implement the good parts in a Hyper-V environment.  I think it will pretty intuitive honestly, since no matter how you brand it, it’s still Virtualization and the underlying theories and practices behind it is the same no matter what you use. 

I’m really excited about this trip.  Firstly, I’m going to San Francisco, which is a new place I haven’t been, there’s lots of great stuff to do and see I’m sure (how much of that I’ll get to do, is still in question.)  Secondly, my hotel looks totally awesome too!  Thirdly, it’s a week filled with nothing but Virtualization, which is going to be a fantastic thing!  It’ll be a great combination of amazing hardware and really cool software, so basically the best parts of the IT world!

Ok, that’s gonna be about it from me, I’m sure I’ll write some more as I’m in San Francisco and I’ll see about maybe even posting a few pictures on here. 

More later on!

~C