VMworld 2019 Day 2 Keynote: Demo Extravaganza

Yesterday, Pat came out and did a great 1 hour set talking about the future of VMware and how the recent acquisitions fit into that picture.  Today, Ray O’Farrell is going to show us how that works.  As per the usual, Ray has come up with another great business to showcase the emerging technology.  In this case, Tanzu Tees.  Ray says there are 4 key things to guide an app: Build & Run, Connect & Protect, Manage, and Experience.

First up was June Yang, showing of a demo of VMware Cloud on DellEMC.  This managed services offering gives customers a fully managed infrastructure from the hardware all the way up through the software.  Embedded within this demo was also Project Pacific, showing off containers running side by side with VMs.  This is the future of vSphere and I can’t wait for this to go GA.  Expanding this with Tanzu Mission Control, you can manage multiple clusters across multiple clouds (both public and private), giving you full oversite over your environment.

Next up was Marcos Hernandez, CTO of network and security.  The first demo was to showcase the new NSX Service Mesh.  This technology allows administrators to set policies that will dynamically load balance and reroute traffic based on failures and slowdowns to ensure SLAs are met.  Next he showed off NSX Intelligence, which used machine learning to ingest telemetry data from multiple sources, make recommendations, and even let you preview the effects before pushing them into production.  He went on to showcase what is going to be coming from Carbon Black and leveraging it into App Defence.  It can go so far as to take warnings of high CPU and investigate deep into a virtual machine to find the cause of the issue and potential suspicious behavior (in this case a rouge Tomcat instance that shouldn’t have been there).

Purnima Padmanabhan is up next talking about WaveFront.  One of the interesting things here was that some of the new ways they can cut through all the noise of various telemetry sources to get at the root of the problem.  With Project Magna, they will leverage AI to automate a reaction and dynamically adjust settings for this.  CloudHealth was also featured with an interesting metric: Budget.  They showed off a demo where you can set alarms and early warnings when you are going to go over your cloud budget for the month and even make recommendations on resources that can be reclaimed to pull back on the costs.

VMware Horizon was next on the docket, and to showcase the latest innovations was Shikha Mittal.  VMware Horizon is expanding into the cloud.  Now you can spin up VDI instances quickly and easily in AWS.  Leveraging the image manager, you can have a consistent end user experience weather the desktop resides on prem or in the cloud.  WorkspaceOne has a new intelligence layer that is leveraging carbon black for VDI inspection.  You can monitor network traffic and suspicious process and automate locking down a system and alert operations.

Finally, Greg Lavender joined Ray on stage.  Greg has been working on the emerging technologies front.  One thing in particular he showcased was a new edge computing offering from DellEMC that included the use of “Smart NICs”.  These NICs were running a virtual machine that showed up in ESXi and could be managed directly (no nesting required).  This allows things like HA for an SD-WAN device.  They also showed off the power of HCX as they took two VMs (one running in AWS and the other running in Azure) and vMotioned them between the two cloud providers.

Finally Pat (wearing his Tanzu Tee) made a bombshell of an announcement, Greg is going to be the new CTO of VMware!

VMworld 2019: Day 1 Keynote

Pat’s theme this year to open the VMworld 2019 main keynote was “Tech in any age”.  He talked a lot about the good that technology has done for the world.  Things like the Mercy Hospital ship and Angel Medical Flights use technology to bring help to people in need.  He also talked about the unintended consequences of technology.  He mentioned BitCoin in particular being used for nefarious purposes and I think he may have hit a nerve with a few members in the audience, but he has a point.  Blockchain as a technology is a great way to keep a chain of evidence/integrity end to end, but it’s when people use it for bad things does it spoil the concept for everyone.

Pat then went on to start to lay out the vision behind some of this year’s acquisitions and where they fit in the portfolio.  Starting off with the announcements behind containers, Pat introduced Joe Beda who let everyone about Tanzu, VMware’s answer to containers leveraging IP from Heptio and Pivotal.  One of the offshoots of this was Project Pacific, which is a way in which they are embedding Kubernetes and containers directly into vSphere.  They claimed there is an 8% performance increase over running on bare metal and 30% faster than running inside linux VMs.

Next Pat went on to talk about the multi cloud world we live in.  He showed off some very impressive stats highlighting VMware Cloud Foundation being the #1 software to build out a hybrid cloud platform.  VMware’s cloud health is now managing over 7000 customers and helping drive down costs.  Pat then attempted to do the impossible, unite Star Trek and Star Wars fans.  Unfortunately, that’s like mixing water and oil, it just wont happen.

Speaking of hybrid cloud, Project Dimension is a GO!  This is a managed services offering for those that want to have a public cloud like operating model, but not have it running out in the public cloud.  A fully managed environment leveraging VCF on top of DellEMC VxRail with a monthly metered billing is going to be available and is already being leveraged by a few customers in the pilot program.  Interested as well is that VMware is going to be offering DRaaS, leveraging DellEMC Power Protect.  I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about this later.

Finally, Pat talked about some recent acquisitions that are being folded into the NSX platform.  AVI networks is going to be adding Application Intelligence to the mix.  Rounding out the robust security platform that NSX is becoming was the Acquisition of Carbon Black (announced just the week before).  To help with that message, Sanjay Poonen came up and explained the 5 points of intrinsic security: Network, Endpoint, Cloud, Identity, and Analytics.  Carbon Black as part of VMware and the security ecosystem (Think Dell SecureWorks) is going to make a strong platform for full stack security in the hybrid cloud era.

You can catch the full replay of the Day 1 Keynote here

Thoughts on the VMworld 2018 Day 1 Keynote

Today, with some assistance from the VMware Blogger program, I was able to get front and center for the VMworld 2018 keynote.  They shared some interesting updates with us.  First and foremost, Pat has a new tattoo

But seriously, VMware has seen their transition over the years in 5 acts.  First, it was all about ESXi.  Then came the ByoD (Bring your own Device revolution.  Followed closely by SDN (Software Defined Networking).  Then the entrance into public/hybrid clouds.  Most recently, they are getting into the Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning space.

As Pat put it, cloud is all about consistent infrastructure and consistent operations.  And the best way to do that on prem is with Cloud Foundation

When it comes to Public Cloud, there were some new announcements around integration with AWS.  Andy Jassy from Amazon came up on stage and talked a bit about road maps.  They’ve been getting high demand for their new fed cloud and will be opening and eastern US location soon.  However, the biggest announcement was around support for RDS (Relational Database Service) on VMware.  This is really going hard after the database market and is a great way to make a splash.

Next up was Project Dimension.  This is like a reverse hybrid cloud option.  The idea is going with a cloud first initiative that then stretches into on prem.  So what you can do now, leveraging VMware on AWS, is give your developers and AWS availability zone that is running on your own local hardware.

One of the cooler demos i saw was around “Cloud Motion”.  The idea of being able to bulk move VMs right into the could.  It starts by using vSphere Replication, and then when that’s done it does a vMotion right up into the cloud.  This makes it real easy to fling workloads into the cloud when the time is right.

There were also some great announcements around integration with Dell.  All new business laptops will ship ready to work with VMware workspace one.

We also got to see some cool new tech.  Coming soon you will see a version of ESXi that runs on ARM64 chips.  We are finding these embedded in more and more IoT devices, and this is a great way to do development and high availability.

And finally something new called vSphere Pro, which is a version of vSphere that has AppDefense built right in.  Now you can start building your firewall rules, segregation, and app security right in vSphere and be protected much more easily.

All in all, i think this is a strong showing from VMware that is in an area of growth.  I’m looking forward to the rest of the conference.

Join me at VMworld with Tech Field Day Extra!

TFD-Extra-VMworld-300Hello Everyone!  This is a quick post to let you know that I will be a delegate this year at Tech Field Day Extra @ VMworld.  Join me and my fellow #TFDx delegates Tuesday afternoon where we will be hearing from Kingston, Druva, Pluribus, and NetApp.  Be sure to join in the conversation by using the hash tags #TFDx & #VMworld!

Below is the current schedule of presentations:

August 29, 2017
11:00-12:00
Kingston Presents at Tech Field Day Extra at VMworld US 2017

August 29, 2017
13:00-14:00
Druva Presents at Tech Field Day Extra at VMworld US 2017

August 29, 2017
14:30-15:30
Pluribus Networks Presents at Tech Field Day Extra at VMworld US 2017

August 29, 2017
16:00-17:00
NetApp Presents at Tech Field Day Extra at VMworld US 2017

My thoughts on VMworld 2016

VMworld 2016This week, geeks of the world flocked to Las Vegas to celebrate all things datacenter and virtualization.  This was my 5th VMworld (and my first time not attending as a vendor), but my first VMworld in Vegas.  Now, as I sit here in the airport waiting to return home, i wanted to reflect on my thoughts of the show.

 

Announcements

I found the announcements from VMware a bit disappointing.  There, I’ve said it!  The things that were announced were great as part of a vision and forward looking direction that VMware is headed.  However these announcements weren’t really new and were discussed last year as well.  This time however they were a lot more polished and had working demos.  Its great to see that VMware is accepting that people will chose other clouds for their workloads.  But while cloud workloads may be the future, many people are not there yet.

I found the lack of announcements around whats coming for traditional infrastructure (also known as private cloud) a bit disturbing.  In my experiences with customers, very few of them are using the cloud.  The reason being that they aren’t developing their own apps, they are using someone else’s, and those still install into traditional VMs.  I don’t believe we will see a bigger shift to cloud and container based workloads until the workload vendors start adopting them.

 

Infrastructure Trends

Walking around the show floor, it was very clear that there has been a shift in traditional infrastructure.  Even from the big players, you didn’t see any mention of a spinning disk array.  It was either all flashed or converged.  Which then showed off 2 trends:  A race to the top and a race to the bottom.  So what do i mean by that?  In a race to the top, these vendors are saying that they have the best or the fastest arrays.  One product that can handle anything thats thrown at it, so you know you have the best out there, and it also comes with a top tier price too.  Then the other trend, the race to the bottom.  This was a “do more with less” approach i was seeing.  These vendors were trying to put up the impressive numbers without braking the bank through innovative technology.  You saw this through your newer vendors, who have a great idea, but haven’t necessarily gone through many revision cycles to add to or refine their offerings.  I’m looking for big things from this space as i still believe price dictates the market.

You also saw this same trend in the converged space.  It seems like this is the area with the most growth and just about everyone had some sort of a converged offering.  Again, you have major players in this space that offer a full featured converged platform to address the majority of a company’s needs.  And you also have the race to the bottom, where several companies were creating virtual san offerings trying to put out impressive performance numbers with very few disks.  I honestly wonder what the landscape will be like in a few years as it becomes increasingly crowded.  Something has to give, and i expect we will see a large change in the number of vendors in this space in just a few years time.

 

Community

The community at VMworld has already been a great experience, and this year was no exception.  It was great to see so many friends and almost felt like a family reunion.  While the vExpert community is increasing, it’s great to see vendors still taking the time to engage these people.  There are two vendors that i want to single out in particular.  The first, Cohesity.  They took the time ahead of VMworld to talk to the vExpert community, and went above and beyond to reward them for their hard work at the show.  The backpack and show survival kit was a great offering and i was really impressed with the quality and effort put into it

The second was Datrium.  I think this year is a story they will be telling for years to come and a great lesson learned.  Their booth staff was calm and patient while secretly having a meltdown over missing Raspberry PIs.  I’m proud of them that in the end they were able to pull it off, even if that meant missing evening activities and staying up till 2 in the morning assembling these things.  They came out great, and again I want to thank them for supporting the vExpert community.

The vExpert community is increasing in size each year, and having a place to congregate in the bloggers area was awesome.  So many people are giving back to the community and i’m proud to support as many of them as i can.  My laptop came in relatively empty, and now its hard to  find any free space on it.

Final Thoughts

VMworld is always a great experience, and this year was no exception.  While vegas is cheaper, doing a show in August  there is just too darn hot.  Its clear that there is a shift in the landscape going on, but you can’t forget about those customers who aren’t constantly living on the cutting edge.  And the community around the show is great, you will find amazing people to talk to all around the show and i encourage you to do that.  Finally, i want to give a shout out to Battle Bots.  Having these robots at the show was awesome and i can’t wait to see who wins in the finale tonight!

 

Want to go to VMworld 2015? Win a trip from SimpliVity!

VMworld is a great gathering of all things VMware and I think that everyone should have the chance to go.  Unfortunately, it can also be an expensive gathering, which might be cost prohibitive for some potential attendees.  Good news though, because my employer, SimpliVity, is giving away 3 sets of tickets that include hotel and airfare.  All you have to do is click below and enter for a chance to win.

VMworld Social Contest

Winners will be announced on July 17th, 24th, and 31st.  Good luck to everyone!

VMworld 2013 in pictures

VMworld 2013 - Day 3 331San Francisco is an amazing city (and also an expensive city).  I finally was approved for travel to this city after trying the past two years, so I wanted to make it count.  I had heard so many great things about VMworld from years past and I was looking forward to all it had to offer before, during, and after the show.  With only a few days in the city and a lot to accomplish, my adventure began on saturday.

 

Saturday night kicked off the first VMworld activity (if you don’t count booth assembly or hanging in the alumni lounge).  Simon Seagrave hosted a spectacular vBeers event to kick things off and it was packed the the point it was spilling out on to the sidewalk.  I met a lot of really cool people (including several people I follow on twitter) and I even got to try out google glass (I need to find one that fits people with glasses).

 

VMworld 2013 - Day 1 189_HDRThe next day started off with some sight seeing and a bit of a walking tour of SF.  Google maps really need to start telling me about elevation changes because some of those streets were straight up (or down depending on the direction you were going)!

 

Sunday afternoon was home to the 4th (or 5th depending on who you ask) vOdgeball tournament and this year did not disapoint.  My understanding was that this was the biggest it has been and major props to the teams competing, the refs for making quick calls, and the fans for surviving stray balls.

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While team EMC was victorious in winning, the real winners was the wounded warriors program who received around $14,000 in donations.

 

VMworld 2013 - Day 2 367That evening we witnessed the opening of the show floor.  I have to say, the EMC booth was amazing and was one of 2 double decker booths on the show floor.  It seemed like every time I was at the booth it was packed full of people and this is always a great sign.  After 3 hours of booths, beer, and food, it was time for the biggest social media meet up of the week.  I’m referring to the VMunderground party.  This year it was held at an art gallery (that was surprisingly vacant of art) and had plenty of room to talk, eat, and mingle.

 

VMworld 2013 - Day 2 066All this has happened and the show doesn’t even start really until Monday morning.  The opening keynote delivered by former EMCer Pat Gelsinger did not disappoint.  Major announcements about the release of vSphere 5.5 which included two new features: VSAN and NSX.  VSAN is VMwares take on software defined storage and NSX is the result of the Nicira acquisition last year and completes their software defined networking portfolio.  There are plenty of great blogs out there discussing these technologies and I can’t wait to see what is done with this technology down the road.

 

VMworld 2013 - Day 2 392VMworld 2013 - Day 2 518At the EMC booth, Chad Sakac didn’t disappoint either.  He has a way with words and seems to be able to fire up the crowd no matter where he is.  Of course it helps when you have goodies to wow people like a VMAX that has a fridge built into it.

 

VMworld 2013 - Day 3 127Tuesday provided even more information about the new technologies announced the day before.  It was also a great day to do hands on labs.  VMware provided a huge hands on lab area, but for people wanting to try out EMC specific labs, we also brought our own booth setup to handle several labs at a time across the entire EMC portfolio.

 

VMworld 2013 - Day 3 565Tuesday night was the vendor parties and EMC, Cisco, and Intel banded together to bring you Cloudfest!.  We took over Ghirardelli square to bring the ultimate combination of music, food, and chocolate.  As evidence by the photo to the right, this place was packed!  The bands were great and delivered some amazing covers of popular songs by Queen, The Police, and others.  I was told this was one of the best parties of the night and people were still talking about it up through the end of VMworld.

 

VMworld 2013 - Day 4 080VMworld 2013 - Day 4 220On Wednesday, the EMC booth had a t-shirt meet up.  Everywhere you looked was a sea of EMC datacenter hero shirts (I think there were more than at EMC World).  This was the final day the show floor was open and even after 3 days of presentations, booth attendance was still very high (including some special guests like Pat dropping by).

VMworld 2013 - Day 4 249

 

VMworld 2013 - Day 4 279That night was the VMworld Party.  They took over AT&T park and turned it into a cVMworld 2013 - Day 4 301ounty fair!  The midway games were great however I still maintain that they were rigged since the same people kept winning (and I won nothing).  Both Train and Imagine Dragons did a great job.  This has to be one of the best customer appreciation parties I have been to and I can’t wait to see what happens in the coming years as other events step up!

 

All in all VMworld was a great event.  I met more people than I can remember (including about half of the people I follow on twitter).  I learned a lot about upcoming technology and the solutions they play.  To see the full collection of my photos (all 154 of them) I have posted them to google+.

VMworld 2013 - Day 3 342

VMworld – The EMC presence and where to find me

With VMworld getting underway in just a few hours, i thought i’d talk about EMC’s presence at the show and where you can find me.  EMC will have 2 booths this year.  We have the main booth which is 2 floors and full of awesome!  The main floor area will have a social media wall, a presentation theater, a prize wheel, and plenty of stations to learn about all that we have to offer.  The upstairs area will be an EMC Elect space for all Elect members in attendance.  Have you nominated someone (or yourself) yet?

 

The other area will be in the back corner and it is an EMC Hands on lab (Powered by vLab!) area where you can try our latest and greatest solutions in a virtual environment.  This is separate

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I urge everyone to stop by the booths and check them out, and you may even find yourself in a picture up on one of our posts!  Which brings me to where i’ll be.  This year i am acting as official EMC photographer for the event.  I will be EVERYWHERE gathering photos of all things EMC.  So be sure to attend one of our sessions or anything else listed on the vPass page and you may wind up in our photo album.  When i’m not shooting photos, you’ll find me hanging out around the EMC booth or in the VMworld hang space.  At night, you can find me at one of VMworld’s many social gatherings.

 

Speaking of social gatherings, are you going to Cloudfest?  For those of you who don’t know, Cloudfest is a customer appreciation party cosponsored by EMC, Cisco, and Intel.  It’s going to be the best party tuesday night.  For those of you who have already signed up, be sure to pick up your invitation at the EMC Booth.  If you didn’t get a chance to sign up, there will be more tickets given out, so talk to the booth staff and see if you can get one, or become friends with an EMC Elect member who might be able to get you in.  I hope to see everyone there.

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Thats it for now, but be sure to check out the EMC VMworld vPass page to cover all things going on at this year’s show.

VMworld – Introducing the Software-Defined 7

With VMworld a week away, I wanted to start talking about the goings on at the event and how I will be contributing to the community.  This year, we have seven EMC Elect Social Champions (also known as the “Software Defined 7”) who will be attending VMworld and offering live coverage of the event.  I am honored to be one of those members this year and will be your goto contact for EMC party related information (more onthat later) as well as taking photos of the entire show.

This year, EMC has several break out sessions, as well as a large double decker booth on the show floor, hands on labs, and a customer appreciation event.  A full list of all the events can be found here.  A member of the software defined seven has volunteered to be the social champion for a break out session or event and will be your contact for any questions as well as blogging & tweeting the content from the session.  They will become the goto person for asking questions during the event wether you are attending or playing the home game.

 

For those of you who cannot attend, but want to stay up to date on all things EMC at VMworld, i encourage you to visit the Virtual Pass page on ECN where we have everything EMC is doing all in one space.  There is even a discussion thread to talk about the show (thanks to a suggestion from Luigi).