I just got back from the VMware Partner Forum 2009 in Esher. It was held at the Sandown Park Racecourse this year. I attended a bunch of different break out sessions choosing the most interesting or applicable options for myself. Here is what I attended at the forum:
1. Keynote
2. How to upsell vSphere for VI3 customers – 5 great reasons to upgrade customers from VI3 to vSphere 4.
3. Partner enablement – Profit from your knowledge and meet your new competency requirements.
4. Technical session – Configure Host Profiles / Distributed Virtual Switch.
5. Hosting – vCloud and the VMWare Service Provider Program.
6. Technical session – Upgrade VI3 to vSphere 4.
There were lots of refreshments and breaks in-between each session as well as a great lunch.
Naturally I found the technical sessions the most interesting. In the Upgrade VI3 to vSphere 4 session I found out about the three different methods of upgrading ESX 3/3.5 Hosts to vSphere 4.0. The Host Profiles / dvSwitch session was something I already knew about, but had not yet tried it in a lab environment until today.
Hosting was quite interesting too – there were a bunch of people that got caught out providing hosted vmware solutions to the public without the required partner program status. Good thing my company has the necessary credentials to provided hosted platforms!
I also got to see a demo of Veeam’s new Backup 4.0 – still in development but they have many improvements and new features.
As per usual there was a bag of goodies given out to each attendee.
