party

VMworld Europe 2013 Day 2 and the VMworld Party

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Sessions summary

 

Here is a list of sessions I managed to attend on Wednesday:

  • Getting started with Horizon Workspace: Use cases and Configuration
  • Demystifying VMware Mirage: Tips and Tricks for Success

Horizon Workspace is really quite well featured, and provides a centralised location for the workforce to access all the apps, desktops and data that is relevant to their role in the company. VMware use this internally, and it is a great example of how one can mobilise a large workforce.

The Mirage session felt quite lengthy, but it did have a wealth of information and best practices tips that were discussed. The session did start to feel a little bit tedious toward the end, but that was mainly due to the many slides of tips & tricks. Perhaps a slightly higher level look at the best practices would have suited the session time better. However, anyone who attended should now have a very good idea of how to approach a Mirage deployment from the start to the finish.

 

Vendor time / Solutions Exchange

I had a good wander around the solutions exchange and chatted with various vendors. Some of the interesting areas I looked at were:

  • Nutanix
  • Simplivity
  • PernixData
  • nVidia
  • PuppetLabs
  • Cisco
  • VCE

I must say thanks to Simplivity and Nutanix for their vExpert gifts – I collected an awesome Raspberry Pi, and vExpert Beer glass from both 🙂

 

Hands on Labs

I got some more time on the HOLs section and managed to do some more PuppetLabs modules. This is a great framework/product and I’ll definitely be looking into it further in the future. It was also good to catch up with Steven Thwaites at the PuppetLabs stand – previously known from Xsigo, and have a chat with him around all the awesome PuppetLabs framework and functionality.

puppet-labs-logo

 

Bloggers / Community lounge

I spent a bit of time early morning catching up with other bloggers and networking. I had a good chat with Erik Bussink, and we also had a bit of a look at some troubleshooting his vMetrics plugin he grabbed from this blog which was having trouble connecting to WordPress. Incidentally, he has some awesome information about Infiniband and using it in your lab environment with ESXi – go check out his blog for more info if you are interested!

 

VMworld Party

Hanging around after the main conference event until 7pm, meant we could jump straight across to the VMworld party. The event was put together well, with some impressive layouts.

In the center area was a large roller disco, with the main stage up front hosting two or three acts throughout the evening. Food and drinks were plentiful and there were various arcade games scattered around the area. I had to fire up some old school Street Fighter, so we had a few vs. games of that among others.

Left to right: Darren Woollard, Michael Poore, Gregg Robertson, Paul, Daragh, Sean Duffy, MrX?, Ather Beg, Curtis Brown
Left to right: Darren Woollard, Michael Poore, Gregg Robertson, Paul, Daragh, Sean Duffy, MrX?, Ather Beg, Curtis Brown
Roller disco
Roller disco

VMworld 2013 Party

Taio Cruz - not my first choice in music, but great to have a live act none the less :)
Taio Cruz – not my first choice in music, but great to have a live act none the less 🙂

VMworld 2013 Party

VMworld 2013 Party
Aliens on stilts walking around the party

VMworld Europe 2013 vRockstar Party, Partner Day, and PernixData Party

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After a quick flight over from the rainy UK, I arrived in Barcelona along with fellow Xtravirt colleagues traveling from Gatwick airport, Darren Woollard and Michael Poore.

With very little time before the Sunday night vRockstar party commenced, we reformed and took a taxi down to central Barcelona to meet up with others at the Hard Rock cafe. It was great to meet some new faces (if you exclude Twitter profiles) for me – Fred Hofer, Lars Troen, Damian Davis, Patrick Redknap, Juan, et al as well as catching up with old – Jonathan Medd, and others.

Drinks and snacks were provided free, and the team that put everything together for the community did a really good job of keeping things running smoothly. Many thanks go out to them, as well as all the sponsors! Here are a few snaps I took at the event.

vRockstar Party #1

vRockstar Party #3 Prize draw

vRockstar Party #4

Early Monday morning meant Partner day had soon arrived, so after catching a taxi down to the conference center, registration was soon complete.

VMworld Europe 2013 entrance

Walkways were fairly empty at this stage, which was great for mobility and exploring the venue layout.

Darren Woollard and Curtis Brown, fellow Xtravirt colleagues walk the travellator
Darren Woollard and Curtis Brown, fellow Xtravirt colleagues walk the travellator

I took the time to complete a few Hands on Lab sessions – targeting down Puppet Labs, VMware vCO and vCAC, as I really do enjoy my automation topics. The hands on labs were predictably fairly quiet on partner day, so this was a good time to get them done. The sign up process was smooth and the staff handled things well – guiding people in to the BYOD or traditional HOL sections and getting everyone setup. Soon the VM counter had risen from around 7, to 1000 virtual machines deployed.

Hands on Labs, VMworld 2013

HOL - Cloud topics

An interesting wall mural/interactive VMware Timeline seen – I can place myself as really starting off with learning VMware technologies around 2007-2008 when VI3 was the “in thing” 🙂

VMware timeline
VMware timeline

The day ended after speaking with/meeting some new faces at the Bloggers lounge and us heading off to the PernixData party at the El Boo beach club in Barcelona. Many thanks to the guys at PernixData for putting this event together. The atmosphere and location were awesome, and so was the selection of food and drinks.