Learn how to integrate Azure VMware Solution with Native Azure Services [ELW-HOL-2394-03-HBD]

This mouth full of a session was an expert-led hands-on lab (HOL). Emad Younis, and Jeremiah Megie were representing VMware, while Trevor Davis and Carlos Villuendas handled the Microsoft side of things.

We were able to go through a live lab where Microsoft Arc features were deployed to an Azure VMware Solution (AVS) deployment. This allowed VMs and storage to be provisioned within the VMware environment in AVS via the native Azure Portal interface. Some pretty interesting and potentially useful stuff.

A quick couple of notes about connecting your on-prem VMware environment to AVS:

• While Microsoft's Azure ExpressRoute used to be a requirement, it's now recommended. Connectivity can be established via VPN, or even by leveraging the stretched L2 that VMware HCX provides. Officially the HCX connection is recommended to only be used for migration.

• HCX is included with AVS, it just has to be enabled via the add-ons. Don't worry, it doesn't cost extra!

Financial Services Workshop [INDB2773US]

This session, though listed as a workshop, was basically a series of fireside style chats with various senior technology folks from financial services enterprises. The two chats I caught were quite interesting.

Harendar Chadha, Sr. Director at RBC said that when he first joined RBC it was a bit disjointed, with different global offices and data centres running different versions of vSphere. That's all since been unified and they use vRealize Automation to automate and manage the full lifecycle of their VMs across the globe. From a staffing and retention standpoint, Harendar pointed out that finding and keeping talent has been a challenge.

Tom Eck, Sr. VP for Fiserv also spoke strongly in favour of automation. In fact he suggests that folks currently in an operational role should start developing their automation skills right away. Opportunities in "traditional" ops are going to be more and more limited. He also echoed the challenge with hiring and retaining talent, though for Fiserv it's mostly engineers.

Welcome Reception

The Expo is always officially opened with the Welcome Reception, a chaotic and appetizing event where attendees' attention is split between vendors and food. This year was not so different, though the space is noticeable smaller than the previous number of in-person conferences, and less vendors are displaying their wares. That being said, it's easier to chat with the vendors who are there, and there's a bit more elbow room. Always a good thing.

I managed to chat with some Google engineers, seeing how Google's VMware Engine worked within the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Also had a notable conversation with folks from Zabbix.

Converged User Group Meeting & VMUG Member Party

After the official convention events of the day ended, I attended the Converged User Group meeting and the VMUG Member Party.

At the Converged User Group meeting, we got to hear an interesting conversation about tech at Top Golf Calloway. Top Golf uses converged infrastructure, Dell hardware running VMware products, to deliver their digital golfing experience. I also got to chat with peers, some who are currently running converged tech and some who are still learning and deciding on whether it's the right fit for them. Great conversations shared with great folks.

The VMUG Member Party was held at SPIN San Francisco, a ping-pong club. It was raucous, and loud, and ping-pong balls were everywhere! People had a great time mingling, chatting, and challenging each other to table tennis.

The More They Stay The Same

Today looked remarkably like the VMware conference of days past. Just goes to show that things aren't that different after all. 'Til tomorrow, as always, stop and say hi. And keep on having a great, safe, conference.

General Session

Only one general session this year, let's see what's up!

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That's how my last post on this blog ended. It was August 2019. Simpler times. Needless to say I didn't see San Francisco in 2020. Or 2021.

Two Gather(ings), Apart

VMworld was held completely online those years. It worked, for what it was. What it wasn't though, was an in-person conference with a focus on community. Not for lack of trying.

VMUG held a virtual meeting space, which was fun, but limited, and little too surreal. Nick Howell had the most successful approximation with his Orbital Jigsaw Discord server. He still does conference "follow alongs", if you will. You should join. Nick and company are good folks, and are the closest you're going to get to an authentic hallway track for online tech events. They also chat about tech and tech-adjacent interests.

It still wasn't the same as attending in person, nothing will be. That, combined with, you know, everything else going on, took the wind out of my blogging sails.

In April, VMware announced their intention to hold an in-person conference once more. It wasn't VMworld. Their corporate conference crown was re-dubbed VMware Explore. I was cautiously optimistic. More caution, than optimism, if I'm being honest. Before I realized it the early bird pricing deadline was imminent and I put my money where my nerves were and paid my fee. Barring a turn for the (even) worse, I was sort of, kind of, committing to going to VMware Explore. Maybe.

I kept a close eye on refund deadlines. Booked flights and accommodations, with more refund options. You know, in case. As we got closer and closer to the event, I felt that familiar feeling of anticipation. Okay. We're doing this. Let's go!

Day 0

It's typically tradition here to have a "Day 0" post on the Saturday before VMwo... er... VMware Explore. It's a travel day, and travel I did. In a big metal tube with wings. With other people. It felt vaguely familiar, but with slightly different travel nerves than usual.

I arrived safe and sound in San Francisco as the sun set late Saturday. A run to the hotel, check-in, then a dash to the grocery store for my usual mini-fridge staples started to make it feel even more familiar.

Traditions March On

It was another last minute decision, but as is a nearly tradition of mine, in SF at least, I signed up for a 5k first thing Sunday morning. Am I really doing this? I am. I did.

Bridge bridging to bridge: 2019 to 2022.[/caption] I was rusty, I'll admit. Out of practice. I'm pretty proud of my time, regardless. Not a personal best, but my best in a long while.

First Official VMware Explore Thing

A little rested and full of brunch, I went to my first official VMware Explore activity. Moscone South hardly looked like it had aged a day while I registered for my badge and picked up my "materials". The trusty conference t-shirt and backpack. Whoa. Déjà vu.

I played the part of tourist for the rest of the day until the next event on my calendar.

VMunderground Rises Once More

No Opening Acts this year. I missed it. No doubt others did too. I can't imagine the logistics and effort required to will those panel discussions into being. Just wasn't in the cards this year. Understandable.

By the grace of, well, some pretty amazing folks, the VMunderground party happened this year. It was great meeting people in-person again who I hadn't seen in far too long. Always great meeting new people in-person too.

The More They Stay The Same

Day 1 looked eerily familiar. A bit different, to be sure. Masks, distancing, a bit of grey hair that wasn't there the last time. On me, I mean. You look great.

I guess the take away is that change is here. Change happened. It's still a VMware conference. Looks like a VMware conference. Has the stance and gravitas of a VMware conference. Change is still happening. To us, to VMware, to VMware Explore. As folks who deal with technology, change is what we do. It's how we thrive, and what keeps things interesting. I'm very interested to see what the week brings at VMware Explore.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm still sore from that race this morning. But what else is new?

As always, stop and say hi if you're here and spot me. And have a great, safe, week.

Wizards of Networking Predict Shifts by 2025

The day kicked off with a very interesting panel, with five leaders in networking providing their predictions for what networking will look like by 2025-2030. There were a few different ideas or variations on common themes, so the notes may appear to contradict themselves as they're the collection of ideas from several people.

• 11 year ago networking was primary closed and proprietary. Like the mainframe business of the 1980's.

• There had been 7,000 RFCs to consider and implement into network solutions. This was complex and cumbersome.

• Since that time we've had SDN, NFV, OpenFlow and other networking innovations.

• The era from 2008-2019 saw network owners take control of their software.

• The era from 2011-2021 saw and will see network owners take control of packet processing.

  • Programmable switches have effectively the same performance as non-programmable switches.

• By 2030 expect about 400 Tb/s per switch.

• As of 2030 everything will have been programmable for 10 years.

• We will no longer think in terms of protocols but software.

• Software engineering practices will be brought to bear on network programming.

• In 2030 networks will be programmed by many, but operated by few.

• Network definitions are starting to move out of documents (ex. Word) and into code (ex. python, go).

• There are five phases of networking:

  • human-driven

  • workflow-driven

  • event-driven

  • machine-driven

  • self-driving

• Open Network is core to innovation.

• Networking will be "self-driven, like the cars are being done, because it's safer, not cheaper" (i.e. don't focus on the OpEx).

• Quality is most important in the network, followed by simplicity and manageability.

• Networking is:

  • Identity

  • Connectivity

  • Security

  • Scale & Availability

• Is orchestration and abstraction the right conversation?

• Priorities have changed in the last 10 years; apps are now the primary driver.

• In 5 years we'll stop focusing on pipes and instead focus on communications.

• Application plan and network plane are treated today like they're different universes (hint: they're not).

• Future-proof principles:

  • disaggregation

  • commodity & open source

  • network management (that is safe & comprehensive)

As mentioned, this was an excellent panel discussion and could've taken most (or all) of the day on it's own.

Network or Infrastructure Focused Data Centre

This session focused on whether it's possible to move I&O to an SLA consumption model.

• Moving to an SLA-based infrastructure model requires management of risks (don't avoid them).

• Provider SLA penalties are typically ineffective, and considered by many providers as "just the cost of doing business".

• If SLAs don't work, then what?

• We've gone from data centres to centres of data.

  • "Where does the data live?"

• Expect up to 80% of on-premises private cloud to be deployed by Kubernetes by 2023 (less than 5 year away!).

• Infrastructure is just cost of goods sold.

• RIP: MTBF and MTTR.

  • Don't use these as PKIs.

• During the next network refresh look at the network management model and practices before considering vendor and products.

From Automation to Operations

Another panel discussion, this time regarding automation. Most of the panelists were in agreement, so there wasn't a large variety of points to make note of. Here are a few highlights.

• Adopting technology is changing peoples' behaviours.

• Agile requires version control.

• Guiding principle:

  • Make the "right thing" the "easy thing".

Simplifying Networks

A small panel discussion regarding the simplification of networks. The core tenet of the conversation was, well, keep it simple.

• Simple must equal maintainable.

• Making something simple is hard, keeping it simple is hard too.

SOCs or NOCs?

This presentation spoke to whether SOCs, NOCs or both should have control and responsibility for networks.

• By 2025 SOCs and NOCs will either:

  • Be replaced be "Resiliency Centres",

  • Stay separated (as they are today), or

  • Integrate with / overlay each other.

• "Automation doesn't solve any problems that are not already solved."

Who Should Have Control?

A panel session about who the keepers of the network should be.

• FedEx is bringing in PAM, identity, and OKTA.

• FedEx uses all major cloud platforms.

• Inside FedEx, the InfoSec team owns PAM and OKTA. Specifically an Identity team within InfoSec.

• At Google, internal applications don't use DNS at all, they have a completely separate naming system.

• At Global Webscale, they don't have any Palo Alto Networks-like systems in production as that type of solution is much too expensive at scale.

• Global Webscale turned to Yubikey internally as a temporary security solution while they work on a long-term solution.

• Global Webscale underwent a very complex role-based access control (RBAC) initiative.

• Google's NOC is part of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE).

What's Next in Branch?

A look at what's happening with edge networking.

• Is the running of the network crucial to business success? No, more often than not.

• 5G will not be the answer for edge networking connectivity for another 5-7 years.

IT Orgs of the Future

Last, but not least, a small panel discussing how the organizational charts of the future will need to look.

• "Your DNA will be different is you're building services."

• Swisscom is starting to see business developers, where developers are located in business units outside of IT.

• Try out changes to organization structure via a lighthouse project before rolling them out corporate-wide.

The End… for Now

That wraps up another VMworld 2019 conference. As always it was tiring, exhausting, overwhelming, and worth every single minute of it. I heard someone mention that just because you get better at doing something, that doesn't mean it gets easier. The same is true of VMworld. Attend a few times and you figure out efficient routines, how to set your schedule, learn to prioritize what's important to you, etcetera. That makes each moment as optimum as you can, however there are still a lot of moments, and a lot of legwork (literally; I walked over 125k steps from days 0 thru 5).

So, I'm tired (as all attendees must be) but happy and grateful for yet another successful conference. And I can't wait to do it all over again. See you next year San Francisco!

Swing and a Miss

I had a breakout session booked early in the morning this morning. Early enough that I had to skip breakfast to get to it. No problem, I thought, the topic looks relevant to some things going on at work, it'll be worth it. When I originally scheduled the session, it had a vendor-neutral title and description. Twenty minutes into the session, and it was obvious that the speakers sole purpose was to pitch his vendor's products. Not only that, it was further clear that his audience was (potential) partner companies, not customers. Ooof.

That's something you end up learning with time at VMworld. While the vast majority of sessions are well delivered, with interesting, relevant topics, every once in a while you get a pure sales pitch. Know when to cut your loses. That's what I did, so let's move on.

The Virtually Speaking Podcast LIVE: The Future of IT - How Will You Fit in? [HCI1894PU]

As a fan of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, I was looking forward to this session. It was interesting and fun seeing Pete Flecha and John Nicholson basically run through what they would normally do when recording their podcast. It was further helped out by some great guest. Namely Ken Werneburg, Duncan Epping, Frank Denneman, and William Lam.

If you can, it's worth listening to this podcast when it's released. In the meantime, here are two book recommendations that were made during the chat:

• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath

• Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun

60 Minutes of Non-Uniform Memory Architecture [HBI2278BU] (Redux!)

Following the power outage from the previous day, Frank Denneman's session was rescheduled for Wednesday. It was well worth shuffling my schedule around to attend.

Here are just a few notes I took. The session was very detailed, so I spent more time paying attention than jotting down notes.

• When a memory module is under high load, the clock speed is throttled to compensate. On average the memory module's performance goes down 22%.

• Node interleaving creates a single logical NUMA node. This increases latency on average compared to local NUMA node usage.

• The latest versions of ESXi are designed to take advantage of AMD's EPYC v2 CPUs.

• If a process is scheduled on hyper-threading, it is "given back" some CPU scheduling time. This allows it to have more CPU time to compensate for HT not being a full core.

• Set numa.preferHT if you have workloads that have high memory requirements but low CPU requirements.

  • This helps address memory latency, and can be set per host or per VM.

• With CPU hot add, vNUMA is disabled.

  • You can continue to add vCPU to the VM, but there will be no optimization done.

  • Hot adding RAM has no effect on vNUMA.

  • The vNUMA state for the VM is stored in the VMX file.

  • The "fix" for a VM with CPU hot add enabled, and addtional vCPUs added, is to reboot the VM and reconfigure it so that vNUMA is enabled (disable hot add CPU).

When this session's video is made available online, I highly recommend watching it to get the full story on NUMA.

VMworld Fest

The VMworld Fest was well done this year. It was kicked off by surprise act Billy Idol (although it might have been the worst kept secret at the conference), and followed up by One Republic. Everyone, including myself, enjoyed the conference party this year. It's almost as if, a few years ago in Las Vegas, VMworld noticed that people were skipping the VMworld Fest to go see Billy who was in town that week. Hmm.

In any event, it was well put together and much appreciated.

One Last Sleep

That does it for the penultimate day of VMworld US 2019. Thursday is the final day of the conference and, as hinted above, I'll be spending it at the Future:NET sister conference. Stick around to find out how that goes.

General Session

Once again the General Session was live blogged here. It was great to see how the announced products from Monday's keynote come together to holistically address business needs.

vExpert Daily - Tuesday [VMTN5062U]

First session up today was one where I didn't sit in the audience so much as get up on stage and join the panel. I got a bit of feedback later on in the day that it went well. Don't know if I dare watch it myself, so I'll leave it to you to decide.

VMware Inner Circle Panel & Luncheon

I had to join the VMware Inner Circle Panel a little late due to the aforementioned vExpert panel. By the time I arrived the panel, made up of various VMware folks, and audience were engaged in a Q&A session. Most question focused on licensing and support, with many expressing frustration with procurement, the ELA process, and reasonable GSS turn around times.

To the panels credit they took the time to listen to and address each concern. While there may not have been many immediate resolutions available, by and large the panel members either mentioned that something was in the works to improve things, or that they would take the feedback back to their teams.

It's appreciated that VMware chooses to incorporate customer and partner feedback like they do. I get the impression that they too understand that a mutual vendor/customer relationship is key for all to benefit.

I hope to catch the full panel session next time around.

60 Minutes of Non-Uniform Memory Architecture [HBI2278BU]

This was one of the session I was most looking forward to this year. Presented by Frank Denneman, his deep-dive style session always increase my understanding of the depths of the vSphere hypervisor engine.

Unfortunately this year the session was cut short. The power to the building, and apparently about a city block's worth of buildings, went out about ten minutes in. We were all advised to exit the building for safety reasons. At least things weren't shaking. It is San Francisco after all.

I ran into Frank afterwards, and as of Wednesday morning the session hadn't yet been schedule. Due to the logistics of an already full conference, it may or may not be rescheduled. Check the VMworld calendar for details.

vExpert Party

I rounded out the evening by attending the vExpert Party at Spin, which is basically a ping-pong pub. Yes, it's exactly how you're picturing it. Table tennis and treats on tap. Ariel Sanchez Mora brought his Street Fighter V setup to add even more "sport" to the event.

It was great catching up with and socializing with folks who you basically only get one opportunity a year to meet with in person. Playing a few rounds of table tennis, or SF5, is a great way to further cement the community bond.

Thanks to Corey Romero and the rest of the VMware Social Media and Communities Team for all they do, all year round.

Put a Bow on It

That's Tuesday taken care of. We've run out of General Sessions for the week, but the breakout sessions keep rolling on and the Solutions Exchange will keep going strong until Wednesday afternoon. Stick around.

General Session & Beyond

I live blogged the General Session this morning, in an editorial style. The biggest takeaway being Project Pacific, the integration of Kubernetes into vSphere. While there are obvious benefits for container infrastructure, not least of which is the performance improvement (even against physicals!) but there are interesting applications beyond that.

I was lucky enough to attend a session this morning that expanded the announcements this morning, however I'm not able to share. It's certainly interesting getting a bit of an idea of what VMware's thinking beyond the literal announcements of the day. Like all thoughts and intentions, we shall see when we shall see.

Better Together

First breakout session of the conference for me was VMware Validated Design: Introduction and its Future [HBI1637BU] with Forbes Guthrie.

• What is VMware Validated Designs (VVD)? It's a set of prescriptive blueprints with comprehensive deployment and operational practices.

• VVD documentation can be found at the following links:

  • https://vmware.com/go/vvd-docs

  • https://vmware.com/go/vvd-diagrams

  • https://vmware.com/go/vvd-stencils

  • https://vmware.com/go/vvd-checklist

• VVD for SDDC supports 10,000 running VMs, with 150 VM deployments per hour.

• It supports a multi-region design, and contains nearly 400 design decisions.

• The VVD is made up of about 20 different VMware components, each with their own release cycles.

• Before each VVD release, the components on the bill of materials (BOM) are integrated as per the guidance and extensively tested for interoperability and resilience.

• Want to do something that varies from one of the design decisions? Check the tech notes, which acknowledge and provide some guidance when you want to vary (ex. OSPF vs. BGP).

• Since last VMworld VVD 5.0 released which included Cloud Builder, started aligned with VMware Cloud Foundations (VCF), and had a full BOM refresh and document set.

• Make sure to check the VVD documentation map to find the state of a particular VVD document. Some documents may not yet be updated in the VVD version you're looking at. The map will help you find which VVD version the doc is in.

• Cloud Builder currently requires you to fill out an Excel spreadsheet with all of your deployment parameters. The file is then injected into the Cloud Building app.

• VVD 5.0.1 added VCF workflows to Cloud Builder.

• VVD 5.1 was based on vSphere 6.7 U2 and included a full doc set.

• VVD 5.1 supports SRM 8.2, which saw SRM move off of a Windows-based VM to a virtual appliance. The upgrade guides will help with that transition.

• VVD announcements at VMworld 2019 include a NIST 800-53kit add-on, support for VMware Cloud on AWS as a region, early access support for vRealize Automation Cloud, and support for availability zones on an NSX-T workload domain.

• What is Cloud Foundation (specifically the regular on-premises VCF)? It's an automated deployment and lifecycle management of full SDDC.

• SDDC Manager does what it says on the tin, and manages the full SDDC environment. A design goal for it is to avoid needless duplication of existing management interfaces, so where it makes sense it defers to a components native management UI.

• The future of VVD and VCF is to more tightly integrate them.

• VVD.next will see Cloud Builder use SDDC Manager for much or all deployment.

• VCF customers will be able to refer to the VVD documents for operation ("day 2") guidance, as well as to understand the common design.

• Transitionally, anything that's currently in VVD but not VCF will have to be manually deployed following the published guidelines. Eventually those components may be added to SDDC Manager.

• VVD + VCF will eventually support "ingesting compliant Brownfield Environments". The intention of which is to try to analyze existing environments to determine how close to the BOM and deployment the current environment is, in order to provide prescriptive guidance to fully implement VVD/VCF.

I think that the prescriptive nature of the VVD and VCF can be immensely valuable to most organizations. Especially as IT departments begin to realize that their businesses value the ability to quickly get up & running in order to deploy business workloads.

HPE Briefing

I was invited to attend the HPE vExpert & Blogger briefing again his year. It's an opportunity to get a glimpse into how HPE's looking to move forward with their infrastructure offerings. There was a weighted focus on service offerings over hardware, which makes sense in a more software-defined market.

• Half of HPE staff are on the GreenLake side of the HPE house. Showing considerable focus on GreenLake and its subscription oriented offerings.

• HPE gear still accounts for the majority of traditional on-premises vSphere deployments.

• Recently vSAN Ready Nodes have been introduced that focus on particular workload types. Gives the customer a more tailored choice to meet their needs.

• GreenLake, more generally, is HPE's on-premises "as a Service" offering, which utilizes metered, "rented" equipment with a customer's environment.

• GreenLake environments are regularly monitored for consumption trends, and the on-premises gear adjusted proactively based on the capacity needs of the customer. Done right, and the customer shouldn't run out of capacity within their own physical data centres.

• GreenLake now integrates with VMware Cloud Foundation, so a VCF environment can be easily provisioned.

• The VCF integration could allow for a scenario where hardware is on site at a customer environment, but "cold" (not actively consumed and therefore not being billed for). The "cold" gear could then be spun up on demand when capacity needs dictate, and leverage VCF to extend the virtual infrastructure in a matter of minutes.

• HPE can work with customers to come to an agreed approach on how and what is managed on site. For example, if a customer wants HPE to manage all infrastructure, they can, if a customer wants to retain control over a particular area, like the network, that can be accommodated too.

• Primera storage is the successor to 3PAR.

• A number of HPE's storage offerings now support data mobility. There's a demo on the Solution Exchange floor this year showing a migration of data out of AWS and into Google Compute Platform (GCP) without incurring any AWS egress charges.

• Analytics offer prescriptive recommendations and optional execution of optimizations for data on HPE storage.

Over all it's interesting to note HPE's expanding focus on services over hardware. It seems like the hardware itself has reached a commodity threshold, with the software layer providing the differentiating service. For example HPE's Synergy platform of composable infrastructure leverages its software layer to carve up and present its hardware in whatever ways make the most sense and deliver the most value to the customer.

It's an interesting evolution for a company that has deep hardware roots. The tenacity and perseverance demonstrated by HPE means it will continue to be one of the big tech companies to keep an eye on.

Hackathon

One of my VMworld highlights is the VMware{code} Hackathon. This year was no exception. I was privileged to be on the team that placed first this year. Our team put together a module that provided a pipeline for checking and linting PowerCLI Examples.

The judges stated that they believed this effort will have broader benefits to the community, showing the potential lasting effects of efforts like the Hackathon for the community at large. On a more individual level, a number of participants were introduced to development concepts, some executing their first GitHub commit that night. It's these sorts of impacts, from an individual scale up to broader community, that make this effort worthwhile.

That, and the ability to meet and spend time with like-minded folks problem solving and noodling over tech. What's not to love?

Wrap Up

Monday in the can. One more General Session tomorrow (the typical Thursday session isn't on the agenda this year), some more breakouts, more conversations, more VMworld! Stay tuned. As always, make sure to stop and say hi if you can.

Tuesday General Session

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Monday General Session

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Sunday kicks off the first set of activities for many VMworld conference goers. You get registered, grab your backpack, and eagerly await the Welcome Reception, perhaps taking in a hands-on lab while you do. Based on the fast, smooth registration process, it looks like VMworld's really getting the hang of some of the conference minutia. This bodes well for the week ahead.

Off to a Running Start

First things first, for me anyway, was the Bridge2Bridge 5k race. We ran / jogged / walked from the Ferry Building near the Bay Bridge, along the edge of the bay towards the Golden Gate Bridge. We 5k'ers stop about 2/3 of the way there, but the brave 12k'ers continue up near the base of the Golden Gate and back again.

I didn't post my best time, but it was a heck of a route with great views and I'm satisfied to say that I finished within about 10% of my typical time. It was also fun rocking the conference exclusive #vFit t-shirt. Both things, the race and the shirt, support great causes. The former supports the Special Olympics of Northern California, and the latter supports mentoring in the tech community.

I do hope that VMworld considers hosting their own 5k fun run for next year, as they've done in year's past.

Opening Acts

The sixth annual Opening Acts tackled topics relating to employment. All three panels took on slightly different ideas, but they all dovetailed nicely together. Here are some of what I found to be key takeaways. Questions and responses are paraphrased.

• Q: What should someone do to move their career forward?

  • Work backwards from where you want to be in five years, and figure out how to get there.

  • Leverage recruiters at the larger tech companies so that you don't end up in the applicant "black hole". You have a better chance at an interview than applying alone.

  • Get in front of changing tech. Read, learn, talk to others. Consider the book The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen.

  • Embrace automation of your tasks / area of responsibility in order to position yourself for future career opportunities.

• What is tech growing?

  • Try to move above the tech while staying with the tech.

  • Don't be a CAVE person (citizens against virtually everything).

  • Put in a little learning every day, and like an interest-bearing savings account, it will compound and grow.

  • Look for and fill in the gaps within your own team and area.

  • Campaign for improvement at work. If (when) you get push back, considering replying with something like "sure we could hire someone, but what happens when they leave?"

• What talked about technology is just hype?

  • Nothing is pure hype, but watch out for statements like "will replace everything".

• How long should you stay in a job?

  • As long as it's still the right job for you.

  • Work culture is very important. If you have a mismatch with the culture at your employer, try to make changes and exert influence or consider other employment.

• What's the number one thing to consider when accepting a job offer?

  • Know how much money do you actually need to pay bills, afford family stuff, and deal with life. Consider this your "basement" salary requirement. Anything below it doesn't work.

  • You basically have one chance at negotiating your salary, so do it. Don't trust someone saying "take this salary now and we'll fix it during your first review".

  • Negotiate not only your salary, but your vacation and sick days as well (and always!).

  • Talk to people who do what you do to learn how much you are worth.

  • The hiring manager likely doesn't want to start over with another candidate after investing in you so far, so make sure you negotiate. They'll probably willing to try to accommodate you (just don't go overboard).

  • The candidate is the one who often presents their salary expectations first.

  • Never answer salary history questions. Respond with, "my employer does not allow me to discuss information about my job".

  • Remember that startup equity is worthless unless the startup has a good exit. Treat equity as gravy. Don't compromise your "basement".

  • Walk away from offers with stock vestments of greater than four years.

  • Stock options still have to be purchased by the employee, so take that into account, and if you have options don't forget the exercise them.

  • At a startup you can negotiate the triggers for vesting stock.

  • Before accepting a job offer, make sure you ask for and review the company benefit policies.

  • Remember that working from home has financial benefits. That's less miles you're putting on your car, less wear-and-tear, etc.

  • Considering keeping six months' worth of salary in a "screw you" account, just in case. This can give you a cushion if things go bad.

As always the Opening Acts panels and crew do an amazing job. There was lots of good advice and info to be had. Thanks all!

Welcome Reception

The Solutions Exchange Welcome Reception was the mad rush of excited tech enthusiasts it always is. It's not necessarily the best time to have an in-depth technical conversation with vendors. More of an opportunity to whet your appetite for future returns to the vendor space. There are always a few smaller booths around the fringes with something a bit different on offer, so be sure to visit more than the just the big players. Those smaller booths can be interesting, are small enough to be a bit more personal, and with any luck may end up one of the big players at future events.

Sunday Soirées

A pair of Sunday evening events spent meeting and chatting with folks were on my agenda. First up was the VMUG Member Party at Spin, a table tennis bar. It was an interesting venue, and actually seemed to have a bit more breathing room than the VMUG Vegas parties. It was nice to see folks having fun volleying ping pong balls back and forth, and I'm pretty sure at one point Michael Dell even tried his hand at a game.

Next was #VMunderground 2019, Opening Act's big sister event. There were lots of good conversations to be had and people to catch up with.

Wrap Up

Tomorrow's got the session-filled goods. First up will be the General Session, which will set the topic tone for the rest of the week. I'll be live blogging the General Session, so make sure to tune in!

If You're Going to San Francisco

So, what should we expect to hear about this year? The recent spate of acquisitions will likely be mentioned. It's early days yet there, however we may be given some hints regarding VMware's intended positioning of the new tech and talent within their product portfolio.

There's also some interesting chatter about developments in the core products. That's right, allegedly vSphere's getting a bit more than its typical stock refresh. I'm curious to see just what VMware has in store to show us.

Don't be surprised if there are more cloud-y announcements. VMware's been explicitly positioning themselves as the must-have cloud infrastructure abstraction and consumption layer for some time now. We'll likely find more partnerships touted and cloud features flaunted. The recent HCX Enterprise release will likely be among the cumulus chatter.

You're Gonna Meet Some Gentle People There

As always, VMworld's best experienced by having lots of great conversations and interactions with people. The hallway track tends to be more interactive and more personal than the sessions, though they have their place too. There's also some decent information to be mined from the Solutions Exchange. The vendors staff their booths with some of the brightest minds in the industry. It's not just about the bright lights and tchotchkes.

The VMware {code} Hackathon's still going strong for those who want to get creative Monday evening. You can likely still sign up on the VMware {code} site if you're interested, so come out and join us if you can. Hot tip about the Hackathon: You don't have to be a coder, or even know how to code. You just have to show up and participate. I may have some Canadian caffeine cocoa bars on hand at the Hackathon for people to try out… just sayin'.

People in Motion

And with that, I must retire in order to rest up for the Bridge to Bridge 5k run first thing in the morning. I hope to see some other conference going folk there, and perhaps I won't be the only one rocking a #vFit shirt.

I hope you're ready to have a wonderful week, whether you're here at the conference or following along at home. If you are here you're encourage, as always, to stop and say hi.

As long as you have an internet connected device and some time, VMware's vForum Online events are the next-best thing to attending VMworld. Whether you had to miss VMware's flagship conference, or wish to catch up on all the latest announcements and technologies, the vForum Online event is just the thing.

The vForum Online event is effectively a one-day online conference, and the next one's coming April 24th!

What to Expect

The April vForum Online agenda hasn't been released yet, but based on earlier vForum Online events it'll likely take on a similar format to the tech conferences you're familiar with. They typically kick off with a keynote address from notable figure in the VMware ecosystem. Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, is a common presenter. Then there's a full day's roster of sessions and chats, while the virtual exhibition hall and hands-on labs are available on-demand.

Looking to see what's new in vSphere and vSAN? Wanting to learn more about NSX and Workspace One? Odds are the sessions will have you covered. Often there will be customer success stories that help you understand how others have been able to successfully meet their business needs through technology.

Personally I'm hoping for some content on VMware Validated Designs and VMware Cloud Foundations. Much like HCI helped businesses consume hardware in predictable, pre-engineered building blocks, I believe VVD and VCF will do much the same from a software perspective.

Much like the offerings from vForum Online's big sister, VMworld, there will also be chats where you can ask questions of folks who have successfully deployed solutions you're interested in. Usually structured like a chat-room, chat participants will be able to pose their questions and designated experts will answer them in turn during the allotted time.

If you're not yet familiar with Hands-On Labs, there are usually a handful available through the vForum Online interface for you to experience. You'll get a full-blown provisioned environment with all the components needed to learn about a particular technology. Instructions will guide you through several practical exercises, usually provisioning or performing common operational tasks. Make sure to take a moment during the day to check them out.

Tips for Work / vForum Harmony

If you're able to take part all day in vForum Online, that's the ideal way to immerse yourself in its opportunities. If, like me, you're only able to drop in on the vForum Online throughout the day based on your availability, I have a few tips.

• Block off your calendar for the entire vForum Online, but mark it as free so that you don't appear busy. This way you'll be able to remind yourself when it's running. Don't forget to set a reminder!

• For any of the keynotes, sessions, chats, etc. that are at a fixed time that you don't want to miss, add an appointment notice in your calendar and mark it busy. Make sure you include enough info so that you can find the event you're interested in quickly when you visit the vForum Online interface.

• If you visit the virtual booth of an exhibitor you're interested in, but you don't have time right then to engage in a full chat, take a moment to see if the vendor has any downloadable content available. There could be things like whitepapers or videos which you can read or watch later at your convenience.

• Pack your lunch ahead of time, and if there aren't any scheduled items you want to attend during your lunch hour, drop in on a hands-on lab, visit the exhibitor hall, or see if there's a general chat area to network with fellow vForum Online attendees.

See You (Virtually) There!

Like I mentioned, we don't know what the agenda looks like yet. We do know that the next vForum Online is on April 24, 2019. So, as they say, save the date and stay tuned!

Featured image photo by Picography

A Deep(er) Dive with PowerCLI 10 [VIN1992BU]

Presented by Luc Dekens and Kyle Ruddy, this session covered some advanced approaches and considerations for your PowerCLI code. Some of these methods are not specific to PowerCLI, meaning they work with PowerShell in general, but were still very welcome given that PowerCLI is a gateway to PowerShell for lots of VMware customers.

Note that any code I present here has been transcribed from my handwritten notes, so I can't guarantee that I jotted the examples down 100% correctly.

Drawing from the Olympic motto, "Citius, Altius, Fortius" (higher, faster, stronger) a number of improvements were demonstrated. For example, limiting the number of calls to a cmdlet can notably improve performance. For example, rather than calling a for-each loop and then running a cmdlet on each object within the loop, the cmdlet can be called once against all the objects, which are then filtered or sorted as needed.

Try to execute lookups once, and pick faster methods. For example, instead of piping to where-object use the x*.where* method. You can also do the same with for-each: x*.ForEach('Name')*. Take advantage of splitting to create multiple variables using a single lookup:

$vmon, $vmoff = (Get-VM).Where( {$_.PowerState -eq 'PoweredOn'}, 'Split' )

You can work with vSphere objects in two ways:

$vm = Get-VM -Name vmname
$vm.ExtensionData

# or

Get-View -ViewType VirtualMachine -Filter @{Name = '^vmname$'}

The second method above is the faster of the two approaches.

Even Get-View can be made faster:

# Typical way:

Get-View -ViewType HostSystem

# Versus (with additional parameters):

$sView = @{
  ViewType = 'HostSystem'
  Property = 'Name', 'AlarmActionsEnabled', 'Hardware.SystemInfo.Uuid'
  Filter = @{
    Name = 'local.lab$'
  }
}
Get-View @sView |
Select-Object Name, AlarmActionsEnabled, @{N = 'Uuid'; E = {$\_Hardware.SystemInfo.Uuid}}

The second method demonstrates what is effectively pre-filtering the output by restricting the data returned by the lookup. Using dot notation you can even retrieve nested properties, as the Hardware.SystemInfo.Uuid property shows. As you can see from the example, you can also literally pre-apply filtering to your returned output. All of these efficiencies allow Get-View to work more efficiently and complete more quickly.

Wait for the right event in the most efficient way. For example, rather than requesting to start a VM and then looping over and over to see if the power state has changed yet, check the vCenter events to see what the outcome of your requested action is. Make sure to check for both the expected state, in this case the VM powering on, and unexpected states. After all, things don't always work as expected and our scripts should react appropriately.

Try to use Try/Catch to address failures instead of silently continuing cmdlets and reacting via if/else statements. Note that you may need to run your cmdlet with -ErrorAction Stop in the Try block to force an explicit error on failure. Otherwise the Catch block may not execute. Also pay attention to $_. It behaves differently in Try/Catch, becoming an error object in the Catch block. Instead, use explicit variable names in both Try and Catch as that will work and maintain consistency.

Guest operations are available via APIs, which in turn interact with vmware-tools. Luc created Invoke-VMScriptPlus, taking advantage of these APIs, to execute actions within the guest operating systems.

Try to avoid the ForEach (alias %) and instead use the ForEach-Object, as it's more efficient.

You can also now SSH natively with PowerShell by using the Posh-SSH module. PuTTY's no longer required for allowing PowerCLI to make SSH connections.

The best scripts are made before you open up your code editor. Make sure you think through what you want your script to do before you start to write and you'll improve the quality and efficiency.

Finally, check out Code Capture in the vSphere HTML5 Web Client fling. It's the successor to Onyx, and allows you to capture the PowerCLI equivalent to actions you perform in the web client. It's now only available in the fling and works on vSphere 6.5. I presume 6.7 support will come in future.

vCommunity

I spent the rest of the morning catching up on blogging and chatting with peers in the VMTN area of the VMVillage. The Blogger tables are a great place to have conversations with fellow bloggers, vExperts, and others. If you follow a community member online, chances are good that you could catch them for a quick thank you or chat in this area.

It has also become sticker-central for all things vCommunity. This year sticker mania hit new extremes, with both blogger tables blanketed in the colorful adhesives. While the sticker exchange, if you could call it that, has become a fun and core experience in the VMTN area, I hope the organizers consider a dedicated sticker table or area next year.

After my fill of community and one last tour of the Solutions Exchange, which closes at end of day on Wednesday, I attended one of the VMware{code} sessions.

Building and Monitoring IOT with Liota and Wavefront by VMware [CODE5546U]

This hands-on interactive session had participants connect to a Raspberry Pi on the bench in front of them and configure it to act as an IoT device and gateway. The Pi had a barometer on it, and we were given instructions to install Liota. Liota was configured to send the barometer data (the temperature detected by the sensor) and send it to Wavefront.

Wavefront could than be used to visualize the data. By default the metric could be seen in a graph, showing the temperature change over time. Wavefront could also be used to create dashboards that could show the data in context of other data, as well as using different means, such as other visualizations or in a table.

This was a very interesting experience and was eye opening about how quickly and easily VMware's tools enable edge-based IoT devices to retrieve and action data.

You can see what was required for running Liota on the Raspberry Pi by checking out the Maker Space Raspberry Pi Liota/Wavefront Lab blog post.

VMworld Fest

As always, Wednesday hosted the conference celebration. This year it was branded as the VMworld Fest instead of party. It was held at The Pavillions at World Market, and consisted of two large, connected tents or domes. Within that space, four unique areas were setup with food, music and interactive elements like games or photo opportunities. I took in the fest for a while, but ultimately the venue felt too small for the size of the crowd, and the lines for food stretched out to turn into half hour waits. I bowed out before it finished, but hear that fest goers enjoyed the musical acts VMworld arranged.

Wednesday wrapped. 'Till next time.

Thursday General Session

Note: This was originally published as a live blog. In the course of migrating to a new hosting platform, the live blog entries have been converted to a list. Newer entries at the top, older entries at the bottom.

• That wraps up the general sessions for this VMworld 2018 US.

• Anil suggests that once we understand how we see the world, we can improve our understanding of each other and our place in natural and the world. That we are not apart from and are a part of the world around us.

• The brain perceives self, the world, time, and reality itself as a set of controlled hallucinations. As the brain has such influence over these perceptions, everyone has their own individual reality.

• In summary: How things seem is not how they are.

• We perceive reality as things having objective persistence in the world. Lucid dreaming or de-realization are examples where people have an alternative perception of reality.

• People experience time at many different time scales despite not have time sensors, or clocks, within the brain. The brain has to infer time.

• Anil’s showing video of another study where participants were shown 3D renderings of their arm. If the rendered arm pulsed red gently in time with the participants heartbeat, it increased the perception that the virtual arm was part of their own physical body.

• Interoception is the perception and control of the interior of the body.

• Out of body experiences mean you brain has reached an unusual conclusion about the location of your physical body.

• The study using these objects, showed participants one of the paint brushes touching the fake hand, while the participants actual hand is hidden and also being touched with a paint brush. After enough time, the body accepts the fake hand as part of itself.

• Anil has a fake hand and two paint brushes on stage, which he says are all that are needed to study neuroscience.

• Being associated with a body, Anil contends, is an important part of being a person. Whether we like it or not.

• Hallucination could be explained as an uncontrolled perception, where our predictive processes are impaired. Based on this you could argue that what we perceive all the time is a controlled hallucination. This includes the sense of the self.

• We don’t just passively perceive our worlds, but actively generate them via the predictive processes in our brains.

• Anil plays an audio clip that sounds odd and out of sorts, like noisy whistling. Then he plays another clip of someone speaking. Playing the first audio clip again, the brain, given additional input, lets you hear words in the sounds.

• A second optical illusion is shown where two squares among many look to be two different colours, but are in fact that same colour. The brain makes you think this as it uses queues from the rest of the image, such as an object appearing to cast a shadow.

• Anil shows an optical illusion that causes your eyes to see a green disc amongst a field of pink ones. The green disc does not exist. Your brain, a predictive engine, conjured up the visual representation of the disc in response to the rest of the moving image.

• Starting with vision, the eyes being the windows to the world, humans only perceive a thin slice of the visible spectrum.

• Regarding how things seem, originally it seemed as though the galaxy orbited around the Earth. We now know differently.

• Anil is taking about the experience of being you, and how you detect properties of the outside world which tell you that it’s there. That’s how things seem.

• The final speaker today is Anil Seth, a Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex and co-author of 30-Second Brain.

• Laurie hopes everyone will take on the challenge to incorporate these simple actions into their lives to improve their happiness.

• This inspired Laurie to take the class global.

• The New York Times covered the class as the "largest class at Yale".

• The gratitude study found that the "bump" in happiness lasted for a month, slowly tapering over time.

• Would the act of taking time to thank someone for something your grateful for help? A study tested this, and found that reaching out that thanking someone, especially in person, have a profound effect on both the recipient and the sender.

• For example, jot down five things you’re grateful for daily, and it will enhance your happiness over the week.

• Top Insight #4: Happy people experience gratefulness more.

• Savor present experiences. This is something that can come with practice.

• We need to find time to be in the present moment. Take time to breath and enjoy now.

• People whose minds wander (which we do an estimated 46.9% of the time on average) have lower levels of happiness. Even pleasant mind wandering, like thinking about an upcoming vacation, can have a negative impact.

• Top Insight #3: Happy people tend to spend time in the present moment.

• People predicted that solitude would make people feel good, control would be moderate, and connection would have a negative impact. In fact, they found the opposite to be true. This applied to folks whether introverted or extroverted as well.

• Can you get a social benefit from those that aren’t friends and family? A study was done on the Chicago subway, where participants were asked to interact with strangers on the trains under 3 conditions: connection, solitude and control.

• A distinguishing item about general happy people is that they make time for others.

• Top Insight #2: Make time to make connections.

• You can become happier, but have to overcome what your mind and intuition are "telling" you.

• Your mind lies about you motivation in seeking out what allegedly will make you happier. For example, pursuing a increased salary. While it may make people happier at a certain level, for example if it lifts someone out of poverty, it generally doesn’t increase peoples’ happiness. The impact of salary on your happiness levels off at about USD$75k.

• Top Insight #1: Your mind lies to you about what will make you happy.

• One out of every four students at Yale ended up taking the psychology of happiness class.

• She thought of the inclusion of the science of practice about happiness as being similar to encouraging exercise. Knowing how people feel about exercise, she knew she had to be a little "sneaky".

• Laurie’s happiness course was called "Psychology and the Good Life". It was about the psychology of happiness and included practices on how to accomplish this.

• Positive psychology has been written about in major periodicals such as Time Magazine. It promotes behaviour change over time to improve happiness.

• She was disappointed in what she was seeing on college campuses. Contrary to the stereotypical photos you see of smiling college students, a significant proportion of the student population across the country are stressed, unhappy, and depressed.

• Laurie taught a class on happiness at Yale, and she’s going to tell us why.

• Next up is Laurie Santos, who is a Professor of Psychology at Yale University and Primary Researcher at CapLab.

• Raffaello’s parting thought is that technology is an amazing power that we have, and we should use it wisely.

• Kiva worked on this problem, and engineered the machines to learn how to recover from failure as well as possible, so that it can safely land away from danger. Such a failure occurred with a Kiva drone on broadway, and the drone safely landed out of the way. From the audience perspective, this looked like a part of the show, and no one was injured.

• With multi-rotor systems, if one blade fails, the drone will crash. Video demonstrating other people’s large drones failing in this manner is shown.

• The flying machines weight less than 15 grams, and are therefore more inherently safe than large units. What could you do with them? Let them loose in an environment to collect measurements, check for security issues, etc.

• These drone displays have "worked with" Cirque du Soleil, Metallica, and more. The client has control over how the drones perform. They’re now "on tour" with Drake.

• Raffaello’s next startup company is responsible for some of those light-up, choreographed drone displays seen at various events.

• A number of videos showing the autonomous flying robots manipulating objects, balancing things, and working in tandem are being shown. Quite impressive considering there isn’t a human with their hand on the wheel, so to speak.

• Raffaello has also been working with autonomous flying machinery since 2008.

• The acquisition of Kiva brought fully autonomous robots that could learn and adapt. These robots were deployed in Amazon’s warehouses to help move inventory.

• Kiva Systems was formed in 2003, not long after the "big crash". They were bought by Amazon in 2012. At the time people weren’t sure about the acquisition, but in hindsight it was an opportune time to do that.

• A second video of the robot games is being shown, from several years later, demonstrating that the robots had evolved significantly. No longer as random and chaotic, they now pass the ball and have a measure of ball control.

• The robot games, at least the one being shown, had fully autonomous robots playing a version of soccer.

• Raffaello was a professor at Cornell and worked with his students to go to the robot games in Japan.

• Presenting, by the way, is Raffaello D’Andrea, founder of Verity Studios and co-founder of Kiva Systems.

• "This is an interesting time for AI."

• We’re being shown a cube device that has all sorts of sensors, which enable it to try to self-balance. Takes anywhere from 30 seconds to 3-4 minutes to figure out how to adapt.

• Thursday’s General Session is kicking off, which is typically about interesting and innovative things (but not necessarily specifically VMware-related).

General Session

The Tuesday general session had some interesting panels. The undisputed highlight being the one-on-one interview Sanjay Poonen had with Malala Yousafza. Her story and message to support education for girls and women is inspiring.

Check out my dedicated general session post for more details.

Meeting Old and Making New Friends

Following up from the morning session, I spent some time catching up on blogging, then headed to lunch. There I met up with a colleague I'd worked with before, as well as making some new friends that he brought with him, as well as those we met at our lunch table. We chatted about our tech experiences, work experiences, and life in general.

These kinds of interactions are what make conferences like VMworld very rewarding. You learn not just about technology, virtualization or otherwise, but also about our peers, old and new. Next time you head for a conference meal, pick a table where there are some folks you don't know. Instead of eating quietly, kick off a conversation. It may even make the food taste better…

HPE Briefing

HPE graciously invited bloggers and vExperts to a briefing in the afternoon. They provided about a dozen of us with a brief overview of the various goings-on within different business units. HPE highlighted their alliance with VMware, noting that it's been an 18 year partnership, with HPE become their #1 partner.

Regarding storage, HPE's working on products that will help customers place workloads in the right place, whether that's on premises or in the cloud. HPE has a storage service that can be placed in the customer's DC/colo and then connected to public cloud compute. That way the customer has more control over data capacity and locality, while taking advantage of public cloud compute offerings. The HPE service is block only at the moment.

HPE's finding that customers are most interested in placing secondary and tertiary data into cloud storage over primary data. Both Cloud Volumes and Cloud Bank, both from HPE can help with that.

A participant asked about Simplivity deployed on HPE Synergy, and was told that it's still being worked on. Also HPE InfoSight is now available for Nimble and 3PAR storage.

HPE's working on building out a developer community called HPE DEV. They decided to create a forum separate from HPE's existing forums as the current one isn't really developer focused. For example it's conducive to sharing code. An example of what HPE's been working on, from a developer perspective, is the Grommet open source project. It's a UX framework that was open-sourced by HPE with version 2.0, and is now in use by multiple companies.

Last, but not least, we chatted about HPE GreenLake. As described to the room, Greenlake, which started out as an IaaS offering in Europe, is a service offering for "rolling your own" HPE technology stack/environment. This includes not just cloud services, but also on-premises solutions as well. It enables flexible capacity for the customer, as HPE can bring in the right gear when needed. To support this, HPE works with the customer to forecast their requirements and capacity, determining when the opportune times are to bring in added capacity. From a licensing perspective, licenses are included with each "unit" of service, so as your capacity increases so does the associated license spend, which is built-in so you don't have to manage it yourself or bring your own. Given that Greenlake is essentially a service agreement, when capacity increases the customer shouldn't have to go through a PO process. HPE's found that within a four-year contract, customers typically grow their capacity an average of 18%.

Apple VIP Reception

I had a brief window to attend the Apple & VMware VIP Reception, and was keen to hear what Apple had to say about using their end-user devices within an VMware-powered environment. Unfortunately, during the hour I was able to attend, no one addressed the crowd. I did manage to have some interesting chats with fellow attendees, who also all pretty much were there to see what the messaging would be.

vExpert BBQ

The vExpert reception was held at the Las Vegas Pinball Hall of Fame again this year. The VMTN folks brought in a company specializing in BBQ, with three full spit-roasted hogs. The food, company, and venue was perfect for the vExpert crowd. Pat Gelsinger was gracious enough to stop by and chat with us, taking about an hour out of his busy schedule. It's always great to see the support he shows for the vExpert community.

Thanks to Pat Gelsinger for stopping by and the VMTN/vExpert crew for putting on another excellent event.

K.O.

That's Tuesday knocked out of the park. 'Till next time.

Why live to tape? Due to the overwhelming popularity of today's general session (to reason for which you'll discover below) the VMvillage was a bit more full than usual and space and electricity for the laptop more scarce than usual. So I turned to my trusty pocket notebook (yes, actual pen and paper) to record my notes and observations, which I'll transcribe here.

Tuesday General Session

Kick off

• The session starts off with Sanjay Poonen, VMware's COO, taking the stage.

• He causally mentions that the conference this year boasts some 25,000+ attendees.

• The theme for this session is "Pioneers of the Possible".

• During a slide of VMware's approaches and vision, it's interesting to note that they've been focused on multi-cloud, hybrid-cloud and virtual networking since 2016.

• Originally, when VMware started shipping their virtualization infrastructure product, customers would share with them power bills. Both before and after the implementation of VMware, showing savings of 10's of thousands of dollars per month or more.

• vSAN can deliver 619% ROI over a period of 5-years for customers.

• NSX's estimated impact is a 50% reduction in expenses/effort, mainly via operational improvements.

• The three A's are becoming increasingly important:

  • Automation

  • Analytics

  • AI

Customer Panel

• Sanjay is joined by representatives from Brinks, Sky and a third company (I missed it - audio's not great in the VMvillage).

• Brinks is building what they call a digital network, which connects not only their offices, but extends out to the edge. This includes connecting their drivers as well as the secure devices they leave on customer sites.

• Chad Sakac can be heard yelling "yeah!" from the crowd again today at the mention of PKS by one of the panelists.

• Sky is using HashiCorp's Terraform, and is trying to execute an agile, software driven approach to their digital business.

• Sky is using VRNI and NSX.

• The third company (again, sorry!) are also using NSX and PKS and have integrated them.

• At the mention of PKS, there's more noise from the crowd. Sanjay: "If [Chad] creates too much noise, security will vMotion him out of the arena."

• Brinks decommissioned their DR site entirely and replaced it with VMware Cloud on AWS. They only keep a bit of compute active to keep the site warm.

• Brinks is keeping on eye on blockchain and digital currency. Makes sense, given their business.

• Interestingly Brinks mentions that Las Vegas is the biggest cash city (meaning for the use of cash over digital transactions - credit, debit, etc.) They'd likely be the ones who'd know.

End-User Panel

• Sanjay mentions that end-user devices are no longer typically from a single vendor. Apple, Google and Microsoft each have a significant share of the enterprise end-user device space.

• VMware estimates that today it costs companies about USD$50 per user per month to manage their end-user devices and experience. VMware Workspace ONE can allegedly bring that cost down to USD$15 per user per month.

• Sanjay is joined by representatives from DXC and Adobe.

• DXC's company name is meant to represent digital transformation for its customers.

• Adobe has had many pioneer transitions to the cloud, most infamously the transition of much of their popular consumer products to online services (ex. Creative Suite).

• Adobe's key measurements for success for end user changes are viability and employee experience.

• DXC is looking to enable contractors who may work for multiple companies within the same day.

• Adobe's workforce is about 50% Windows, 50% Apple devices.

• Adobe adopted Workspace ONE to unify the employee experience and enable self provisioning for all end-user devices (not just smartphones).

• DXC is working on reducing their dependency on email. Looking to solutions such as Slack, Skype for Business, and others.

• Adobe agrees about the approach to email, further predicting that email will become mainly a medium for delivering alerts and monitoring information.

• Sanjay mentions Workspace ONE has (will have?) Slack integration, as VMware is working with Slack on this.

Malala Yousafza

• The audio feed cut out within the VMvillage, leaving many concerned that the warning that this portion of the keynote wouldn't be streamed might apply here as well.

• Malala is the reason for the additional popularity for the keynote this year.

• After several minutes, about half-way through a trailer for a documentary about Malala, the audio returns. The trailer wraps up and Malala joins Sanjay on stage.

• This is Malala's first tech conference, and when asked her first impression, she notes that there are too many confusing acronyms.

• Malala recounts her youth growing up in the north of Pakistan, referred to by Queen Elizabeth II as the "Swiss Alps of the East".

• Malala father (who is present in the audience) believed in women's rights, as he grew up with a brother and five sisters, the sisters who were not allowed to go to school. He made sure Malala was able to go to school.

• Malala's father named her after a famous soldier who raised her voice, and is the only named historical female figure known in Pakistan.

• Cricket is Malala's favourite sport. As she puts it, "obviously, it's the only sport I know".

• In the area that Malala grew up, the Taliban first banned music, then banned women going to market, then said that women should stay home, and finally that girls and women should not attend school.

• Basically the Taliban was trying to stop the empowerment of women.

• Malala wanted to speak out for her dreams and her future. At that time she wanted to continue her education to become a doctor.

• October 2012 was when Malala was attacked.

• She doesn't remember what happened, only that she woke up in a UK hospital surrounded by English speaking doctors.

• "Sometimes I think they made a mistake trying to silence me, and now look what happened."

• Hate and anger are a waste of energy, and Malala doesn't want to waste her energy.

• The best thing to do is educate girls.

• A clip is shown from her 2014 Nobel Peace Price acceptance speech.

• Malala says she was in chemistry class when a school official arrived, took her into the hall, and told her that she won. She was relived that it wasn't bad news, and went right back to class.

• We have to invest in girls and women, since we cannot succeed globally half the population not educated properly.

• It's estimated that educating women could add 13 trillion dollars to the world economy.

• One hundred students are present in the audience from local Las Vegas schools. They're invited to ask Malala a question.

• Dell Technology is donating computer equipment to the students' schools' labs.

• Malala is now an Oxford University student. Her friends treat her as a student and don't treat her as a "famous person".

• She's pursuing a program involving philosophy, policitcs, and economics.

• When asked what it's like having two younger brothers, Malala jokingly comments that she had two years of peace, then nothing but chaos since her brothers came along.

• The Malala Fund does advocacy for secondary education of girls, as most existing funding is for primary education.

• The Malala Fund looks at issues specific to certain regions and works with local activists to improve education.

• Technology has contributed all over the world, starting from mobile phones to computers.

• Technology provides support for women, for things like education and safety.

• Despite technology, Malala says we need to continue to work on quality education to avoid a gap between only using technology as tools and its ability to improve the future.

That's it for the Tuesday general session, coming to you kinda/sorta live(ish). 'Till next time.

General Session

This year's opening General Session saw Pat Gelsinger double (triple?) down on VMware's vision: Any App on Any Cloud from Any Device. Generally the announcements continue the trend of incremental evolution for a company as mature as VMware.

There were a couple of stand out items for me:

• VMware's increasing its offerings to control IoT, with the announced VMware Pulse IoT Center 2.0. Most impressive about this announcement is that, not only can it be consumed as a service, but VMware has scaled it to support 500 million devices.

• Workspace ONE can now (or soon will?) do automated patch testing before rolling out patches to end-user devices (likely Microsoft Windows, specifically). Any devices that don't pass the tests will not have the patch deployed until the relevant team (who are automatically escalated to and notified) have resolved the issue and marked it complete. This will significantly improve speed to deployment for patches, while minimizing end-user interruption.

For more coverage, check out our live blog post.

Foot Loose and Session Free

I've decided to follow the advice of some of the seasoned VMworld veterans, and have significantly cut down on the number of breakout sessions I'll be attending in person. After all, many if not most of the sessions will be available online shortly after the conference finishes.

Instead I've spent more time chatting with fellow conference goers and taking in the Solutions Exchange.

So far, I'm finding it satisfying and worthwhile. The conversations being had and new friends and acquaintances made are something that are much harder to make happen post-conference.

CONVERGED Meeting

This was the second time for me attending the CONVERGED User Group meeting at VMworld. As a refresher, CONVERGED is a user group concerned with Dell EMC's converged and hyper-converged infrastructure products (CI & HCI). Michael Dell graced the meeting with a brief address to kick things off, further indicating his, and Dell Technologies, commitment to HCI.

Being a new VxRail customer, the meeting held more relevance for me this year. I ended up sitting at a table with one of the gentlemen taking part in the customer panel discussion. His company's been using VxRail for a little over a year, and we were able to talk and exchange anecdotes about how HCI adoption, thru VxRail, was going for our respective companies. It was also refreshing chatting briefly with Lee Caswell, VP of Product, SABU at VMware. He was genuinely interested in our customer experience with VxRail.

These sorts of events where you can trade experiences with fellow customers, and engage with folks who have direct influence over products you use is what conferences like VMworld are really great for!

VMware{code} Hackathon 2018

To round out the day was the third-annual VMware{code} Hackathon. This year's event was setup a bit differently, with participants needing to supply their own tech and environments, but this format also allowed for more flexibility. Some teams worked on IoT and blockchain, which would have been a little less strongly encouraged with the shared vSAN-based environments available in previous years.

While the time given is never enough to create a reasonably comprehensive solution from start-to-finish, the Hackathon delivered on what it's exception at: bringing like-minded folks together for an evening of learning, fun, and camaraderie. The hacking ends up being the catalyst for all of this to happen. Whether your individual team can make magic happen in under four hours matters less than the collective result. By those standards this year was yet another outstanding success. Thanks to the VMware{code} and VMTN folks for putting this on once more. I hope to see it become a staple at the conference.

Day Done, More to Come

The sun sets on VMworld 2018's Monday, but the week is just barely started. 'Till next time.

Opening Acts

I managed to catch the last panel of Opening Acts, but it was a good one: Beating IT Burnout. The panel represented those that work in IT, live with folks for work in IT, and support those in IT. The discussion was a collection of experiences of stress & burnout, as well as both bad & good ways to cope and deal with things.

Hit up Alastair Cooke, the panel moderator, for some cards containing information and advice on how to deal with stress and burnout. He can often be found in the VMvillage, near the VMTN area where the vBrownBag talks are held.

There are a small, limited number of seats available, for the mindfulness workshop two of the panelists are holding this Wednesday.

Welcome Reception

Crush continues to be the most apt description of the annual opening of the Solutions Exchange. Wall-to-wall-to-wall people anxious to grab a drink, a bit of food, and see what the vendors have on display for the week. Another year, another round of new tech companies appear to have joined the vendor floor. It's always a bit much to drink in, both literally and figuratively, on the first evening.

After Dark

Sunday evening hosted the typical dual party threats of the VMUG Members party and VMunderground.

The VMUG Members party was load and exciting. Not as conducive to networking as much as the organizers might have hoped, the digital contact exchange wrist bands seemed more of a novelty than practical in that environment. The atmosphere and spirits were both top notch, however. Michael Dell made an appearance early in the evening to address the VMUG Members and thank them for participating in the community.

VMunderground was more suited to chatting. Among the drinks and pub food I managed to have a couple of good conversations with fellow community members. The opportunity to share "war stories" and learn about each other and our shared tech experiences is always highly welcome and appreciated.

Some of you more observant readers may notice that some of these posts publish out of order. They get finished as time and schedule allow at this busiest of conferences. Stick around, we'll fill your quota of VMworld posts all week long. 'Till next time.

Monday General Session

Note: This was originally published as a live blog. In the course of migrating to a new hosting platform, the live blog entries have been converted to a list. Newer entries at the top, older entries at the bottom.

• Pat believes technology can help eradicate chronic diseases, lift people out of poverty, deliver education to every child on the planet, and reverse climate change.

  And with that, the general session is over.

• Pat’s wrapping things together using the "tech superpower" theme again.

• In the demo, a VM is behaving in a new way that’s not typical. AppDefense learns that this is an expected behaviour, and adapts automatically, allowing the solution to continue to work. Hence, "adapt".

• AppDefense can lock down VMs based on learned behaviour. The "learn" and "lock" security requirements. Now, how to "adapt"?

• The AppDefense dashboard shows up right in the vSphere Client. It provides immediate visibility into VM processes and how they interact with each other. This allows AppDefense to learn the "known good" behaviour of the VM workloads.

• We’re a little over time, but the demos must go on!

• Introducing Adaptive Micro-Segmentation, through integration between NSX and AppDefense.

• VMware says security solutions should Learn, Lock, and Adapt to security threats.

  vSphere Platinum, a new vSphere version, has AppDefense built right into vSphere.

• NSX makes protecting east-west practical.

• Most security is north-south, and most attacks are east-west.

• AppDefense for compute, and NSX for network, are VMware’s solutions to improve security posture.

• Final topic of the general session is security. Best for last?

• VMware helped them improve the IT services and keep their services secure and running.

• Final customer video is of the Make-A-Wish foundation. They went through a full web site crash, preventing Make-A-Wish from being available online.

• The "big deal" is that the demo is being done entirely on ESX for Arm 64-bit architecture.

• This is an edge-style example. vSphere FT is being used to protect a VM between the wind-turbine hosts. Pat comes out and asks, "What’s the big deal?"

• Next demo is of a wind-turbine farm, represented as hosts in a vSphere cluster.

• Workspace ONE’s automated patch testing was able to predict that a new patch would only work 87% of the time. It also highlighted the likely root issue. Based on this assessment, the issue can be flagged and raised to the appropriate team automatically. This allows the update to be scheduled, pending a fix from the notified team. As soon as the fix is made, the blocked devices (those that are predicted to fail the patching process) can be updated safely.

• Pointing out the increased frequency of security updates for modern Windows operating systems, Workspace ONE can automate patch testing so you can safely and securely get updates out the door more quickly.

• Now a Workspace ONE demo, showing the management of Windows end-user devices.

• User experience is to drop ship a new device to the user, provide them with their company credentials, and Workspace ONE does the rest.

• Dell provisioning for VMware Workspace ONE is now available.

• It’s no longer just "I’m a PC" or "I’m a Mac", there’s much more variety and complexity in the managed device space. Workspace ONE is VMware’s solution to help deal with the noise.

• Pat’s returning to the stage for the managed device section of the presentation.

• Project Concord, announced today, is "not just another blockchain implementation". With focus on performance and scalability. Currently available on GitHub.

• It wouldn’t be a technology keynote in 2018 without mention of blockchain.

• The demo is of moving the image processing VM to a new cluster, where it can take advantage of vGPUs. The image process is visually represented in the background behind Ray, showing that it appears to run more quickly after migrating to the new cluster.

• The example workload is a VM using machine learning and image processing, enhanced via vGPUs.

• Ray’s using vROps to view vGPU workloads.

• NSX and Kubernetes (via PKS) work together to automate tasks.

• I’m pretty sure that was Chad Sakac cheering loudly from the audience for Pivotal’s PKS solution during the demo.

• A Kubernetes & NSX demo is underway.

• Wendy Cartee, Senior Director, Cloud-Native Marketing, takes to the stage with Ray. Mr. Gelsinger takes a break.

• VMware’s committed to support all of the major Kubernetes deployments.

• VMware PKS is the solution that VMware wants to set as the standard for using and managing Kubernetes in the enterprise.

• VMware’s working with Google and Pivotal to address those questions.

• How do you secure, network, monitor and manage storage for Kubernetes?

• Of course Pat’s espousing that the best platform for containers are VMs. He’s citing Google and all major clouds as using VMs to run their containers.

• Kubernetes has become "the consensus way" to manage containers.

• The AI/ML features are part of Project Magma.

• The SD in SDDC can go from software-defined to self-driving with AI and machine learning.

• A custom availability zone would show up in AWS that represents the customer’s deployed on-prem instances of Amazon RDS.

• As mentioned earlier, they’re showing Amazon RDS instances running in the customer’s location. Could be for a couple reasons, such as redundancy, or concern about network connectivity to the cloud.

• Since this is a VMware-managed service, VMware keeps their services up-to-date. The customer doesn’t have to spend cycles on that kind of routine maintenance.

• Project Dimension, mentioned earlier in the session, can be used to "stretch" the VMware Cloud on AWS infrastructure into the companies on-prem locations to support edge workloads.

• Elastic DRS which, I believe is unique to AWS, is now being shown.

• VMs shown vMotion’ing from on-prem to VMware Cloud on AWS.

• It’s nice to see the new HTML5-based vSphere Client being used during the demo.

• The demo is of VMware Cloud on AWS.

• Ray O’Farrell joins Pat on stage for the demonstration.

• "You shouldn’t believe me, only what we actually show [at keynotes]." – Pat Gelsinger

  Queue the demo…

• VMware NSX is "10x larger" than nearest software-defined competitor.

• Right in the middle of an Any Cloud approach is the network.

• Dell Technologies today is announcing a cloud marketplace.

• VMware Cloud Automation Services (formerly Project Tango) is being annouced, and complements the CloudHealth Tech acquisition.

• CloudHealth Technologies support multiple clouds. VMware’s committing to evolve CloudHealth into a VMware branded offering. They want to make it the definitive cloud management solution.

• VMware’s acquired Cloud Health Technologies.

• Cloud also has operations problems (not just on-prem).

• Pulse 2.0, announced today, can be consumed as a service. Pulse has been scaled to support 500 million devices.

• "Edge is a decentralization force." – Pat Gelsinger

• Project Dimension, now in tech preview, embeds VMware Cloud Foundation in an on-premises hardware. Hardware partners Dell EMC and Lenovo are working on solutions.

• VMware Cloud Verified, announced last year, is a program that certifies partners as being able to run VCF. ~1700 members in the program, with IBM being called out as a standout example.

• Amazon Relational Database Services (RDS) can be used with VMware on-prm workloads. Replicas can be deployed on premises. Online backups can be either on-prem or in AWS. Available in a few months, and will support a number of popular database types.

• PKS can now be used with VMonAWS.

• Today VMware’s announcing VMware Cloud on AWS version M5.

• Australia is one of the most virtualized places in the world. I recall this being true back in the early days of ESX.

• Quick catch up to the live feed:

  • Pat’s showing off his VMware "bad ass tattoo".

  • VMware has gone through a series of "ages" or "eras".

  • #17 on Fortune 2018 Change the World list.

  • VMware enables "Tech superpowers".

  • Mr. Geslinger loves to tell his Intel 486 stories, and he has good reason to!

  • Edge/IOT still has lots of work to do to make it a standard feature in the enterprise.

  • Aside: The stage this year looks like it wouldn’t be out of place on an episode of America’s Got Talent.

  • VMware’s vision is still "any device, any app, any cloud".

  • "Edge and telco are becoming clouds".

  • 80% virtualization in data centres. Only 10% of telco is virtualized. You can see why VMware sees this as a market with potential.

  • As many have predicted, the message regarding cloud is multi-cloud. "Every business is on a multi-cloud journey."

  • VMware’s definition of hybrid cloud is public and private cloud workloads working on top of a VMware Cloud Foundation.

  • "Ruthlessly automate everything!"

  • Fasted way to get to VMware Cloud Foundation is through Hyper-Converged Infrastructure.

  • Claim to have the largest amount of HCI software revenue.

  • 5 billion people world-wide do not have access to medical surgery. VMware’s customer delivers aid to poor communities, for example in Africa.

• VMware 20th anniversary video montage.

• It’s VMware’s 20th anniversary. They were founded in 1998.

• 23,000+ employees at VMware.

• Pat Geslinger takes to the stage.

Tour of the Switch Data Center, Las Vegas

This morning I was invited by a collection of companies to take a tour of the Switch data center here in Las Vegas. I joined a group of about 20 or so other invitees, who all boarded a shuttle from the Mandalay Bay convention center that would take us to the tour. As soon as we approached the complex it was clear that Switch takes their business seriously. The shuttle passed through a gated entrance to a loading area next to one of the Switch buildings, which surrounded by fencing about 10-12 feet high with a discouraging spiky top. Switch branded security staff (all of whom are highly skilled and trained former military folks) were on hand to guide us as soon as we stepped out of the shuttle.

The procedure for gaining entrance to the facility was fairly standard based on my previous data center experiences: DC staff hold on to your ID and give you a visitors badge, and you are then badged in through a formidable-looking full height turnstile. The entrance area and proceeding hallways were very nicely designed, from an aesthetic viewpoint. Coloured lighting, clean considered flooring, and clever designs made from the powder-coated cable trays and metal piping that's used in areas of the DC itself.

The group was lead to an event room which consisted of tiered home-theatre style seating (plush reclining chairs linked into rows), with very modern A/V gear up front including a large projection screen. The various companies involved in arranging the tour, Evolve IP, HPE, Veeam and Ingram Micro, each gave us a brief overview of themselves before relinquishing the floor to a Switch rep, who provided information about their operation and fielded questions.

Switch's Las Vegas facility was claimed to be one of the most advanced data centres in the country. It's the west coast home for Switch (their east coast home is in Philadelphia). By square footage, it's the largest data centre in the world, as about 2.2 million square feet, including building 11 which is not quite open yet (our tour was in building 7). Each building on the campus is about 300 thousand square feet (several football fields worth), and each is capable of dealing with 100 megawatts of power.

Due to innovations pioneered by Switch, and in fact designed by Rob Roy, the owner, who holds 350 claims and patents, Switch is able to reach higher density in their DCs compared to other providers. In fact, they can squeeze 38-42 kW per rack, and some clients are working on achieving about 60+ kW per rack. This is achievable chiefly due to Switch's unique circulation and cooling system.

The air handlers, which are key to circulation and cooling, have been designed in a modular fashion so that they can be produced and integrated into the facility on-demand. Each air handler also has a weather station built-in, so that it can programatically decide which of six available modes it will run in based on current environmental conditions.

The data centres are built with catastrophe in mind. For example the walls are ballistics resilient to protect against possible projectiles from an explosion of some kind, or from war, or perhaps even a meteor strike. Due to this engineering approach, the Switch facilities have not contributed to a single second of customer impact over the 17 years they've been operating.

It was clear throughout the tour that a lot of thought and consideration has gone into the design and production of these facilities, and that same mindset is in place in dealing with it operationally as well. It was an impressive facility, and an impressive tour. Costs for leasing space in the facilities weren't discussed, but I'd say it's safe to say that if you can afford it, you can't go wrong.

vSAN 6.6: A Day in the Life of an I/O [STO1926BU]

The last(!) session attended at VMworld was presided over by John Nicholson and Pete Koehler. John explained how the vSAN datastore is an object store. It allows for granular availability and can meet business performance requirements. Each object in the object store is made up of one or more components. Data is distributed across the vSAN cluster based on the defined VM storage policy, which means you have some control over how distribution is handled.

The typical objects are:

• VM home (core VM configuration, i.e. the vmx file),

• VM swap (note that it's reserved by default out-of-the-box), and

• Virtual disk (VMDKs).

Make sure that your vSAN is designed to take advantage of fault domains. You can create fault domains to increase availability within your vSphere/vSAN cluster. Fault domains help protect your environment against such infrastructure related issues like rack failures. An example given was how fault domains could be designed and implemented to make sure the cluster can tolerate a single rack failure.

Fault domains can be extended into nested fault domains for vSAN stretched clusters. Nested fault domains provide redundancy both locally and across sites. vSAN is smart enough that it will leverage the nested fault domain design to reduce I/O between sites, preferring local data to that at another site.

As the session was quite technically dense, here are a few points gleaned from the rest of the presentation:

• vSAN caches data based on the frequency of data access and data locality.

• vSAN leverages checksums and disk scrubbing for maintenance.

• vSAN provides deduplication and compression (note that you need vSAN Advanced or Enterprise for this).

• Dedupe and compression effectively happen during the transition of data between the caching and capacity tier. Not strictly in-line, but very close and provides more benefits around workload performance impacts.

Pete Koehler also discussed vSAN backend storage I/O, which was a little over my head, especially on the last day of the conference.

If you're interested at all in how vSAN does what it does, I highly recommend you watch this session once it becomes available online.

Now It's Time to Say Goodbye

As always, saying goodbye to VMworld is tough. There was so much learned this week, so many folks caught up with, so many steps put on pedometers. It was wonderful. It was exhausting. I'd do it all over again. Until next year, ciao!