Hi all,
This is the third week away from home. And I just finished a wonderful VMworld. So getting some thoughts down before I head out for dinner. But, I am going to sleep so good tonight. And not worry about getting up either. It was very good chatting with everyone, in particular the people from my old team at VMware - the Integration Engineering Team - so Mornay, Phil and Kris, very nice to see you doing well! But lots of old and even new friends so that was pretty darn good. And talking with customers about VAO is also pretty good! I love helping customers with the tools and knowledge of how to deal with crisis and outages.
In this version of the newsletter, it will be all about what I saw, touched, heard at VMworld. Some I have not touched yet but heard from smart people I know so I believe it. Much of what you read in this edition, you will learn more about in time as I upgrade or implement.
And yes, no idea on when the new updates are going to be available. If I had to pretend I know I would say near the end of year or early next. But maybe sooner.
This was a wonderful VMworld. Really liked it, some really good technical sessions, some great vendor booth technology / demo’s, so I am very happy with it.
I should mention that I likely missed some good stuff so don’t be angry at me if it is not listed below. Let me know and I will check it out.
As always, comments are welcomed!
Michael
General Sessions
You can catch up on the general sessions at this link. They did not record the talk that Sanjay had with Malala Yousafzai but you can learn a little of it here. She does have a powerful story. BTW, I recommend Pat’s keynote as it was pretty interesting and had a lot of announcements in it.
Top Sessions
You can find the top sessions of VMworld in this link. I particularly like VIN2527BU where Alan and William do Automation Requests and how you can save time. Great info in that one.
Announcement article
In this article you can find a bit of a summary (overview) of the announcements.
VMworld On-Demand Video Library
You can already find quite a range of sessions from VMworld 2018 in this library. Later on I will share some sessions I found or heard interesting.
Links to sessions
William has provided the info to pull the sessions down - find out more here. However, if you want to pull things down a little easier and have local copies, use this article. Nicely done Jorge!
Booth - Uila
The software Uila has is really quite impressive. It will be in my lab as soon as I can get it there. It will help me with actual root cause analysis, but also understanding application dependency mapping. I really like the software and I am impressed with the new version I saw at VMworld.
Booth - Hytrust
HyTrust has some software I helped create and still really appreciate and believe in. It is now known as CloudAdvisor, but if you need help understanding what is in your VMs, or in your backups, it is a great tool. As well, they have my favorite key management server (KMS) and so easily there is a few products with HyTrust I can recommend so that is quite nice.
Booth - Runecast
This company has done really well with a technical product as well as the UI. Really nice, and of course, it helps you understand the state of your infrastructure and which VMware KB articles apply to you! This software is in my lab, and I quite like it! I have written about how to install and configure it.
Product - vRealize Automation 7.5
You can learn ore about this new version in this blog, but I like how they have full integration with vRealize Ops now. The ServiceNow plug-in is handy I think too. The AWS enhancements and Ansible support are pretty big too.
Product - vSphere 6.5 Update 1 and Platinum
I did not find an article just about Update 1, but rather about the new edition of Platinum and Update 1. And App Defense too. Here it is - link here. Here is a little more on App Defense. And a little more in this article. I will add some comments on App Defense - the current version does not have an agent. It can learn any software, and it uses VMCI - part of Guest Introspective API to communicate with VMs. I do like the look of the Platinum edition, but with AppD being SaaS it means likely I will never have it in my lab. Color me sad. Update - 9/1/18 - thanks to Adam I saw this Update 1 article. Very good info and thanks for sharing Adam.
Product - VMware Skyline
This is amazing stuff. I love how it shows you all the proactive findings and let you sort / filter to what you really need. I love how it supports the idea a VMware support guy pushing a button and requesting logs, and the customer getting an email and hitting approve or not approved and it uploads the logs automatically. Very cool stuff here.
Product - vRealize Operations 7.0
I really like how the vROps team is continuing to improve the UI, and making it easier to do things for end users. The fact they are adding business logic to things so that it is not all technical decision making is pretty interesting too. See this article for more info, and this one for more too.
Not product, but sort of product - vSAN 6.7 Update 1
In this article you can learn more about vSAN 6.7 U1. This release has some very cool stuff, like an improved create cluster workflow that makes things quicker and easier, but also, VUM will do the updates of firmware that was done in the vSphere Web Client vSAN area previously and this opens up VUM firmware updating to more things over time too. Definitely some cool stuff! I believe that all of this will be delivered in the release vehicle known as vSphere 6.7 Update 1.
Session - What’s New in Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 Update 4 (VIN3703BUS)
This was an interesting session in that it gave you some good intro to our next major release. Which will be end of the year, early next year kind of thing. Here is a link to the video.
Session - Veeam and VMware - intelligent Data Management for the Hybrid World (HYP3704BUS)
Anthony and Michael did an interesting session that you can find the video here.
Session - Documenting your Virtual Infrastructure with PowerShell and PowerCLI (VIN3327BU)
This was a really interesting session in that it showed how to document your infrastructure - with detail from overview to painful detailed and output to Word. Very cool stuff and I cannot wait to try it out. You can find the video here. Here is the link to the presenters web site.
Session - We got you covered: Top Operational Tips from vSAN Support Insight (HCI17169BU)
I so wish I saw this one. I cannot wait to watch it online. I bet there is a lot you can learn from Support Insight and John / Pete.
Session - Start Automating all the things with PowerCLI (VIN2661BU)
I really enjoyed this class that Kyle did. It was a starting out with PowerCLI but it has some very good examples of things to know and learn and I really liked it. Here is the video.
Session - vSAN Encryption Deep Dive (HCI2041BU)
I heard that Jase and Dave did an amazing job on this session. I have heard that from a variety of people.
Session - Better Storage Utilization with Space Reclamation / UNMAP (HCI3331BU)
John has another very interesting session on how UNMAP is coming to vSAN. Video is here.
Session - Nerds with Appliances: vCenter Server Migration (VIN2410BU)
William and Emad talk on an important topic, moving to the VCSA. And I know people who still need to do that! So some good stuff to learn. Video is here.
Session / Panel - Ask the Cloud Experts (HUYP1810PU)
I know several of the guys on this panel and they are truly cloud experts. So definitely worth checking it out. The video is here.
Session - Mac and Linux Users, Don’t Despair: PowerCLI is there (VIN1709BU)
Luc and Alan talk about how to get PowerCLI working outside of windows. Which is good, as I really like using PowerShell on my Mac. See the video.
Session - vSphere Clustering Deep Dive, Part 1: HA and DRS
I cannot believe I missed this one. I love learning from Duncan and Frank. Some really good learning in this video. May take a couple of viewing sessions!
Session - Deep Dive:The value of running Kubernetes on vSphere
Several people have said this was a great session, and with Frank it I am not surprised. But I am still in a hotel and it is really not letting me stream things anymore. I will have to wait until I am home to see this one.
Some numbers (that I thought interesting)
- 300 people certified - that is a lot of tests I think for an event.
- 160 of the 800 sessions at full capacity
- Five Elvis impersonators - I only saw two mind you
- 7200 + people at the VMworld Party. I heard it was pretty darn good.
Blogs
- Michael Cade’s wrap up article.
- Vlad talks about Update 1 in this article.
- Duncan shares a bunch of things - article.
- Anthony has two blogs (part 1, part 2) that are a nice recap.
- Tim - VMworld 2018 - The Highs & Los - Part One - in this blog article the author talks a session I was in and enjoyed a lot. Automated as-built vSphere documentation. Very cool. He was also on the winning team for the Hackathon. Here is a link to his product page.
- Introducing Project Dimension - interesting project and nice to learn more about it.
- AWS and VMware Announce Amazon Relational Database Service on VMware - article.
Updates
- 9/7/18 - added Anthony’s two recap articles, and a link Pat’s keynote. Also added Tim’s article and the Project Dimension article too.
- 9/2/18 - added the session on Kubernetes and also Emad to the appliances description.
- 9/1/18 - added a very nice U1 article from Adam and an article by Jorge on downloading MP4 format. Also added the vSphere Clustering part 1.
- 8/31/18 - added the link to the video for the Mac and Linux PowerCLI.
- 8/31/18 - added the link to the top sessions.
- 8/31/18 - published.
As I watch more, or hear about others, and watch them I will add them to the list. Plus anything else VMworld related worth sharing.
Michael
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