VMworld 2016 In Review

My first VMworld is coming to an end and has been an amazing experience. I have learned a lot about VMware’s pipeline, dug deep with vendors to learn more about products we are evaluating, and sat in some breakout session with tips that will help me improve our environment today.

Cross cloud services is the most interesting and important development as far as I am concerned. They are using NSX and their other SDDC services to provide a single dashboard with visualization and control of your AWS, Azure, and Google cloud resources. As VMware transitions itself from a Compute virtualization platform into a cloud management and complete work solution platform this fits perfectly.

One thing I wish didn’t get left behind was vCenter and ESXi. There was very little mentioned about the future of the “core” VMware product. I have dedicated my VMware learning so far to masting the On-premise stack so the silence was deafening. There were a few troubleshooting courses but much of the energy was expended on NSX, VSAN, vVols, and End user computing.

That said, there was so much to learn and so many people to talk to I was still overwhelmed. I’ll try to dig in with breakout posts focusing on the PowerCLI and database optimization sessions I visited. Those were the most relevant and helpful to my day to day life.

As for my VMware future I have found that I have a growing passion for Software Defined Storage, VSAN in particular. I see a definite use case for isolating data to the local cluster. Between storage policies to optimize data availability and performance and being able to run lower importance VMs Off-SAN really makes sense. ROBO VSAN licensing helps small remote offices have the benefits of shared storage without needing expensive SAN arrays.

The experience of VMworld is going to stick with me for a long time and the friends I made will carry with me forever. I arrived without knowing anyone and leave with a ton of friends.

If I’m fortunate enough to come back next year I will be presenting at vBrownbag again, but talking about something I actually know this time. I want to give back and participate in the rich community.