VMworld Europe 2010 – Wrap Up

(the photo shows @BasRaayman, Me and @VMdoug, in order of appearance)

So VMworld Europe has come to an end, sadly this kind of events are always shorter than expected, but I’ve been lucky enough to meet a lot of interesting people and fellow tweeps.

I enjoyed many sessions, my favorite surely was BC7803: Planning and Designing an HA Cluster that Maximizes VM Uptime, presented by Duncan Epping and Marc Sevigny, this session covered many advanced aspects considered when designing HA clusters in simple and even complicated scenarios, like stretched campus clusters, very interesting.

Another session that I enjoyed was TA7805 Tech Preview: Storage DRS by Irfan Ahmad which is a cool guy and a great presenter (I didn’t fall asleep even if I was in a post-lunch coma ) showed a really cool new feature that can literally disrupt what we do today to ensure storage fairness.

But the killer feature of VMworld this year were the hands-on labs, as I mentioned in a previous post, all the labs were hosted on the “Cloud” which was physically located across the Atlantic in Florida and Virginia (more information about the labs can be found here). All the labs were delivered via Wise Thin Clients using the PCoIP protocol, I completed several labs and never experienced a delay, the end user experience was awesome. Also it’s worth mentioning that every Lab was provisioned using virtualized ESX servers which is just plain cool! (and make me proud of my discoveries on how to run a virtualized ESX 3 back in 2007).

I also hung around the Blogger Lounge and had a quick chat with @plankers (which incidentally runs one of my favorite blogs: The Lone Sysadmin) and the one and only @BasRaayman (who is now part of the vSpecialist army), met the vNinja @h0bbel who took A LOT of pictures during the event (including the one featured in this post). I shook hands with @DuncanYB and @FrankDenneman (if you lived under a rock until today, they’re two of the most respected Virtualization Gurus around) and met a huge amount of Italian people interested in Virtualization, this meeting has sparked the creation of an Italian chapter of the VMware User Group, we created a LinkedIn Group and more than 70 people already subscribed to it.

We’re facing interesting times, let’s see what happens next

Technorati Tags: VMware, VMworld, VMworld Europe

VMworld Europe 2010 – Day 1

I’m sitting at the blogger lounge right now with a couple of fellow tweeps: @h0bbel, @BasRaayman, @vladan, @maishsk and @VMDoug, with special thanks to Bas from which I borrowed the Macbook charger

First day at the VMworld Europe has been exciting so far, the networking options are really incredible, and I had the possibility to meet many fellow tweeps in person.

This morning at the keynote we saw some interesting demos, I really appreciated the Project Horizon demo, coupled with the iPad View client interaction which looks really stunning, also in a “eat your own dogfood” fashion the VMworld labs are running on a real hybrid cloud with farms located in Miami, FL (provided by Terremark) in Ashburn, VA (provided by Verizon) and locally here in Copenhagen (provided by Colt / VMware).

Back to Project Horizon (its name is now vCloud Request Manager), interestingly it seems that all the new products coming from VMware are converging to a more service-oriented architecture, also they’re moving from the old client/server model for their management products, we saw a quick demo of “Alive” which is a software made by Integrien which was acquired recently by VMware and it’s probably going to be the foundation for the next generation VMware management platform (think of it as a next generation vCenter).

So it’s everything for now, I’ll try to update this post this evening as I got back to my loculus*..Ahem..*Hotel Room

Technorati Tags: travel, VMware, VMworld, VMworld Europe

Warming up for VMworld Europe 2010

So VMworld Europe is finally starting tomorrow, I’m finishing my schedule right now (still too many interesting sessions and so little time ) and I’m really excited to meet many fellow tweeps in person.

As is said in a previous post, it’s been a long time since my last VMworld (it was 2008) but of many vendor events that I attended VMworld is surely the best by far, the labs are going to be awesome (thanks to Duncan Epping which is the mastermind behind them) and I’m sure I will find some new interesting technologies on the showfloor too (In 2008 we chose to become a Compellent partner after we saw a demo at their booth).

Also the VMworld parties are legendary, this year I will attend the VMUG party on Monday, an Italian #vBeers gathering on Tuesday, and of course the official VMworld Party on Wednesday, no Veeam party for me this year but it’s surely one of the best around.

If you didn’t made it to Copenhagen this year be sure to check out twitter for updates on new announcements and products, I’ll try to tweet as much as possible during the keynotes and general sessions, it’s going to be really fun!

Technorati Tags: VMware, VMworld, VMworld Europe

Italian #vBeers @ VMworld Europe Copenhagen 2010

*Sorry, this post is in Italian only*

Prendendo esempio dagli eventi #vBeers già organizzati in Inghilterra ho pensato di indire una vBeers italiana in concomitanza con il VMworld Europe di Copenhagen.

E’ online una form di iscrizione raggiungibile qui: http://bit.ly/VMworld2010IT dove è possibile iscriversi per mantenersi aggiornati (e anche per sapere quanti saremo .

Ho deciso di ritrovarci Martedì 12 visto che è l’unica sera dove non ci sono eventi programmati (almeno eventi ufficiali VMware), il posto che ho scelto è la “Bryggeriet Apollo”, una birreria nella zona centrale di Copenhagen, dove si può eventualmente anche mangiare qualcosa (per chi volesse anche cenare li).

Qui potete trovare il loro sito internet con relativo menù: http://bryggeriet.dk/eng/breweries/apollo-copenhagen

Il ritrovo è per le ore 20:15 / 20:30 direttamente alla birreria, questo perché non ho punti di riferimento all’interno del Bella Centre, qui potete trovare le indicazioni partendo dal sito del VMworld:

View Larger Map

Ovviamente se avete dei suggerimenti scrivetemi pure o commentate, altrimenti ci vediamo tutti là!.

Technorati Tags: VMworld, vBeers, VMworld Europe

Getting ready for VMworld Europe 2010

*Italiani leggete sotto*

With the *real* VMworld winding down, the hype for the European event is building up (the event is smaller, but at least we have decent beers here ).

It’s been a LONG time since I’ve been to a VMworld event (it was February 2008), this year will be all different to me, the keynote will be delivered by the new CEO (in 2008 Diane Greene did the opening speech) and there will be a lot of new interesting ecosystem partners on the showfloor.

This year I will travel alone, I’ll stay at the CABINN Metro which is probably the cheapest hotel in Copenhagen from Monday ’til Thursday so if anyone want to join me to do a tweetup or just to share a beer at the (in)famous VMworld party just let me know, you can reach me at fabio@p2v.it or on twitter @fabiorapposelli.

Italians do it better

Se siete italiani, state leggendo il mio blog, e sarete presenti al VMworld Europe vi invito ad aggiungervi a questa lista: http://bit.ly/VMworld2010IT, sto cercando di raggruppare un contingente italiano per condividere le esperienze sulla virtualizzazione e magari riuscire finalmente a creare un VMUG Italiano, se vi piace l’idea fate girare il link!

Technorati Tags: VMware, vSphere, VMworld