Random Hack: August 2015

Monday, August 31, 2015

VMworld: Opening Keynote

The first General session introduced the term Unified Hybrid Cloud. VMware is continuing to push the vCloud Air product as a solution and brought several big industry names out such as DirectTV to talk about how they are utilizing VMware's public cloud and SDDC products for their business. Here's a few of the noteworthy announcements:

Unified Hybrid Cloud Announcements

New EVO: SDDC Manager Application

Non-disruptive lifecycle automation including firmware updates for the hardware

Content Library in vSphere 6.0 will be able to sync automatically with vCloud Air
Cross-Cloud vMotion Tech Preview

Tech preview of live migration between private and public clouds, both directions!

Cloud Native Apps Announcements

VMware Integrated Containers (finally!!)

Docker containers are supported using a new lightweight Photon VM
Uses a 1:1 ratio instead of many:1 that is common with Docker hosts

This is done for security, a big concern in container based solutions
Allows NSX to apply security on the per-container network interfaces
The performance hit is actually very small, Photon VMs power up in less than 1 second

Photon includes two main components:

Open Source Photon Controller

Distributed multi-tenant control plane

Photon Machine

ESX based "Microvisor"

Distributions include:

Subscription based model
Subscription based and bundled with CloudFoundry

Everyone seems pretty excited about the cross-cloud vMotion demo. I was actually more impressed with the news about container support. They showed a demo of deploying a Kubernetes and Mesos clusters within minutes, including large scale deployments of 1000 containers in about 30 seconds!

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Achievement Unlocked: VCP6-Datacenter!

I took my VCP6 exam today at VMworld and passed! I can't say anything about the actual test (NDA) other than to say you really need to know your stuff. I went over the exam blueprint at least a dozen times before the test. But you need to know way more than that blueprint lists. (Production experience is a must!) The biggest challenge was time, you only have about 60 seconds for each of the 85 questions. By the end of the test I only had about 90 seconds to review my marked questions.

Anyways, I'm glad thats done so I can concentrate my focus on the sessions and the location here in San Francisco.

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Arrived in San Francisco

Well I arrived this morning about 10AM Pacific after jumping on the early flight leaving Greensboro at 6AM Eastern. It's weird to loose 3 hours. I wanted to get here pretty early so I could get checked in and registered.

I'm staying at the Hyatt Regency on Market Street this week. It's a few miles on foot to the Moscone center and the VMworld shuttles aren't running yet. I made it ok down to the Moscone West building and completed my self-checkin earlier today. VMware was giving out the usual.. backpack, shirt, and a plastic bottle. (now where am I going to put this bag going home??)

San Francisco so far is pretty great. The weather is nice and cool and there are street vendors and interesting looking hole in the wall restaurants around every corner. There was even a fusion Sushi / Burrito place right down Market Street from the hotel. (interesting combo there) I had to get some food after checking in and stopped by a Vietnamese sandwich shop that had some good reviews on Foursquare. I'll have yet to decide on a place for dinner.

My studying is going pretty well. I'll have to ask my friend John to quiz me later when he arrives. Since tomorrow is mostly Partner Exchange exclusive sessions, I think I will use that time to take my test. I'm anxious to get that done so I can stop studying so much and enjoy the town.

I guess thats it for now. Thanks for reading.

Friday, August 28, 2015

Trip to VMworld

Well I thought there might be some interest in posting some of my experiences in visiting the VMworld conference this year in San Francisco. This will be my second VMworld, the first being the 2011 conference in Las Vegas.

I was a little late to the session registration. It looks like all of the expert led workshops filled up on the first day. I've been checking back but have not seen any more sessions added.. I'm not concerned though. There's plenty of presentations and hands on labs to keep my schedule filled. And a lot of these full sessions might have some last minute openings if you time it right!

I'm also going to be going for my VCP6 certification for the new test that came out this week. I'm currently finishing up my Virtual ICM6 course, which doesn't cover all of the test.. but hopefully in my spare time sitting on airplanes I'll find some ability to study the exam blueprints. =)

Here's my current session schedule:

Sunday:

Monday:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday:

And some of the sessions that filled up before I could register:

This will be my first attempt at blogging a conference, so please bear with me as I try to get accustomed to updating a blog. (it's been awhile)