It has already been a month since ITQ was at VMworld 2019 Europe with 40 colleagues(!), so it is time for a overall recap from 4 of our consultants! Maarten Caus, Samir Verkuijlen, Kabir Ali and Michael van de Gaer have all written a blogpost about their highlights and experiences during VMworld.
Read all about it below and check out some of the photos we have taken.
Maarten Caus about VMworld 2019
Recently, I went to VMworld 2019 Europe in Barcelona with my ITQ colleagues. It was my third VMworld Europe and my second with ITQ. ITQ made a large impact, because we attended the conference with 40 colleagues! Last year, I thought how awesome would it be to speak at VMworld 2019? Beyond all expectations, I was able to get two community speaking slots this year!
Monday
On Monday morning, I had a great VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) workshop. Existing VCDX talked about their experiences. What the requirements are to pass and other great tips and tricks!
The best moment of the day was one of our founders Francisco Perez was on stage during the partner General session. He talked about how we obtained the 4 master server competencies and how closely we work with VMware.
Tuesday
My second day started with the VMware general session, Pat Gelsinger was on fire talking about project Tanzu and many other new announcements. Then it was my time for my own first VMworld Community session at the vBrownbag stand: “Why do I want to become a VCDX?”
I was a little nervous because the session was fully booked. After the session, people came up to me to talk about their experiences and someone even wanted to start a study group. It was a great experience!
Later that evening Brian Madden hosted his Community Tech talks. It was a great setting with beer, wine tapas, and geeks. Johan presented about VDI by day and compute by night and I talked about how AI can empower your Digital Workspace. It’s a must attend event for every (EUC) geek!
Wednesday
Wednesday started with a great general session full off awesome demos off what’s possible with the newly announced technologies. Followed by Bear Grylls personal story of how he became a Marine Commando, how you have to keep growing and embrace your failures. It was a great and inspiring story.
Another great session was how to use REST API’s of VMware EUC portfolio how you can create your own scripts and automation. They showed how you can edit users in WSO Access, create writable volumes all through REST API. In the evening it was time for VMfest with the Stereophonics. They gave a great show and we had a great time.
Thursday
Last day of VMworld, I attended a few more sessions. The best session of the day was ‘”How to fight cancer with VMware Technologies” by Johan van Amersfoort and Niels Hagoort. They explained how you can leverage vGPU’s for machine learning and image recognition. Leading to much faster data processing and patient diagnosis!
Then it was time to pack our bags and fly home. I hope to see you there next year!
Samir Verkuijlen about VMworld 2019
VMworld Day 4 & a Recap
Day 4, it was the last day of VMworld. After having a great VMworld Fest and a relaxt evening with my colleagues the night before, it was time to pack my last stuff and to get back to the Netherlands. My flight to Eindhoven left late in the evening, so I still had a good day to spend in Barcelona and on VMworld itself. That day I went to a few vBrownbag sessions, talked to some people on the community, hanged a little bit on the Solution Exchange, and wrote a few new blogs that I will be sharing soon. For me, it was a relaxed day, but also a good day to let all the impressions sink in.
One of the bigger realizations is that VMware is keep going harder, faster and better with their products. The integration becomes better and tighter as well, which also brings completely new options towards customers. The product Portfolio becomes more and more complete and really works toward the vision of creating a simple but great and effective “Hybrid Cloud Platform”. This also brings us consultants or our customers new challenges. More often we will be in a transition phase between different products or versions and that can be difficult. Things like going from nsx-v to nsx-t, vRA 7.x to 8.x, PKS and project Tanzu, are just a few things that can be quite a big change for some organizations. That doesn’t make it always easy or great, but it is that vision that VMware is so beautifully executing that makes it all worthwhile. I truly believe that VMware is going the right directions and that is constantly innovating and helping businesses in ways that nobody had thought of ever before, and gives me a pretty cool job as well.
With a great VMworld behind, I return with a lot of passion to and eager to learn and develop myself more on products like NSX-T, vCF & PKS. Besides that I also think I’m going to challenge myself on a personal level as well, and maybe fill in some speaking slots on events as well.
Kabir Ali about VMworld 2019
It was my second VMworld and the first one with ITQ. And because we attended VMworld with almost 40 people, we flew in different groups. My group arrived Sunday late afternoon. And as VMworld was on our way to the apartments, we stopped at VMworld to get our badges an already score some swag. ITQ had organized a dinner at the El Nacional. And because Barcelona is beautiful to see plus the restaurant wasn’t that far from the apartment, we decided to walk to the restaurant. While enjoying some good food and drinks meanwhile more and more of my colleagues landed in Barcelona and showed up at the restaurant.
Monday we decided to get up early and walk to the venue. It was about 5 kilometers it took us about an hour to get to the venue. On our way to the venue we got to play tourists. Taking pictures of buildings and monuments. That Monday, I only had one session and that was a four hour session about vSAN operations. And I must say that was a really informative session that had plenty of deep dive into vSAN.
Later that day Francisco went on stage during the general partner forum. That was really awesome to see! That wraps up my VMworld day one.
The whole team of ITQ got together at La Tramoia and while enjoying ourselves, we said goodbye to Monday and headed to Tuesday.
Tuesday was going to be a busy day so we decided to catch the metro to the venue. My agenda was filled with the performance series. I would recommend everybody to watch those sessions. For those who don’t know, you can watch (most) of the sessions online. All you need to do is log on to myvmwold.com and on the lower right side you will see a pane called “VMworld On-Demand Library”. I highly recommend the session of Valentin Bondzio (HBI2526BE – Extreme Performance Series: Performance Best Practices). His approach on performance was an eye opener for me. The session had plenty of technical depth and was the best session I attended that day.
What better way to end a busy VMworld day? Exactly… BeNeLux party! ITQ was one of the sponsors of the party and had some cool giveaways (custom Ajax/ITQ jerseys), super cool! While socializing and watching Ajax – Chelsea another great day came to his end.
Wednesday I woke up and I could feel my legs hurting, so I knew it’s time to take the metro to the venue. After the general session I had some spare time so I thought why not check out the solution exchange. As I hate spam (who doesn’t?) I was eager to keep my badge hidden! Hehehe! My colleague Rick Verstegen arranged a one-on-one session with John Dias (Senior Technical Marketing Architect specializing in Cloud Management solutions). That was a really cool setup to ask questions about vRealize Operations Manager 8.x. Sorry, NDA so I can’t tell you more about it. That was the only highlight of the day. The other sessions didn’t match my expectations.
And again what better way to end a VMworld day? Exactly… early to bed! Just kidding! After skipping the VMworld Fest we decided to head out into Barcelona city…
…and then all of a sudden it was Thursday. Time to pack our bags and fly back home.
Michael van de Gear about VMworld 2019
A few weeks have passed since VMworld 2019 in Barcelona and all the sessions have had some time to rattle around in our minds. It was my first VMworld experience and I aimed to get some more insights:
- Getting more information about Tanzu & Project Pacific
- Deep diving into vRA 8
- Getting hands-on experience with a few products
- High level overview of VMware’s IoT offerings
- Talking with product experts
Due to my road tripping holidays I was hopelessly late to schedule sessions, so some really interesting sessions (at least to me) were full. Did my VMworld go as planned? Well, not according to my planning in the VMworld app. But I managed to still join some of the really interesting sessions by just showing up; which was great! The things that stood out for me personally were the ‘Meet the Experts round tables’ and ‘Design Studio’ sessions. It was really interesting to talk with the people who actually develop the product and share experiences. It felt like you could really make your mark!
The Partner General Session is also something I will not quickly forget, maybe it has something to do with the fact that ITQ was represented on stage 😉 The VCDX workshop on day 1 gave also a lot of insight in the VCDX process, how you get reviewed and they shared some tips and tricks. I’ll keep these things in mind, but I’m not there yet. Just aiming for my first VCAP Design this year.
We also participated in some instructor led Hands On Labs and while they were very good led, I think I will focus more on other sessions next time. You can do the Hands On Labs also at home.
The last day was swag day! We walked around the entire Solution Exchange to pick up some nice gadgets, goodies and chances to win a PS4 Pro or Bose headsets. Unfortunately I was not that lucky.
In general, VMworld was a great experience. I did not join a lot of Project Pacific or Tanzu sessions because there were some Pacific & Tanzu sessions before VMworld thanks to the vExpert Program. By talking to the product experts I gained some really useful insight into vRA 8, vRO and by joining some general and deep dive sessions I hope to have improved my knowledge on IoT, VCF and HCX.
Looking forward to next year!!
And that was it… our VMworld 2019 journey. We hope you enjoyed reading it and maybe we see you next year in Barcelona! 😀
