VMware vCloud Blog

By: David Davis

The second day of VMware Partner Exchange (PEX) 2012 kicked off with the keynote address. It started off like no other keynote I have seen. A talented actor circled the room, describing different types of clouds while a gifted artist digitally drew what was described on the screen. 

While the keynote didn’t make any specific product announcements, it was inspiring, visionary, and a sign of what is to come in 2012. It started off with VMware’s Scott Aronson, Senior Vice President, Global Channels and Alliances taking the stage and offering some amazing statistics related to virtualization. If my notes serve me correctly, some of them were:

• VMware has approximately 350,000 customers to date
• 32% growth year after year and 85% of sales come from VMware partners
• VMware is in 95% of enterprises today
• The cloud computing market represents a $41.5 B opportunity by 2015
• SMBs are only 20-30% virtualized
• 215,000 partners were trained last year on VMware technologies

Scott went on to say that the VMware approach to the market must change to focus not only on enterprise and commercial segments but also the SMB. In order to do that, VMware is announcing a SMB accreditation for partners. Overall, Scott rallied partners to capitalize on the opportunity before them.

Next, VMware CEO Paul Maritz took the stage. He talked about how VMware’s goal is to continually transform IT and evolve the software-based datacenter. Paul pointed out that 1 VM is created every 6 seconds, and 25 million virtual machines are running on vSphere today. Over 50% of the world’s workloads are now virtualized. He gave us a history lesson on how well known applications have died off over the years (like Wordperfect and others) and how VMware partners and customers need to make a decision to choose (what will be) the winner.

After that, VMware’s CTO Dr Stephen Herrod (always my favorite speaker at these conferences) took the stage. Steve pointed that there are 25 million VMs in the world and that if they were physical servers, they would stretch twice the length of the great wall of China (also in the Infographic – The World Runs on vSphere). Those VMs must be managed efficiently and that’s what the new VMware vCenter Operations Manager 5 (vCOPS) is there for. Steve talked about the new vCloud Director iPad Client, Project Horizon, and Project Octopus, and the new vCloud Service Delivery Manager. 

Steve went on to say that there are over 4,000 developers at VMware who are focusing on “cloud management with less management.  A big part of that management is understanding performance and capacity. Steve pointed to the quote “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it”. That measurement will come from VMware vCOPs. Finally, Steve discussed that IT has to become a broker for IT services, not a builder of hem.

After the keynote, I had my photo taken with Elias Khnaser and the VM Monster! What fun!

After that, I did my first VMware PEX Lab and was very impressed. There were no lines, the topics were great (building a vCloud Director lab), and the performance was FAST. If you haven’t tried them, I highly recommend them! I’ll be doing more today, and the lab hours are 11am-6pm today.               

That afternoon, I attended the partner social media strategies session with John Troyer and was impressed with the packed out room. As always, John had great social media tips, based on years of social media experience. In this session not only did he go into details on VMware’s approach to social media, but he also gave VMware customers the opportunity to discuss how they went from social media phobic to developing innovative social media strategies that are bringing in real revenue for their businesses.

As for today, I enjoyed this morning's keynote with Carl Eschenbach, where he discussed why VMware is the best bet for partners (more details on that tomorrow!), and I look forward to more awesome sessions and the PEX party with the Bare Naked Ladies! Enjoy!

David Davis is a VMware Evangelist and vSphere Video Training Author for TrainSignal. He has achieved CCIE, VCP, VCAP-DCA, and vExpert level status over his 18+ years in the IT industry. David has authored hundreds of articles on the Internet and over 10 video training courses for TrainSignal.com including the popular vSphere video training package. Learn more about David at his blog or on Twitter and check out a sample of his new vSphere 5 video training course over at TrainSignal.com.

By: David Davis

Yesterday was the first day of VMware Partner Exchange (PEX) 2012 and we’re off to an amazing start! I heard that this is the greatest attendance in PEX history, with an expected attendance around 4000+.

In my previous post, It Starts Here – VMware Partner Exchange 2012, I talked about how this is my third partner exchange and how you should make sure not to miss specific sessions. Those sessions will start tomorrow, after the keynote session – I can’t wait!

VMware and its major partners offered bootcamps on their products. At the EMC bootcamp, Chad Sakac (of VirtualGeek), Tommy Trogden (of vTexan.com) and Scott Lowe (of Blog.ScottLowe.org) spoke about the latest news from EMC. Over the weekend, numerous bootcamps were offered on VMware products like VMware vCloud Director.

On Monday, I was honored to be invited to a VMware vExpert meetup with VMware VIPs. That was where I met (and had my picture taken with) VMware’s CTO, Dr Stephen Herrod.

I was also honored to see a large sign outside the door that recognized every one of the VMware vExperts in 2011, by name (I am on there under “D”, in the first column): 

On Wednesday, we’ll find out more about the upcoming changes, the application process, and awards associated with the vExpert program for 2012.

Next, I attended the opening of the Solutions Exchange at PEX, which was a huge deal. I don’t ever recall the PEX solutions exchange welcome reception being so large and impressive (they even had a chocolate fountain). The hall was packed with partners enjoying food and drink while visiting the PEX booths. There was even an Indy race car! 

And my company, TrainSignal, had their first booth ever!

After that, I attended the unofficial community tweetup at Margaritaville, sponsored by HP, where I met up with so many great people in the virtualization industry. I love this picture of (left to right), Scott Lowe of EMC, Christopher Wells of NetApp, Eric Siebert of HP, and Jason Boche of Compellent. It shows that storage vendors of all types can finally get along.

Day 2 Preview

Today things are really getting exciting, especially after the keynote address at 9am. Scott Aronson, Paul Maritz and Steve Herrod annunced new Partner Programs, solution competenceies, and rewards designed to help VMware Partners succeed.

On the vCloud blog this morning, they also announced a new vCloud Director Client for the iPad.

Besides that, VMware will be live blogging numerous sessions. I will be attending as many sessions as I can to give you the latest in vCloud news. Stay up to date on what’s happening at PEX with the PEX social media feed and make sure you blog using the hashtag #VMwarePEX.

Have a great Day 2 at VMware Partner Exchange 2012!

David Davis is a VMware Evangelist and vSphere Video Training Author for TrainSignal. He has achieved CCIE, VCP, VCAP-DCA, and vExpert level status over his 18+ years in the IT industry. David has authored hundreds of articles on the Internet and over 10 video training courses for TrainSignal.com including the popular vSphere video training package. Learn more about David at his blog or on Twitter and check out a sample of his new vSphere 5 video training course over at TrainSignal.com.

by Murthy Mathiprakasam & Neha Sampat

Hold your cloud in your hands with the new VMware vCloud Client for iPad.  The VMware vCloud Client for iPad empowers users to view and inspect their VMs, provision environments, and perform basic workload operations –all from the convenience of an iPad.  

Available in the App Store:  Existing vCloud users can quickly install the client from the Apple App Store and immediately access their vCloud Director environments. 

Inspect and Troubleshoot: Inspect running tasks and perform basic troubleshooting, such as checking on configuration changes. 

Quickly Provision Apps: Deploy apps and provision entire environments from your catalog of Cloud Computer Systems (vApps). 

Access Your Hybrid Cloud Now: Use your existing login credentials from a vCloud Powered private cloud or public cloud, and even file related support tickets directly to your service provider from your iPad.

See how it works:

After a brief hiatus, we were glad to restart #cloudtalk in January and discuss 2012 predictions – what’s next in the cloud. Co-hosted with VMware’s very own vCloud Architects, Chris Colotti and Massimo Re Ferre’, participants sounded off on everything from hybrid cloud to production workloads in the cloud. For those who missed it, here are some highlights from last Tuesday’s chat.

We kicked off the chat by asking participants if they agreed with the buzz that 2012 is the year of the hybrid cloud.

@mreferre agreed but added that tools need to deliver on the promise of hybrid cloud. @cxi chimed in that 2012 will really be about enabling those realities. On the other hand, @tier3 and @gazzar_rj both thought that 2012 was more of the year for PaaS. @wholmes responded, “If you are an Enterprise, this is the year of Hybrid Cloud. If you are a startup, this is the year of PaaS Cloud,” to which both @Virtacore and @mreferre agreed. However, @jakerobison noted that he sees PaaS playing a big role for new development in the enterprise as well, with @tier3 also adding that as PaaS begins to support more traditional enterprise languages such as .NET, it will be adopted more among larger organizations. 

@bgracely then asked what would happen faster in the enterprise this year – PaaS investigations or the virtualization of mission-critical apps. @mreferre, @mikefoley, and @maishsk all believed that the virtualization of mission-critical apps would happen faster, with @mreferre adding that even though we talk a lot about cloud PaaS and IaaS, many organizations have not even started to virtualize their infrastructures yet.

We then asked if participants believed that 2012 would see more SMBs making the transition to the cloud.

The vast majority of respondents agreed that yes, more SMBs will transition or at least start seriously looking into the cloud, with @Stratustician pointing out that there are many great benefits to incentivize SMBs to make the move, from standardization and automation to security. @rob_rutherford also noted that the cloud is often the best fit in the SME market.

From there the chat moved into the consumerization of IT in 2012 and whether participants have seen more organizations adopting BYOD policies.

@ccolotti believed that BYOD is a good idea with a lot of bad implementations around the concept. @Stratustician recommended that companies should either adopt BYOD or hire more security folks to keep up with the increase in second policy violators, with @daviottenheimer suggesting that organizations could also extend responsibility for security to everyone. @Stratustician also added that the key is to allow BYOD under agreement that security needs to be used, ie. IDM, VPN, content management, and forceover from 4G to Wifi.

To round off the chat, we asked @ccolotti and @mreferre what most of their customers want to see in the cloud in 2012.

@mreferre responded that his customers want vCO most definitely, with @maishsk commenting on his surprise that it took so long for vCO to become such a major component. @mikefoley then added that good automation and orchestration will become important not just to IT but also security in vCloud implementations, a comment which both @jakerobinson and @joerglew agreed. 

@ccolotti responded that his customers want to see production workloads in the cloud, and that it was time to move out of test/dev cloud, which many agreed with, including @mreferre, @tier3, @wholmes, and @ZertoCorp. @bgracely then asked why @ccolotti believed that 2012 is the year of productions workloads in the cloud, to which he responded that people have spent enough time “playing” with cloud and that it’s time to move forward. @DuncanYB also added that people are getting used to the technology and have started seeing it as a proven solution.

Finally @cxi commented that cloud cannot be adopted mainstream without Executive Leadership buy-in, but that 2012 will see an increase of that, which @wholmes, @Virtacore, and @heidigro all agreed with.

Thanks again to everyone who participated in last month’s #cloudtalk, and special thanks to @mreferre and @ccolotti for co-hosting it with us! We'll be at the #PEXTweetup tomorrow from 4:30-630pm in the VMware Community Lounge, and we encourage both PEX attendees and other cloud enthusiasts to join in the discussion. We’ll be highlighting key cloud conversations using the #cloudtalk hashtag, so be sure to follow us at @VMwareSP and @vCloud to catch live content from the meetup! 

By Chris Colotti (Consulting Architect, Center Of Excellence) and Duncan Epping (Principal Architect, Technical Marketing)

This article assumes the reader has knowledge of vCloud Director and vSphere. It will not go in to depth on some topics, we would like to refer to the Site Recovery Manager, vCloud Director and vSphere documentation for more in-depth details around some of the concepts.

Creating DR solutions for vCloud Director poses multiple challenges. These challenges all have a common theme.  That is the automatic creation of objects by VMware vCloud Director such as resource pools, virtual machines, folders, and portgroups. vCloud Director and vCenter Server both heavily rely on management object reference identifiers (MoRef ID’s) for these objects. Any unplanned changes to these identifiers could, and often will, result in loss of functionality. vSphere Site Recovery Manager currently does not support protection of virtual machines managed by vCloud Director.

The vCloud Director and vCenter objects, which are referenced by each product, that are both identified to cause problems when identifiers are changed are:
   •    Folders
   •    Virtual machines
   •    Resource Pools
   •    Portgroups

Besides automatically created objects, the following pre-created static objects are also often used and referenced to by vCloud Director.
   •    Clusters
   •    Datastores

Over the last few months we have worked on, and validated a solution which avoids changes to any of these objects. This solution simplifies the recovery of a vCloud Infrastructure and increases management infrastructure resiliency.  The amazing thing is it can be implemented today with current products.

In this blog post we will give an overview of the developed solution and the basic concepts. For more details, implementation guidance or info about possible automation points we recommend contacting your VMware representative and you engage VMware Professional Services.

Logical Architecture Overview

vCloud Director disaster recovery can be achieved through various scenarios and configurations. This blog post is focused on a single scenario to allow for a simple explanation of the concept. A white paper explaining some of the basic concepts is also currently being developed and will be released soon. The concept can easily be adapted for other scenarios, however you should inquire first to ensure supportability. This scenario uses a so-called “Active / Standby” approach where hosts in the recovery site are not in use for regular workloads.

In order to ensure all management components are restarted in the correct order, and in the least amount of time vSphere Site Recovery Manager will be used to orchestrate the fail-over. As of writing, vSphere Site Recovery Manager does not support the protection of VMware vCloud Director workloads. Due to this limitation these will be failed-over through several manual steps. All of these steps can be automated using tools like vSphere PowerCLI or vCenter Orchestrator.

The following diagram depicts a logical overview of the management clusters for both the protected and the recovery site.

In this scenario Site Recovery Manager will be leveraged to fail-over all vCloud Director management components. In each of the sites it is required to have a management vCenter Server and an SRM Server which aligns with standard SRM design concepts.

Since SRM cannot be used for vCloud Director workloads there is no requirement to have an SRM environment connecting to the vCloud resource cluster’s vCenter Server. In order to facilitate a fail-over of the VMware vCloud Director workloads a standard disaster recovery concept is used. This concept leverages common replication technology and vSphere features to allow for a fail-over. This will be described below.

The below diagram depicts the VMware vCloud Director infrastructure architecture used for this case study.

Both the Protected and the Recovery Sites have a management cluster. Each of these contain a vCenter Server and an SRM Server. These are used facilitate the disaster recovery procedures. The vCloud Director Management virtual machines are protected by SRM. Within SRM a protection group and recovery plan will be created to allow for a fail-over to the Recovery Site.

Please note that storage is not stretched in this environment and that hosts in the Recovery Site are unable to see storage in the Protected Site and as such are unable to run vCloud Director workloads in a normal situation.  It is also important to note that the hosts are also attached to the cluster’s DVSwitch to allow for quick access to the vCloud configured port groups and are pre-prepared by vCloud Director.

These hosts are depicted as hosts, which are placed in maintenance mode. These hosts can also be stand-alone hosts and added to the vCloud Director resource cluster during the fail-over. For simplification and visualization purposes this scenario describes the situation where the hosts are part of the cluster and placed in maintenance mode.

Storage replication technology is used to replicate LUNs from the Protected Site to the Recover Site. This can be done using asynchronous or synchronous replication; typically this depends on the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) determined in the service level agreement (SLA) as well as the distance between the two sites. In our scenario synchronous replication was used.

Fail-over Procedure

In this section the basic steps required for a successful fail-over of a VMware vCloud Director environment are described. These steps are pertinent to the described scenario.

It is essential that each component of the vCloud Director management stack be booted in the correct order. The order in which the components should be restarted is configured in an SRM recovery plan and can be initiated by SRM with a single button. The following order was used to power-on the vCloud Director management virtual machines:

1. Database Server (providing vCloud Director, vCenter Server, vCenter Orchestrator, and Chargeback Databases)
2. vCenter Server
3. vShield Manager
4. vCenter Chargeback (if in use)
5. vCenter Orchestrator (if in use)
6. vCloud Director Cell 1
7. vCloud Director Cell 2

When the fail-over of the vCloud Director management virtual machines in the management cluster has succeeded, multiple steps are required to recover the vCloud Director workload. These are described in a manual fashion but can be automated using PowerCLI or vSphere Orchestrator.

1. Validate all vCloud Director management virtual machines are powered on
2. Using your storage management utility break replication for the datastores connected to the vCloud Director resource cluster and make the datastores read/write (if required by storage platform)
3. Mask the datastores to the recovery site (if required by storage platform)
4. Using ESXi command line tools mount the volumes of the vCloud Director resource cluster on each host of the cluster
   • esxcfg-volume –m <volume ID>
5. Using vCenter Server rescan the storage and validated all volumes are available
6. Take the hosts out of maintenance mode for the vCloud Director resource cluster (or add the hosts to your cluster, depending on the chosen strategy)
7. In our tests the virtual were automatically powered on by vSphere HA. vSphere HA is aware of the situation before the fail-over and will power-on the virtual machines according to the last known state
   • Alternatively, virtual machines can be powered-on manually leveraging the vCloud API to they are booted in the correct order as defined in their vApp metadata. It should be noted that this could possibly result in vApps being powered-on which were powered-off before the fail-over as there is currently no way of determining their state.

Using this vCloud Director infrastructure resiliency concept, a fail-over of a vCloud Director environment has been successfully completed and the “cloud” moved from one site to another.

As all vCloud Director management components are virtualized, the virtual machines are moved over to the Recovery Site while maintaining all current managed object reference identifiers (MoRef IDs). Re-signaturing the datastore (giving it a new unique ID) has also been avoided to ensure the relationship between the virtual machines / vApps within vCloud Director and the datastore remained in tact. 

Although we have not specifically validated it, yes this solution/concept would also apply to VMware View.

Chris Colotti and Duncan Epping
VMware Center of Excellence & Technical Marketing

The demand for cloud has grown tremendously in the last few years, with an increasing number of enterprises expressing interest in and taking advantage of private, public and hybrid cloud models. Hybrid cloud models in particular have received much attention in the last year, and in a recent Forbes article, David Nichols, principal and Americas CIO services leader for Ernst & Young IT Advisory Services, noted that hybrid cloud strategies provide a “failsafe” model for enterprises and may be the best approach to cloud computing for the enterprise.

So where does VMware fit in all this? Well last week we featured a report by the Taneja Group that discussed how VMware stacks up against other cloud vendors and why the Taneja Group considers VMware the clear cloud leader. In addition to that, check out the handy infographic below that breaks VMware down by the numbers and illustrates where VMware’s growing ecosystem of Service Provider partners fits in the cloud revolution, providing hybrid cloud services to the enterprise. 

VMware values all of its Service Provider partners, and at VMware Partner Exchange next week, we look forward to highlighting all the reasons why VMware’s ecosystem of Service Providers and partners ranks among the best in the industry. Check out yesterday’s blog for a full rundown of what to expect at VMware Partner Exchange, and don’t forget to follow @VMwareSP for live coverage from the show! 

By: David Davis

The theme of VMware Partner Exchange (PEX) 2012 is “It Starts Here”. That ‘IT’ could mean “Information Technology” or, more likely, it’s that “it” (meaning all things virtualization and cloud computing) will start here in 2012. With only 1 week to go before PEX kickoff on February 13, 2012, I can’t wait to find out what VMware could announce, what I will learn, and who I might be able to network with at PEX this year. While competitors would beg to differ, in the VMware world, it is true that, in a new year, it ALL does start at Partner Exchange (as it does take place in the beginning of the year and is when VMware announces to partners what product pushes they will make together that year).

What Should You See at PEX?

This will be my third PEX and I have begun to think of it as “the mid-year VMworld”. However, it really isn’t VMworld because there are only VMware partners present, because a huge focus is on the sales side of VMware solutions, and because the show is around 3-4000 people (much smaller than VMworld at 15,000+). Still, it is the best mid-year VMware show for me, personally, because I get to talk to the same industry experts as VMworld, find out what VMware partners are up to, sit in VMworld-style labs, attend awesome sessions, and listen to an inspiring presentations by Paul Maritz & Dr Steven Herrod.

I always enjoy visiting the Solutions Exchange Theater to listen to VMware Partners present and showcase their solutions, services and unique capabilities. Everything from cloud architecture, networking, storage, security, management, and more is covered. VMware has one of the most impressive partner ecosystems I have ever seen.

Plus, TrainSignal (who I create vSphere video training for) will have our first ever booth at the PEX solutions exchange. Likely I’ll be there a lot so, if you attend PEX, make sure that you come by and see me!

And if you can attend, make sure you register and attend on of the awesome PEX Tweetups, parties, and gatherings. I will be at the HP Tweetup at Margaritaville so I hope to catch you there!

The Best Sessions of VMware Partner Exchange 2012

Speaking of those sessions I mentioned, what are the best sessions? I had a tough time making up my schedule because there are just so many great sessions spread across just a few days.

Here are the sessions I’m really going to try to attend:

• 2/11 at 1:30pm – #CIM1262: DR of the Cloud and to the Cloud with Chris Colotti and Duncan Epping
• 2/14 at 1:30pm – #CIM1291: Multi-tier vApp Solution Design for vCloud with John Arrasjid (VCDX #001) and Amanda Kammampati
• 2/14 at 4pm – #TEX1261: Building Apps on Top of the vCloud API with Mike DePetrillo
• 2/15 at 1:45pm – #PAR1571: Becoming a VMware Service Provider Using vCloud Powered Services with Luke Norris
• 2/15 at 4:15pm – #CIM1289: vCloud Architecture Toolkit Overview with John Arrasjid (VCDX #001)
• 2/16 at 10:15am – #CIM1269:  Upgrading the vCloud Solutions Stack in an End to End Environment with Chris Colotti and Dave Hill
• and more!

However, since I haven’t figured out how to clone myself yet and don’t have the ability to attend every PEX session that I want to, here is a list of other PEX sessions that the VMwareSP team will fortunately be live-tweeting from:

• 2/14  at 4pm – #CIM1432: How to Win with vCloud Services with Theresa Vu
• 2/15 at 2:30pm – #CIM1453: Creating Public Clouds for Regulated Verticals with Melody Hazi
• 2/15 at 4:15pm – #CIM1345: Real World Experiences: Service Providers Share Best Practices for Delivering Public and Hybrid Cloud Services with Mathew Lodge
• 2/15 at 4:15pm – #CIM1307: Automating Deployment and Operations of a vCloud Infrastructure with Amit Gupta
• 2/16 at 9am – #CIM1398: VMware Service Provider Momentum and Expansion with Kedra Simm
• 2/16 at 9am – #CIM1260: Multi-Site Cloud Deployment with Mike DiPetrillo
• 2/16 at 10:15am – #SMP1540: Selling Hybrid and Public Clouds: Solution Providers and Service Providers in Harmony with Kedra Simm
• 2/16 at 11:30am – #CIM1343: How to Sell and Deliver IaaS Clouds Powered by vCloud Service Providers with Kirti Dewan
• 2/16 at 11:30am – #CIM1311: Cloud Infrastructure Product Opportunities for Service Providers with David Baldwin

So whether you can attend, or not, make sure you are following @VMwareSP and @vCloud to catch highlights from these PEX vCloud/SP sessions.

For more great PEX sessions, make sure you checkout:

• PEX 2012 Content Catalog
• Chris Colotti's blog that highlights his vCloud session & others 

Also checkout this post: What to Expect at VMware Partner Exchange 2012

Top Reasons to Attend VMware Partner Exchange 2012

If you are unfamiliar with PEX, make sure you checkout this video on the top reasons to attend:

If you haven’t already registered for PEX or haven’t built your schedule yet, make sure that you try to checkout these sessions! Register at VMware Partner Exchange (PEX) 2012.

David Davis is a VMware Evangelist and vSphere Video Training Author for TrainSignal. He has achieved CCIE, VCP, VCAP-DCA, and vExpert level status over his 18+ years in the IT industry. David has authored hundreds of articles on the Internet and over 10 video training courses for TrainSignal.com including the popular vSphere video training package. Learn more about David at his blog or on Twitter and check out a sample of his new vSphere 5 video training course over at TrainSignal.com.

With all the great sessions and events taking place at VMware Partner Exchange, we thought it would be helpful to give a rundown of what attendees can expect at PEX 2012. We’ll be on-site at the show, providing photos, videos, and live-tweets straight from Las Vegas, so be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Activities at the VMware Booth

At the VMware Booth (#1300), PEX attendees will have the opportunity to learn more about VMware Partner Programs, Products and Solutions through 16 demo stations, including live demos of the new vCloud Integration Manager (vCIM) and vCloud Connector 1.5.

Service Provider Pavilion 

Be sure to drop by the Service Provider Pavilion, an area created exclusively for VSPP partners to exhibit their offerings. Inside the Pavilion attendees will have the opportunity to speak with experts and learn more about virtualization and cloud solutions from VMware Service Providers such as Bluelock, Hosting.com, iLand and more.

The Solutions Exchange

This year at PEX the Solutions Exchange will feature over 80 of the leading virtualization and cloud infrastructure companies.

The Solutions Exchange hours are:
Tuesday, Feb. 14: 11am – 6pm
(with Happy Hour taking place from 4:30-6pm)
Wednesday, Feb. 15: 11am – 6pm

There will also be a Welcome Reception in the Solutions Exchange on Monday, Feb. 13 from 5:30-7:30pm. PEX attendees won’t want to miss this opportunity to explore the Solutions Exchange and interact with peers, partners and the VMware team. 

While you’re at the Solutions Exchange, also be sure to drop by the Solutions Exchange Theater where Key VMware Partners will be presenting and showcasing their solutions, services and unique capabilities. 

From cloud architecture to security to storage and management, these live presentations highlight the power of VMware’s Partner Ecosystem. Check out the schedule below: 

Other Events 

VMware PEX Tweetup
Tuesday, Feb. 14, 4:30-6pm
Drinks are on the house Tuesday night in the VMware Community Lounge! We encourage our regular #cloudtalk participants to grab a “tweetini” and come mingle with the global VMware partner social media community, where you can get your VMware questions answered by VCDXs, the VMware Certification Team, the VMware Partner Readiness Team and more.

We’ll be covering the tweetup with live photos and videos, so be sure to follow us @VMwareSP to join the event virtually, and don’t forget to RSVP here.

VMware Partner Exchange Awards
Tuesday, Feb. 14, 6:30-10pm 
Congratulations to our regional 2011 Service Provider Partner of the Year winners, iland (Americas), OVH (EMEA) and Fujitsu Australia (APJ)! VMware Partner Network Awards are awarded to partners that offer the most innovative and comprehensive cloud solutions to their customers, and our global Service Provider Partner of the Year winner will be announced during the Partner Exchange Awards on Tuesday night.

VMware Partner Appreciation Party
Wednesday, Feb. 15, 7-10pm
This is the night you don’t want to miss, when we pull out all the stops to show our partners how much you mean to VMware. At the Partner Appreciation Party, attendees will have the opportunity to network with peers, meet colleagues and hear the Barenaked Ladies perform. This event promises to be one of the biggest highlights of an amazing week, so block out your busy schedules now! 

Trivia and Giveaways
If you followed @vCloud and @VMwareSP during VMworld 2011, then you’ll remember our #vTrivia prize contest. In addition to our #vTrivia gift card giveaway, we’ll also be hosting a Photo Scavenger Contest for our grand prize, an iPad 2!

#vTrivia - how to play:

• During the show, follow the @VMwareSP handle on Twitter, and look out for trivia questions posted with the #vTrivia hashtag.
• #vTrivia questions will cover big announcements at PEX, as well as highlights from key PEX sessions and events.
• If you think you know the answer to a #vTrivia question, @reply to @VMwareSP with your guess, making sure to tag your tweets with #vTrivia.

Our Photo Scavenger Contest will be held throughout the week, and one lucky winner will get to take home a new iPad 2 on Wednesday night. Here’s how to play:

• In order to win, take three pictures of yourself at the booths of any three of the following Service Providers in the Service Provider Pavillion (AirVM, Bluelock Corporation, CSC, RackForce Networks, Inc, SunGard Availability Services, Terremark North America, Verio, Xtium, iland, PhoenixNAP, Hosting.com, NTT Communications).
• Tweet all three pictures to the @VMwareSP Twitter handle any time during the conference, but all entries must be received before Wednesday, Feb. 15 at 4pm.
• You MUST be in the picture in order to win – and we’ll give you extra bonus points for including a booth staff member in the picture with you!
• We’ll go through all eligible entries by Wednesday, Feb. 15 at 4pm, and one lucky winner will be chosen at random to win our grand prize, an iPad 2!

Partner Exchange is building up to be an exciting event, so be sure to follow us @VMwareSP for live updates from the show! 

In a recent evaluation of ten of the leading cloud solution vendors (including Microsoft, Red Hat, Amazon, Rackspace and others), the Taneja Group determined that VMware stands out as the clear cloud leader due to its broad portfolio of virtualization and cloud management solutions, service provider ecosystem, and cross-cloud enabling tools and interfaces.

According to the Taneja Group, only VMware offers the combination of industry-leading virtualization and management solutions required for an on-premise, private cloud, as well as the enterprise-class tools needed to bridge the private cloud with one or more off-premise, public clouds – making the successful deployment of hybrid clouds a reality for the enterprise. Check out the following charts to see how VMware’s IaaS and PaaS stacks up against other cloud vendors: 

The Taneja Group also determined that the offerings of VMware’s ecosystem of vCloud service providers surpass the service capabilities of public cloud providers such as Amazon and Rackspace/OpenStack. Using the VMware-CSC service provider partnership as an example, the Taneja Group highlights what sets VMware’s hybrid cloud service provider program apart:

• A true enterprise hybrid cloud offering. In CSC’s case, BizCloud offers the dedicated infrastructure and security of a public cloud with the pay-as-you-go economics and convenience of a public cloud.
• Fast time to deployment.
• Transparent and auditable security – made possible with VMware’s vShield security framework, which is fully virtualization aware.
• Dedicated infrastructure.
• Multi-tiered enterprise SLAs.
• Global consistency and reach. CSC, for example, offers a consistent set of public CloudCompute services from seven CSC Trusted Data Centers on three continents, with plans to expand to 28 data centers in the future.
• Enterprise hybrid cloud expertise. Because the vCloud Datacenter Services program provides rigorous training and certification services and requires service providers to meet enterprise-level standards for security, agility and application portability, certified vCloud Datacenter Service Providers can provide customers with the benefit of their considerable expertise. 

For a breakdown of how VMware’s Service Provider Ecosystem stacks up against Amazon and Rackspace/OpenStack, check out the following chart: 

In sum, if your enterprise is considering a hybrid cloud model, VMware can help make this transition a reality with industry-leading virtualization and cloud solutions and a robust ecosystem of compatible cloud providers. 

For more on the Taneja Group’s findings, download the full report. If your enterprise is interested in the public cloud, you can also apply to test drive a public cloud from a vCloud Provider via vcloud.vmware.com. For future updates, be sure to follow @vCloud and @VMwareSP on Twitter!

By Karl Robinson, Sales Director at StratoGen

Despite the economic gloom on both sides of the Atlantic, 2012 is shaping up to be a bumper year for those involved in the VMware hosting business. Whilst it’s true that most IT managers are under budgetary constraints, the majority have realized that increased use of the cloud will deliver cost savings and bring about an increase in agility and performance. The entire IT industry is moving to delivery ‘as a service’ and the timing of these financial difficulties only serves to focus people’s minds on the benefits of the cloud.

The Rise Of VMware Based Clouds

So where does VMware fit in to this picture? VMware has gained real traction with its service provider program (VSPP) by offering a simple licensing model and a software suite that really delivers. vSphere 5 offers outstanding performance and vCloud Director (which has been updated to v1.5) continues to lead the way as the most powerful tool to manage your virtual infrastructure. But one of the biggest factors driving growth to VMware based platforms is the move away from commodity clouds to enterprise class clouds with defined Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

At StratoGen we’ve experienced this change first hand. In the first half of 2011 a significant percentage of our inquiries were from organizations that wanted to move away from a commodity cloud such as Amazon. But then things changed. Widespread reporting of cloud outages and the increased exposure of IT managers to cloud technologies led clients to realize the importance of VMware based clouds and their associated benefits. This trend has continued and today the majority of our enquiries are from organizations that are already bought-in to the VMware ‘Journey to the Cloud’. Commodity clouds are out of favor, above all because businesses need guaranteed availability. The icing on the cake for clients is vCloud Connector, which offers the unique ability to seamlessly integrate their on-site infrastructure with a VMware based public cloud.

StratoGen Launches US Cloud

Looking forward to 2012 and it’s certainly exciting times here at StratoGen, as we recently announced the launch of our cloud platform in the US. Based out of Denver, our US cloud is built on NetApp, HP and Cisco components and offers the same mix of performance and stability as our award winning European operation.

Feel free to take it for a test drive by signing up for a free 7 day trial here.

About StratoGen          

Karl Robinson is Sales Director of StratoGen, a leading cloud hosting provider with a worldwide client base. You can follow StratoGen on twitter, or read more on the StratoGen blog.