This year will be the 10th yearly VMworld event. (Have you registered for VMworld yet?) In the run up to the event, we’ll be running some features talking about the previous nine years of what I like to think of as the World’s Best (And Most Intense) Technology Conference.

Photo: Peter Tsai/Dell

One of the best parts of VMworld is the deep set of breakout sessions. Deeply knowledgable VMware employees, partners, and customers share their experiences in hundreds of sessions over the week. Some of us go to many sessions; some of us wait until afterwards, but the week is always filled with deep technical conversations during every waking hour. Although the conference is now very large and securely based in San Francisco, even in earlier years the conference team shared with us that it was hard to find locations to hold VMworld US and Europe because, unlike other events, we needed a venue with dozens of large breakout rooms!

So here’s the question – what’s been your favorite session or lab at VMworld over the years? Have any stuck in your head years later? And what makes it stand out in your mind? Was it the speaker, the new idea, or even the funny running commentary from your neighbor? Or was it how you had just the right answer when you got back to work and your boss thought you were a psychic genius? Or were you watching the right video presentation at the right time after the event? You can share stories about waiting in line or not getting the sessions you want, but those tend to be less fun.

Leave your story here in the comments and watch out for our series ont the VMworld Blog recapping the history of VMworld and getting ready for this 10th Annual VMworld 2013 in San Francisco where we will, once again, “Defy Convention.”

At Interop in Vegas? VMware has brought out a great team and a full set of breakout sessions,  keynotes, and demos. Want to find out more about Network Virtualization and VMware Hybrid Cloud? You’ve come to right place.

Breakout Sessions

VMware Booth

We’ve got an awesome booth with a full range of demos, short theater presentations and giveaways. Stop by Booth #1551 and say hi. Demo stations include:

• NSX & Cloud Infrastructure, featuring the
  • vCNS Suite (vCloud Networking & Security, Nicira Network Virtualization Platform)
  • vCloud Suite & SDDC (vSphere, vCloud Director, vCenter Operations Management Suite, vCloud Automation Center)
  • BCDR (vCenter Site Recovery Manager, vSphere Data Protection Advanced)
• Cloud Management
  • vSphere with Operations Management
  • vCenter Operations Management Suite
  • Cloud Provisioning (vCloud Automation Center, vFabric Application Director, vCenter Orchestrator)
• Public/Hybrid Cloud
  • vCloud Services
  • vCloud Director & vCloud Connector
• End User Computing
  • Horizon Suite (Horizon View, Horizon Mirage, Horizon Workspace)
  • vCenter Operations Manager for Horizon View
  • Horizon View Mobile Secure Desktop
  • Anywhere Desktop

Theater Schedule

Community & Social Media Activities

Wednesday, May 8, 10 pm until:Tech Field Day’s Buzzword Bingo Bash! What could be more fun that coming out to apply all the terms you’ve used and abused during the week? Another event organized by the community, this is a crossover event for everybody attending either EMC World or Interop. Come on out and meet your fellow geeks who have been working on the other side of the Strip!

As you can see, it’s going to be a full week! Follow the #Interop hashtag for everything from everybody, @Interop for show news, @VMwareEvents for these VMware-related events, and connect with me at @jtroyer to say hi!

At EMC World 2013 this week? There will be plenty of VMware-oriented content about virtualization and cloud all across the show, but here are the sessions, booth theater schedule, and other events that the VMware team will be involved with.

General Session

Tuesday, May 7, 2:30-3:30pm
Pat Gelsinger, Chief Executive Officer, VMware
The Software-Defined Data Center: The Foundation for IT in the Mobile/Cloud Era

CIOs today are looking to data center and cloud innovations for new ways to deliver more value to their people and organizations through on-demand access to any application on any device. The Software-Defined Data Center expands the virtues of server virtualization to the entire data center—compute, networking, storage and management—providing a foundation for IT in the Mobile/Cloud era. By delivering infrastructure for cloud services to all devices, this new platform offers the path to IT-as-a-Service—providing efficiency, control and agility, without sacrificing choice. Please join Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, as he arms you with perspective on your role in this multi-year journey and outlines VMware’s technology strategy to radically simplify IT in this new era.

VMware Booth

You can find us at Booth #201 with a full set of informative activities. This year we’ll be offering a full Hands-On Lab experience with access to the full VMware labs, hosted in the cloud, that are available at VMworld and VMUGs around the world. A 13-seat theater with presenters from VMware and its partners give you insight into a variety of topics (schedule below). And demo stations at the booth include:

• The Software Defined Data Center, featuring vCloud Suite, and including vSphere, vCloud Director, vCenter Operations Management Suite, and vFabric Application Director
• Cloud Service Provisioning, featuring vCloud Automation Center, vCenter Orchestrator, and vFabric Application Director
• Cloud Operations Management, featuring vCenter Operations Management Suite
• The Platform for Workplace Mobility, featuring Horizon View, Horizon Mirage, and Horizon Workspace
• Disaster Recovery and Data Protection, featuring vCenter Site Recovery Manager and vSphere Data Protection Advanced
• Run Business Critical Applications on VMware with Confidence, featuring vSphere, vCenter Operations Manager, and vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Twitter Contest: What’s Your Path to the Cloud?

Grab a picture of yourself and a VBlock, tweet it out with the hashtag #ShowYourPath, and win. I’m not exactly sure what you’ll win, but it looks like a pair of nice in-ear headphones.

VMware Breakout Sessions

VMware Booth Theater Schedule

Come by the booth for the following presentations

Evening Community Activities

There’s a great list of community meetups and tweetups at EMC World 2013 here on the EMC Community Network, but I’d like to highlight:

• Monday, May 6, 9:30-11:30 pm:Geek Whisperers Out Loud. Not an official event, but join Matthew Brender (EMC), Amy Lewis (Cisco), and me, John Troyer (VMware) for an informal non-sponsored Tweetup (BYOWallet). We podcast as The Geek Whisperers, a show about all things Social Media in Enterprise IT. Social is a part of all of our careers these days, and we’d love to hear what it means to you. Come out and say hi.
• Tuesday, May 7, 8:00-10:00 pm: EMC Community Network Appreciation Event. If you’re a member of ECN, or if you’ve ever used this great community site to solve a problem, come on by the Zebra Lounge in the Palazzo.
• Wednesday, May 8, 10 pm until:Tech Field Day’s Buzzword Bingo Bash! What could be more fun that coming out to apply all the terms you’ve used and abused during the week? Another event organized by the community, this is a crossover event for everybody attending either EMC World or Interop. Come on out and meet your fellow geeks who have been working on the other side of the Strip!

As you can see, it’s going to be a full week! Follow the #EMCWorld hashtag for everything from everybody, @EMCWorld for show news, @VMwareEvents for these VMware-related events, and connect with me at @jtroyer to say hi!

We’re extending the vExpert 2013 application deadline to from tonight to April 22, 2013 at midnight PDT. More information on the vExpert Program is available at the original announcement: vExpert 2013 applications are now open.

Here is the vExpert 2013 application form.

We’d like to encourage first-time applicants to go ahead and put in an application. It just takes a few minutes to apply.

If you’re passionate about virtualization, cloud, and building the new software-defined data center, you’ve probably shown it in some way just by doing your job with passion. For some of us, that’s building out a blog to record our observations on a current project. For others, it’s speaking at a VMUG, leading a certification study group, or working with VMware as a reference customer. We want people in the vExpert Program who have given back to your colleagues and the community — however you do it. You don’t have to be a book author, you don’t have to be a famous speaker, and you don’t even have to be the smartest person you know. The vExpert Program is a great experience for the participants. Our job is to help you succeed in your career and to help you continue to contribute to the community.

If you know someone who you think should apply — someone who has contributed their expertise to others, who would enjoy hanging out with the most passionate pros in IT, and who we’d like to hang out with too! — then please use this vExpert Recommendation Form to reach out to them and encourage them to apply this year.

This deadline extension is not related to today’s terrible tragedy in Boston, but our thoughts and prayers go out to those affected.

[Update: the deadline for applications has been extended to April 22, 2013 midnight PDT.]

Applications are now open for the vExpert 2013 Program. The deadline for application is April 15, 2013 update: April 22, 2013 at midnight PDT.

Each year, we bring together in the vExpert Program the people who have made some of the most important contributions to the VMware community. These are the bloggers, book authors, VMUG leaders, speakers, tool builders, community leaders and general enthusiasts. They work as IT admins and architects for VMware customers, they act as trusted advisors and implementors for VMware partners or as independent consultants, and some work for VMware itself. All of them have the passion and enthusiasm for technology and applying technology to solve problems. They have contributed to the success of us all by sharing their knowledge and expertise over their days, nights, and weekends. They are, quite frankly, the most interesting and talented group of people I’ve ever been in a room with.

vExperts who participate in the program have access to private betas, free licenses, early access briefings, exclusive events, free access to VMworld conference materials online, and other opportunities to interact with VMware product teams. They also get access to a private community and networking opportunities.

As with last year, there are three paths to being designated a vExpert. Each path takes into account the accomplishments and activities over the last year. You must apply to indicate your interest in the program.You do not need to be nominated by someone else, but in some situations a VMware employee reference is recommended. This year we don’t have a “nomination” form, but we are offering a form with which you can “recommend” that someone else apply. Some VMware programs will also be sending emails to recommend that you apply.

Evangelist Path
The Evangelist Path includes book authors, bloggers, tool builders, public speakers, VMTN contributors, and other IT professionals who share their knowledge and passion with others with the leverage of a personal public platform to reach many people. Employees of VMware can also apply via the Evangelist path. A VMware employee reference is recommended if your activities weren’t all in public or were in a language other than English.

Customer Path
The Customer Path is for leaders from VMware customer organizations. They have been internal champions in their organizations, or worked with VMware to build success stories, act as customer references, given public interviews, spoken at conferences, or were VMUG leaders. A VMware employee reference is recommended if your activities weren’t all in public.

VPN (VMware Partner Network) Path
The VPN Path is for employees of our partner companies who lead with passion and by example, who are committed to continuous learning through accreditations and certifications and to making their technical knowledge and expertise available to many. This can take shape of event participation, video, IP generation, as well as public speaking engagements. A VMware employee reference is required for VPN Path candidates.

Recommend that someone apply for vExpert 2013: http://bit.ly/vExpert2013recommend 

Apply for vExpert 2013: http://bit.ly/vExpert2013application The deadline for applications is April 15, 2013 April 22, 2013 at midnight PDT.

The existing VMware vExpert 2012 directory is at http://communities.vmware.com/vexpert.jspa.

For questions about the application process or the vExpert Program, use the comments below or email vexpert@vmware.com.

Thanks to everyone who has participated in the program over the years,
John Troyer & the vExpert Program Team

[Update: the deadline for applications has been extended to April 22, 2013 midnight PDT.]

For the last several years, the community has gotten together at VMworld and thrown themselves a party. The party is Unofficial, because it really isn’t an official part of VMworld itself, but it’s Official, because we, the Communities & Social Media Team of VMware, anoint it as our primary community gathering. And the invites are spread via Twitter, so we call it a  Tweetup. Thus, the “Unofficial Official VMworld Community Tweetup.”

Last night we gathered once again to socialize, reconnect, and decompress after a hard day keeping up with our VMworld schedules. New this year was a FlipCup tournament, which evidently is some new-fangled drinking game that the kids are enjoying. [Note! Alcohol was not mandatory for our version of FlipCup! We wanted people to be able to make it to the Tuesday morning keynote!]

Teams from across the IT spectrum gathered at the Cable Car City Bar, the trash talk flew, and good fun was had by all. Check out the action in our gallery below. Congratulations to the winning team of VMware Interns! All that time at college paid off!

Great thanks to our primary sponsor Actifio (@Actifio) for organizing the tournament, and thanks as well to Tintri (@TintriInc), Train Signal (@TrainSignal), Veeam (@Veeam), and Clearpath Solutions Group (@ClearpathSG) for making it a memorable evening and for your continued support of the community.

VMware obviously works with a lot of partners. Channel partners drive much of our business, and they range from two guys in a garage to the largest systems integrators, resellers, and OEMs on the planet.

I’m working on a project with VMware’s channel partner team to figure out how we can help our partners get up to speed on social media marketing. Given that social media is an extremely broad topic, and that we’re talking about everybody from Two Guys, Inc. to IBM, I don’t think we can put some pdfs together and call it a completed project.

So as a first start, we’re working on gathering goals and requirements within VMware and in our partner community, and also on assembling a set of Social Media Marketing 101 tools. I think there will be both general social media material that will be relevant, as well as some resources tuned specifically for IT consulting and VARs.

To start us off, I asked for recommendations on Twitter today about this, and these are some of what my network on Twitter suggested:

But I don’t think the conversation stops here! Put your two cents into the comments: what tools, books, links, blog posts should we be looking at as we try to help our resellers and channel partners better utilize social media to connect with customers and bring people along the journey to the cloud?

Just a quick note on the vExpert Program Notifications. Originally I had given us two weeks to go through all 1000-odd nominations and applications. This was too aggressive given travel and other commitments. I'm resetting the clock on this for another two weeks to make sure we don't leave anybody out. Sorry for any inconvenience or upset stomachs. Again, I'm completely blown away and humbled by your efforts and accomplishments. Leaving the specifics of VMware's situation aside, I can't think of another industry where people are so eager to teach and help each other out than our own IT industry. I know we talk a lot about "journeys" and New Ways To Work and 10-year paradigm shifts in how IT departments will be run; but given what I'm reading in these vExpert applications, I am very optimistic that we will all get wherever we're going just fine.

So that you don't walk away empty handed this weekend, I'd like to leave you with a few words of wisdom from the Most Interesting Man in the World.

Stay virtual, my friends.

Our podcast topic this week on the VMware Community Roundtable (#139) was Virtualizing Business Critical Applications on vSphere. Our guests were two of VMware’s Technical Solutions Architects. Alex Fontana specializes in Microsoft Exchange, and Wanda He in Microsoft SQL Server. Both also contribute to the relatively new blog, Business Critical Applications. As usual, you can listen to the podcast via the widget on the right, via the mp3, or via iTunes. 

Some of the pages and blog posts we discussed:

• VMware Business Critical Apps Blog
• Virtualizing Business-Critical Applications (overview page on vmware.com with white papers, case studies, and more)
• New KB: Guidelines for Supported Microsoft Clustering Configurations
• High Availability for Exchange 2010 without DAG
• Monitor SQL Server Performance on VMware
• DBA Guide to Databases on VMware

Alex is a co-author of the book Virtualizing Microsoft Tier 1 Applications with VMware vSphere 4 with Charles Windom and Hemant Gaidhani. Charles and Hemant were both on Podcast #107 last August. Since Charles was nice enough to give me a copy of the book, I would like to pay it forward by sending it to one of you via a contest here. In the comments to this post, tell your story about virtualizing a business critical application. You don’t have to make it a long story, and you don’t even have to identify your workplace. Just lay out an interesting detail, funny incident, something you hadn’t anticipated, or best of all, how well everything went. Be sure and put your real email in the comment (it won’t show up on the page, but I’ll need to contact you.) I will take all the entries on the comment form – one entry per person – by next Wednesday’s podcast and we’ll pick a random entry to send the book to. 

Thanks and good luck!

John

p.s. We’re live every week at noon CA time. You can join us live on our podcast platform Talkshoe every week and join in the chat and ask questions. Please come by — we have a good time! Next week I’ll be doing the podcast live in New York at the VMware Forum. To follow all the latest virtualization podcasts, whether you listen to them at your desk or on your commute, come over the VMTN Communities Podcast Group and see the latest content!

Every Wednesday, we gather online for an hour to talk virtualization and record a VMware Community Roundtable Podcast. We've been using TalkShoe for years, and although we might move to a new platform in the future, for now you can still check out all 132 of our past VMware Community Roundtable Podcasts on TalkShoe. 

New this week: a new VMware Community Group on Virtualization Podcasts to get informed about new episodes of the Community Roundtable and other podcasts from members of the VMware community. If you like listening to podcasts, you have plenty of podcasts to pick from these days. Stay tuned for a podcast directory and more at this new site!

This week, our topic for podcast #132 was VMware Go Pro and vSphere for SMB. I think VMware Go is an interesting service, although most of the people attending the live podcast hadn't used it yet. Just the patching feature alone makes it great. For a VAR working with a small business, being able to set up patching, software and hardware asset tracking, and a help desk seems really interesting. Along with vSphere Essentials and Acceleration Kits, we even got into ROBO a little bit, although that will be the topic of an upcoming podcast. You can listen to the podcast via the widget to the right or the mp3 file, and you can subscribe to the podcast via the RSS feed or via iTunes.

We do need to make one correction: when upgrading from a vSphere Essentials kit (which comes with vCenter Server Foundation) to another level of product (that comes with vCenter Server Standard), no vCenter Server reinstall is necessary. Just upgrade your license key and you are good to go.

Show Notes

• VMware Go home page: https://go.vmware.com/
  

  "VMware Go is a free web-based service that guides you through the installation and configuration of VMware vSphere Hypervisor. VMware Go Pro provides … patch management, hardware asset management, and …Software License Management." and now Help Desk

• VMware Go Product Page
• VMware Go and VMware Go Pro community
• VMware Go videos: These will be moving over to the main VMwareTV YouTube channel shortly, but for now check out these five in-depth VMware Go videos on YouTube:

• VMware for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses
• SMB Virtualization Assessment Tool
• vSphere Essentials Kits and vSphere Acceleration Kits
• There is now a vSphere Standard Accelerator Kit alongside the Advanced, Midsized, and Enterprise Plus kits. 
• If you are an existing vSphere Essentials customer, you can get 40% off the new Standard Acceleration Kit for a limited time.