Hands-on Labs at VMware Explore: The Admin’s Ultimate Playbook

Whether you want to explore new feature sets, dissect the architecture of our event infrastructure, or challenge your skills, here is your playbook for the Hands-on Labs at Explore this year.

Written By: Kelly Smith, Product Marketing Engineer, VMware Hands-on Labs

As a virtual infrastructure or cloud administrator, you spend your days managing environments, keeping up with change, and evaluating where your private cloud strategy is heading next. The best way to master new capabilities isn’t watching a passive demo—it’s logging directly into a live console and driving the software yourself with expert guidance nearby.

That is why the Hands-on Labs room is the ultimate destination for technical administrators and engineers at Explore. This is where you get exclusive, first-look access to our brand-new VCF 9.1 lab content. While VCF 9.1 went GA earlier this summer, Explore is the official in-person debut of the lab environments built specifically around it.

1. The Heavy Hitters: 36 Expert-led Workshops

Think of our Expert-led Workshops as highly technical, interactive deep dives led directly by the specialists who live and breathe this technology in the field every day.

Admin Access: These workshops bypass passive observation and place you directly inside a live, fully-functioning sandbox environment with admin rights.
Direct Line to Field Experts: These 36 workshops are developed and presented by the actual Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who built the labs. They work directly with customers in the field daily, giving you a direct line to ask practical, real-world questions about architecture, migration, automation, or security.
Deep Technical Variety: This year’s catalog covers the critical fronts of modern infrastructure management, including:
- Core Cloud Operations: Day 2 diagnostics, health triage, and performance tuning (like vNUMA and processor optimization).
- Advanced Networking & Storage: Multi-site BGP peering, native VPC routing, and advanced Elastic Storage Architecture (ESA).
- Automation & Next-Gen Workloads: Infrastructure-as-code deployments with Salt, workload mobility with HCX, and even building your first Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) app with private AI.
The Standby Hack: Because these sessions offer such high-value technical depth, they fill up instantly in the catalog. If a workshop you need is marked as full, show up to the room anyway. Standby seats are available onsite for walk-in practitioners to cover last-minute no-shows.

Expert-led Workshops at Hands-on Labs at VMware Explore

2. Learn at Your Own Pace: Over 30 Self-paced Labs

Need to break away from a rigid schedule, or want to dive deep into a specific VCF 9.1 configuration on your own time?

30+ Interactive Lab Titles: Our Self-paced Labs catalog features over 30 unique, interactive titles covering the entire portfolio. There is no pre-registration or scheduling required—just walk in, grab an open station, and start learning.
SMEs on Standby: Just because it’s a Self-paced Lab doesn’t mean you’re learning in isolation. Our product SMEs are stationed right on the floor. If you hit an interesting scenario, have a question about a new 9.1 feature, or want to know how a lab configuration translates to your real-world environment, just raise your hand.

Attendees taking Hands-on Labs at VMware Explore

3. Peak “Software on Software”: The Hands-on Labs Tour & Command Center

Ever wondered what it takes to spin up, monitor, and tear down thousands of highly concurrent, live nested lab environments for an event of this scale? We do it by running our own software stack at absolute peak capacity.

The 12-Screen Command Center Wall: See the real-time performance, compute, storage, and networking metrics of the entire Hands-on Labs event space in real time. This is a true, live showcase of the platform operating under extreme real-world pressure.
Go Behind the Scenes: Join our infrastructure admins, performance teams, and lab builders for the Hands-on Labs Tour of our deployment architecture. We’ll talk capacity planning, automation, and how we handle the massive workloads generated by thousands of concurrent users.
Deep Dive Ahead: Want a sneak peek at the infrastructure and business logic that powers this massive operation? Read our dedicated Hands-on Labs Tour blog post here for the full architectural breakdown.

Attendees engaging with the Hands-on Labs Command Center Wall at VMware Explore in Las Vegas

4. Challenge Your Skills: Odyssey & The VCF Lab Explorer’s Tracker

We know that technical admins love a friendly challenge and a bit of bragging rights. We have built-in opportunities to do both.

The Odyssey Tournament: Think you’re the fastest admin in the room? Put your troubleshooting and configuration skills to the test in our gamified live-lab tournament. Race against your peers to solve real-world technical challenges, climb the live leaderboard, and walk away with major prizes and ultimate bragging rights. Details on the challenge and prizes in this blog post.
VCF Lab Explorer Tracker: Start your journey by visiting the VCF demo booth on the show floor to grab your VCF Keychain. From there, head over to the Hands-on Labs area, complete specific technical milestones, and collect exclusive charms to add to your keychain. Completing your passport unlocks a custom plushie and enters you for a chance to win a highly coveted, limited-edition VCF sweatshirt.