VMworld2008

More VMworld Weds & Thurs linkage

We’re having a great conference here in Las Vegas and it’s winding up. The flip side of the overwhelming size of this year’s show is that there are dozens of attendees on the ground blogging and twittering. In years past, I’ve tried to gather links from all over and add commentary as well, but for now let me just link out to the boots on the ground for your reading pleasure. If you’re reading along this week, you can also check out Planet V12n for a good selection, but like a river of news, that water will be gone by next week. So this is still a bit of a treasure-hunt in the linkage. Come back next week for more overviews and summaries.

Scott Lowe has been doing yeoman’s work balancing meetings with detailed session blogging. Take it all in at his blog. He also sat down with me earlier today for a podcast that I’ll have up later.

Rich Brambley is also doing a great job at VM /ETC in his second year of VMworld session blogging. He’s got more coming from Thursday.

Duncan Epping from VMware at Yellow Bricks was blogging from across the pond.

And some more general coverage of the show:

  • Scott Weisler @ System Center Forum: VMWorld 2008 Day 2 – The Virtual Datacenter, Desktop and the Cloud and
    The future of Enterprise Virtualization from VMWorld 2008 – Day 1 (Monday)
  • Hyper9’s David Marshall @ InfoWorld:Day one of VMworld 2008 and the debut of Paul Maritz
  • virtualfuture.info VMWorld 2008 – Tech preview: vCenter Orchestrator
  • Sean Clark on Wednesday’s keynote @ vmwareunderground:

    Was I the only nerd sitting at this keynote feeling like a kid in the
    candy store? What an impressive array of innovation! My highlights are
    ranked as follows:
    1. vCenter as a virtual appliance!
    2. VI Client for any client platform
    3. Client hypervisor
    4. Linked clones and quick prep of VDI images.

  • I apologize for the ra-ra as well, but I’m damn proud of VMware also and what we showed off during the conference this week, just like my colleague Kenon Owens. In line last night I was taling to a fellow attendee in line waiting to get into a Mustang, and he said this was his first VMworld, but he rarely goes to keynotes — oh man, I told him, at VMworld that’s a big mistake. The Tuesday keynote is where you get to see all the good stuff.
  • Jon Brodkin @ NetworkWorld: 10 things seen and heard at VMworld
  • Bridget Botelho @ SSV: VMware CEO fields questions at VMworld 2008

    During his keynote, Maritz talked about deconstructing the operating
    system to better deliver applications, and one reporter asked whether
    VMware’s Virtual Data Center Operating System and ideas about
    deconstructing OSes is designed to threaten Microsoft.

    "It is not a direct threat, but an indirect one," Maritz said.
    "[Deconstructing the OS] is also not an idea that we have cooked up on
    our own. It is something that has to happen to address changing
    application needs," Maritz said. "You have to have a sophisticated view
    on this, but of course, when you have the most to lose [i.e.,
    Microsoft], you tend to be the most conservative."

  • Alex Barrett @ SSV lends some context to Steve Herrod’s Wednesday keynote around the vClient initiative. I need to pull together all the material posted on this — it has gotten lost in the server and VDC-OS news. At CTO keynote, VMworld crowd starts to understand vClient

    “I need that right now,” said the attendee sitting behind me at the
    conclusion of Chen’s demonstration. “Heck, I needed that yesterday.”

    I think part of the crowd’s enthusiasm simply had to do with finally
    “getting it.” Unlike Maritz, Chen used the word ‘hypervisor’ to
    describe the “thin-client virtualization layer” that drives VMware’s
    vClient idea of being able to manage disconnected laptops as well as
    connected VDI thin clients. By saying the H word, 14,000 VMworld
    attendees had a collective aha moment.

  • Keith Ward @ Virtualization Review VMworld Wrap, Day 2.

    I like the idea of one general coordinating all
    that, and that’s what VDC-OS promises to be. Not new, not
    earth-shattering stuff. Pretty low on the "sexy" scale. If you think
    about it, though, VMware has never been a sexy company. It’s really an
    engineering outfit, and even though a new release of VMware
    Infrastructure is exciting for IT admins and the like, it’s not like a
    new iPhone coming out, or even on the level of the new Chrome browser.
    Those are things everyone can immediately understand and relate to.
    Nonetheless, it’s a strong step forward, and ultimately moves the bar
    higher for Microsoft. VMware obviously wants to keep its multi-year
    technology lead over Redmond, and has done that.

  • EMC’s Bill Petro. VMworld 2008: a Veritable Verdant Venture (Green) and
    VMworld 2008: Day 2 Review – Virtually Anything is Possible. The former is where I found out about the messenger bags made from recycled VMworld 2007 banners ($120, very cool, a few left but you’d have to ask me to ask Joyce to get you one). I’ve also noticed a few snarky remarks about having the party at the racetrack as not being very green, and I guess I’d agree. The latter is about social media at VMworld 2008, and it features a picture of me, so I highly recommend it.

Enough for now. They’ve kicked me out of the Solutions Exchange. More hotel blogging later.

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