Day 1 of VMworld US 2019 has been a great start to the conference this year. Though it was Sunday, there were workshops, Hands-on Labs, and the annual Welcome Reception in the Solutions Exchange which had plenty of tasty snacks and beverages. It was also TAM Day, where customers with Technical Account Managers could attend special sessions and roundtables to ask freeform questions and have conversations with experts in a wide range of subjects and products inside VMware.
Finishing up the evening was the VMware User Group (VMUG) party, at a ping-pong club just east of the Moscone Center.
The Hands-on Labs (HOL) team is trying something new this year: VMware Odyssey. This is a competitive lab environment, where you compete against others by doing tasks in vSphere & vSAN environments, and you’re rated on accuracy and speed. There are serious prizes at stake here, like Apple MacBook Pros. Go check this out on Level 3 of Moscone West, and sign up in a time slot. Each day there are qualifying rounds, with semifinals and finals during the last days of the conference week.
The Hands-on Labs themselves are bigger and better than ever this year. 89 self-paced labs where you can try products out, learn new things, and safely experiment with configurations you might otherwise not try in the real world. If you’re at VMworld the labs are in Moscone West, Level 3.
The annual VMworld Hackathon will be 7 PM to Midnight on Monday, 8/26, in Moscone West, Room 3016. There’s a registration process, if you’re interested visit the announcement blog post and sign up. Don’t worry if you aren’t a programmer, as they point out there are lots of productive ways to participate in a team to bring an idea to life — something we live at VMware every day.
Sessions! Gosh, there are a ton of sessions. If you’re worried that a session is full get there ahead of time to secure a place in line. Once all the registered attendees go in they open the doors to other interested folks, so get there as soon as you can. Some interesting sessions are:
The Future of vSphere: What You Need To Know Now [HBI4937BU] (you absolutely need to go to this, this will be a very interesting session by Kit Colbert)
Introduction to the World of Automation with PowerCLI [HBI1743BU] (Kyle Ruddy is a Microsoft MVP in Powershell, go learn from the master)
Architecting Business Critical Oracle Workloads on the VMware SDDC Platform [BCA1116BU] (Oracle products and vSphere are better together, and Sudhir Balasubramanian will show you how!)
Accelerating Critical Oracle Workloads with vSphere New Features [TAM3195U]
Accelerating Oracle and SAP with vSphere 6.7 Hardware Accelerators [HBI1420BU]
vSphere Platinum & Active Directory: Better Security Together [TAM3208U] (Active Directory is the keys to many organizations’ proverbial kingdoms. Here’s how to protect it.)
vSphere Security: News You Can Use [TAM3209U] (Who isn’t interested in security? Bob Plankers and Mike Foley will tag-team a lot of popular security topics in what promises to be an engaging session.)
The Role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Security [MLA1294BU] (Vijay Ganti will be sharing how VMware is using Machine Learning techniques to conquer security challenges)
Last, there is a wonderful Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality demonstration area inside the VMworld booth in the Solutions Exchange. Go experience VR for yourself!
Have other events and happenings? Leave them in the comments! Check back tomorrow for a recap of Day 2.
Photos & Videos
(A big thanks to the vSphere Technical Marketing team for contributing these photos!)
