144 Bottles of Water, 48 Cans of Monster Lo-Carb, 50 Bags of Single Serve Chips, 270 Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers, 144 Bottles of 5-Hour Energy and 300 Oreo Cookies (unfortunately there has been no accurate count of alcoholic beverage)… that is how VMworld started for some of the members of the vSpecialist Organization within EMC on Thursday.

Actually, Über teams within the vSpecialist organization at EMC started months ago with a strategic plan to cause peoples minds to literally explode from all of the awesome-sauce VMware and EMC will jointly deliver the week of VMworld 2011. This includes a huge EMC core booth with 13 VDI enabled workstations showing the latest and great products, there is also a separate EMC vLabs booth that will have 15 workstations that will allow attendees to use and abuse 11 different products within the EMC family. This is all in addition to the EMC focused lab, which is located within the official VMworld Hands on Labs (which by the way are powered by EMC technology) inside the Solutions Exchange.

Needless to say, there have been endless hours already spent by the team (of absolute rockstars) to ensure the best experience possible for the attendees of VMworld 2011. The sessions, labs, solutions exchange, TweetUps, parties and ability to network with your vPeers makes this show undoubtedly the best information technology show of the year.

There are about 20 of us here, from around the global, working diligently on getting everything up and running as well as testing for usability/stress and for an overall great experience. The countdown officially started yesterday afternoon and we have until Sunday afternoon (3 full days) to make sure everything is 100%. So, what about after Sunday? Will we get to just sit by the pool, sipping on some tasty margaritas? Well, I’m hoping to have at least 30 minutes of that sometime this trip, but what about the other 107.5 hours of VMworld?

So here is my schedule, full of great sessions, fun networking opportunities, awesome parties and completely slammed….boy I love VMworld!

Read More…

Posted under Conferences, VMworld

This year at VMworld I have the extreme honor to be moderating a panel discussion with some fellow bloggers that in my opinion are experts in virtualization, Frank Denneman, Duncan Epping, Scott Lowe and Chad Sakac. For those of you attending VMworld be sure to register for VSP1425 - Ask the Expert vBloggers today!

So now here is your chance to be part of this great session!  Do you have a question that you’d like the experts to answer? Simply fill out the form below and your question will be added to the queue! We’ll be answering some of these web-submitted questions live on stage and will be responding to all questions on the VMwareTips.com blog! So, get your question answered and we hope to see you in Las Vegas!

Questionnaire has been removed. Thank you for your support and we look forward to seeing you at VMworld 2012!

Posted under VMworld

We’re just at a month to go until VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas, NV and the official countdown has started within the vSpecialist compound! Boy do we have a lot of great things that we’re going to show you this year, face-melting awesome-sauce things.

Join Chad Sakac (@sakacc) tomorrow morning (Thursday 7/28 at 8:00am PT) as he gives a sneak peak of the latest technology integrations, essential sessions, hands-on lab experience, product demos, must-have giveaways, and fabulous parties!

Click here to register for this session. Don’t miss out!

Posted under VMworld

it’s that time of year again! vmworld 2011 is fast approaching and some great sessions are now up for public vote! Included in all of those great sessions are (5) sessions that I’m part of and I’d love for you to review and vote on them if you’d like to see them in the agenda.

Session details are below and you can vote for them by visiting http://www.vmworld.com/cfp.jspa

1425 - Ask the Expert vBloggers
Rick Scherer, Duncan Epping, Scott Lowe, Frank Denneman, Chad Sakac

1426 - Designing Virtualized Desktops for Success
Rick Scherer, Tyler Baker, Asif Khan

1427 - Battle of the Storage Experts
Rick Scherer, Chad Sakac, Vaughn Stewart, Eric Schott, Mike Koponen

1712 - Virtualizing SAP for Private Cloud
Rick Scherer, Eric Walter

2820 - Real World Storage API for Array Integration Effects, Design and Planning with VMFS and NFS
Rick Scherer, David Robertson

Once again, please check out my session abstracts and vote! http://www.vmworld.com/cfp.jspa

Posted under Conferences, VMworld

Day 0 is over and the official first day of VMworld 2010 is upon us. As I type this I’m getting ready to head over to Moscone for the first general session of VMworld 2010 and am excited to see what this day brings.

With that said, I wanted to do a quick recap of the past couple days.  It would be an understatement to say that I’ve been busy. vSpecialist core meetings, tweet-ups, meeting with customers, VCE parties….it’s all in a days work.

The biggest highlights so far have to be the VCDX Appreciation Party where I received my branded VCDX #21 leather jacket, then some private meetings with VMware CTO Steve Herrod (@herrod) and Acadia CEO Michael Capellas……and then there was a gorilla.

Needless to say I absolutely love the team of vSpecialists I work with, they are the most amazing group of people in the I/T industry.  And as the video says….we get the job done!

Posted under VMworld

First off I need to apologize for the lack of content lately.  It goes without saying that becoming a vSpecialist for EMC has definitely filled my schedule more than my previous role. I promise to continue to do my best in providing the latest and greatest virtualization, cloud and general information technology content.

With that said, VMworld always fills my notepads with hot new ideas, strategies, products and futures. Definitely keep an eye on the site the next few days as I will be live blogging as much as possible during Keynotes, Sessions and other events.

Keep an eye on my Twitter, TwitPic, YouTube and UStreamaccount for live streaming of information, pictures and videos! Also included below is my schedule at VMworld 2010, be sure to find me and say hello - I always love meeting readers of my blog.

Sunday
11:00am - Arrive SFO
2:00pm - Private vSpecialists Meeting
6:00pm - Extra Mile Reception
6:30pm - vExtravaganza

Monday
9:00am - Private vSpecialists Meeting

12:00pm - Design Consideration for Migrating to Windows 7
(DV7167 - Moscone West Room 2004)

4:00pm - Welcome Reception & EMC Hands on Lab booth duties
6:30pm - VCDX Special Event
8:00pm - EMC/Cisco Special Event

Tuesday
9:00am - General Session (Keynote)
10:00am - EMC Hands on Lab booth duties

2:00pm - Infrastructure Technologies Purpose Built for Private Cloud
(SS1004 - Moscone North Room 134)

4:30pm - Virtual Data Warehousing – Improving Time to Data Mine!
(SP9667 - Moscone West Room 2002)

6:30pm - EMC Customer Appreciation Party

Wednesday
9:00am - Infrastructure Technologies to Long Distance VMotion – What Is “VM Teleportation”?
(TA8051 - Moscone South Room 104)

10:30am - Best Practices to Increase Availability & Throughput for VMware
(TA8133 - Moscone South Room 302)

1:30pm - Shrinking RTO/RPOs of VM Replication w/ WAN Optimization
(BC7950 - Moscone West Room 2022)

3:00pm - Storage Super-Heavyweight Challenge
(TA8623  - Moscone South Room 301)

5:30pm - VMware CTO Special Event
7:00pm - VMworld Party with INXS

Thursday
9:00am - General Session (Keynote)

10:30am - Modern Networking in a Virtualized Environment
(TA7962 - Moscone North Room 133)

1:00pm - Leaving VMworld for Santa Clara
8:00pm - vDodgeball at vGym

*Breakout Sessions are BOLD

Posted under VMworld

With VMworld 2010 right around the corner we’d love to hear what’s on your mind in regards to virtualization and your environment. We in the vSpecialist organization at EMC would love to hear from you, this survey will be completely anonymous and will possibly help shape the future of virtualization.

• What’s your IT infrastructure look like?
• What do you like about it?
• What frustrates you about it?
• What do you think we should be doing that we’re not (EMC, VMware, or heck, the whole IT industry)?
• What are YOU doing that’s cool?

To complete this survey please click here.

Posted under VMworld

For those of you who haven’t purchased your pass to VMworld yet do I have a surprise for you!  Being an employee of EMC combined with EMC being a great partner of VMware allows me to extend some good perks to my readers.  If you use the following link (http://www.vmworld.com/registration.jspa?sponsorCode=EMC) to register for VMworld and enter in the promotion code EMC_EB_US2010 you will save $300 from the regular admission price (reg $1,795).

VMworld 2010 is going to have some great sessions, including some awesome Ask the Experts sessions as well as the opportunity to meet a good majority of the vSpecialist team. You can even pick yourself up a copy of Mastering VMware vSphere and have it signed by Scott Lowe, Chad Sakac and myself! Or even a copy of the VCP-410 study guide from McGraw-Hill.

I hope to see all of you there, be sure to visit the EMC booth to meet up and chat about all things virtualization.

Posted under Conferences, EMC, VMworld

First of all, thank you to our excellent panel; Duncan Epping, Tom Howarth, Scott Lowe and Chad Sakac.

The response I’ve received from our attendees has been amazing.  It quite possibly was the best session at VMworld 2009!   Don’t worry, I’ll be pushing extra hard to get this session back for 2010!  Perhaps a Super Session?

Amongst the most valuable sessions at VMworld 2009 for me this year was the Ask the Experts sessions.
–ProfessionalVMware.com

One thing that amazed me is how we basically closed VMworld,  our repeat session did not end until 6:15pm on Thursday - pretty much when the union A/V workers started unplugging equipment!

Chad Sakac so graciously posted both sessions in video format on his website, so instead of recapping the entire session (both of them) on here, go check out the videos on his website here.

So thats pretty much it, I had a great time at VMworld and finishing it with the Ask the Experts panel was great!  I’d love to have the other four panelists back next year and don’t forget to look for it on the 2010 schedule!

Also if you haven’t already, check out Duncan’s linkage list.  Tons of great links to VMworld 2009 feedback!

Posted under VMworld

You may have heard me on Friday via Twitter that I’ve passed the VCP4 Beta (along with a list of others). Today I received an e-mail making it official, along with a selection of great goodies!

The list of goodies included a VCP4 Hat, VMware Certified Professional button and some really sweet (sarcastic) light up glasses…which will probably come in handy on Wednesday night!

Well, thought I’d share that with you guys. VMworld so far has been a blast.  Time to sign off and head to the Welcome Reception, where a select few will receive a very special VMwareTips.com polo shirt, button and VMnut sticker!

Posted under Certification, VMworld