VMworld 2012 San Francisco – Live Blogging
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Hello and Welcome to VMworld 2012 in San Francisco! I’m going to try something a little different these next few days. I’ve created this aggregated page that will serve as a central repository for some live updates (mainly around keynotes, and sessions) as well as a live feed from my Twitter profile as well as my Instagram profile (for pictures). For my up to the minute VMworld 2012 Schedule please visit this post.
As you may have (or not) seen on Twitter, I’m participating in the #vHunt this year and I have some great things (books, stickers, etc) to give away! Just find me at #VMworld, take a picture with me and post it to Twitter with the #vHunt hashtag and you’ll be entered to win some other great prizes (think iPad, etc).
This is going to be an amazing week! I can’t wait for the fun to start (in about 7 hours!) and ingest all of the great information that we’ll be delivered. I also hope to see all of you at INF-VSP1504, our Ask the Expert vBloggers session which is on MONDAY at 2:30pm!
So that’s it for now… let’s switch on the live blogging and hope this all works out! Have a Great Week!
Live Blogging Feed…
Tuesday, August 28th, 2012 at 9:58:29 am
Horizon is now a suite
Before I talk about Horizon, a quick blurb on AppShift… a new product announcement (not sure when it’ll be released) that focused on making accessing your virtual desktop easier on mobile devices. Very clean looking interface that has a number of awesome usability features such as easy text selecting for copy/paste functions.
The Horizon Suite was also announced which combines Horizon Manager with Data (Project Octopus) and gives you the ability to manage, secure, access and track your mobile workforce. Some great enhancements are coming to Horizon, including full Citrix XenApp integration which allows IT to publish XenApp applications through the Horizon Manager. To sum it up, access your applications, data and even full desktops all from one common interface…quickly and easily. Your applications could be anything from ThinApp applications, SaaS/Web applications and even now XenApp applications. Your data is stored securely on Horizon Data (Octopus) and if you need it you can access your virtual desktop as well.
Horizon Mobile is now found on Apple iOS devices, it’s not mobile virtualization but it does offer a solution they call Containers where Corporate Applications and Data can run securely within it’s own Container, not being affected by what other personal applications or data are on the device. In a demonstration they showed how Copying text from a PDF within the Container could not be Pasted into Evernote outside of the Container.
In the end, it’s all about Consistent Access to the Applications and Data the End-User cares about and the Separation of Personal and Business data to ensure corporate security. All while giving IT the ability to easily manage all of this technology from a single pane of glass independent of what type of device the end-user is using to consume.
Tuesday, August 28th, 2012 at 9:24:54 am
Desktops and End-User Computing is the focus
Steve opens up reviewing what technologies were talked about and previewed last year (AppBlast, Horizon, etc), and says that this year he’ll talk about how these all come together. He also announced their Rapid Desktop Deployment program which includes companies like Nutanix and Pivot3 which created products that allow you rapidly deploy desktops very easily. He also talked about Branch in a Box type solutions like the Cisco ISR G2 product.
Through the acquisition of Wanova, VMware acquired the Mirage technology which was showcased on stage by Vittorio Viarengo, VP of Marketing for VMware End-User Computing. Mirage really changes the way we consume our virtualized desktops, why not harness all of the power and new technologies found in the latest desktops and laptops. Mirage allows Corporate IT to push desktop images to physical devices, while maintaining corporate security and also allowing them to keep in sync with the datacenter. In Vittorio’s demo he received an instant upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7, but after the upgrade he accidently broke his laptop… no problem, IT was able to move his desktop from Mirage into VMware View which allowed him to access his desktop via his tablet device. Once he was able to get a new laptop, actually a Macbook Air, IT was able to migrate his desktop from VMware View back into Mirage which actually pushed it into Fusion Pro….very cool!
To sum up the desktop accessibility options, Mirage is great for physical and offline operations (meaning, no internet access, offsite, etc) and VMware View for the highest levels of security and device mobility. However, both options offer central management, Disaster Recovery capabilities and the highest levels of availability. The complete solution really transforms legacy into a service.
Tuesday, August 28th, 2012 at 8:30:08 am
Good Morning Day 2!
Day 2 is here, Day 1 is a blur! I’m sitting in the Press Area of the General Session room at #VMworld anxiously waiting the start of Steve Herrod’s keynote. If I know Steve, I know that he won’t disappoint! Get ready for some amazing mind-melting things!
Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 10:14:27 am
…and in closing
NO MORE VRAM!
Free Upgrade for vSphere Enterprise Plus customers to vCloud Suite Standard.
Nicira deal is CLOSED! Scalable, multi-cloud network virtualization, committed to open source communities.
Steve always does a TON of demos (AWESOME!). They then showed a new stretched (open) network created in vCloud Director appearing within Nicira NVP, which shows the same (exact same) logical network being stretched between virtual and physical infrastructures.
In closing, Steve personally did a demonstration of DynamicOps which shows how a developer can deploy their application to the Cloud offering of their choice, showing all necessary options and finally showing how much it’ll cost them to run that application. So, Self-service, policy based provisioning that is cross cloud capable.
So, where is VMware headed? Very cool demonstration showing the vCenter APIs tied into Socialcast, each ESXi host, Virtual Machine and every other device is actually a “User” on Socialcast. Groups are created to tie different pieces together. When a NFS datastore goes down the ESXi hosts comment (on Socialcast) their vmkernel error and other affected parties “Like” the problem. Very cute. Check out more in the Innovation Spotlight.
Steve then wrapped up, highlighting everything that was covered. Great job Steve, can’t wait to see your session tomorrow morning!
Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 10:00:30 am
Not just Private but also Public Cloud!…wait, Hybrid!
Steve then welcomed T-Systems to their vCloud Service Provider Program, this was followed by a demonstration of a new version of vCloud Director where they demonstrated how easy it is to create a new Organization VDC. The second piece of the demonstration was of vFabric Application Director, which shows how a developer can quickly and easily deploy his multi-tiered next generation application to the Organization VDC that was just created within vCloud Director. Going back to vCloud Director the demonstration showed how easy it is to configured extended Layer 2 networks to enable things like intelligent load balancing. Then he showed vCloud Connector and how easy it is to migrate the deployed application from the Private Cloud to the Public Cloud.
Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 9:50:53 am
Operations and Management…way more than automation!
A true Software Defined Data Center will allow for end-to-end monitoring and operations, and automation of the entire stack. Starting with defining and deploying the Cloud environment, then the deployment of Applications and finally the scaling and monitoring of those applications.
Steve hinted with the fact that the lines between vCenter and vCloud blurring. We should be focused more on creating and managing VDCs. vCloud now has a much broader API set, allowing for very cool concepts like Backup as a Service and Database as a Service. For the deployment of Apps he touched on vFabric Application Director and it’s GUI driven blueprint system that allows for quick and easy deployment and scaling of your next generation applications. Finally, vCenter Operations to offer end-to-end monitor of the entire Cloud environment, allowing for quick correlation and root cause analysis of not only the VDC but also the Applications that are running on it.
Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 9:42:10 am
New goodies in vSphere 5.1
Now on to Storage and Availability. Introducing Enhanced vMotion, allowing for vMotion without the requirement of shared storage. Steve then talked about the future of storage, including vVols which could be thought of as VASA on Steroids. Virtual Flash was also highlighted which will allow for sweet things like Flash as a Resource Pool via an API inteface!, then finally Virtual SAN which hints to the next generation vSphere Storage Appliance. Steve says there are a number of breakout sessions that will cover these topics in depth. Check my #VMworld Schedule as I’m already registered for most of these.
And in closing, Networking and Security. There is an underlying requirement for the network and security policies of a Virtual Machine (or vApp) to follow that virtual device as it moves from cloud to cloud. Technologies in their Distributed vSwitch will allow for this, also the requirement for the physical network is being pushed out for Software Defined Networking (think Nicira). VXLAN is also a requirement as these cloud environments grow, simply because we can’t be limited by things like VLANs. He closed this piece with the extensibility of VXLAN from virtual to physical and how Arista is demoing this in their booth along with technologies by EMC Isilon.
Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 9:32:35 am
Big Data…Bring it!
Next is the introduction of Serengeti, which is an extremely fast and efficient way to massively scale Hadoop on top of VMware vSphere. A demo of Serengeti shows on-demand, elastic Hadoop clusters on top of vSphere. Cool scripts show the possibilities of automagically monitoring Hadoop to scale out as needed and shrink when complete.
Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 9:28:45 am
Good Morning @herrod
Steve took a very high-level look at the infrastructure piece of the new Software Defined Data Center.
The compute should be powerful enough to our business critical applications, like SAP, Oracle, Exchange for example. VMware vSphere 5.1 will be able to support 64 vCPUs/VM, 1TB of RAM/VM and > 1M IOPS/VM… there really should be no reason why you can’t virtualize ANY demanding workload. Epic with their Caché database is a real world example of an application that can make use of this new found compute power. Steve also mentions that enhancements in the software now allow even the most demanding, low latency applications (think collaboration, voip, video, etc) on top of vSphere.
Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 9:20:18 am
All New Products, Suites and Partnerships
Pat then introduced the vCloud Suite, which starts with VMware vSphere at the foundation of this Software Defined Data Center. Also combined will be vCloud Networking and Security, vCenter Site Recovery Manager, vCloud Director. The management side which includes vCenter Operations Management Suite and vFabric Application Director. Finally it will include the integration to link your Private Cloud to the Public Cloud, through APIs as well as vCloud Connector.
Then, music to our ears….a new licensing model! NO MORE vRAM! Also, vCloud is one easy solution…priced per CPU, no limitations and includes everything you need to go to the Cloud. He then annouced the Cloud Ops Forum, which includes the largest SI’s and OEM partners to help shape the foundation of their Cloud Era.
Pat then wrapped up the remaining pieces of the Software Defined Data Center by including the Applications and End-User Computing slices. Cloud Foundry will allow for quick deployment of our next generation applications, it will also include cross cloud applications, including deployment to clouds like Amazon. DynamicOps will enable support for cross cloud automation and orchestration, and finally Nicira to create cross cloud software defined networking and security. VMware View/Mirage and Horizon will enable users to access their applications and most importantly their data from anywhere on any device at any time.
Pat then introduced Steve Herrod (CTO) to the stage to take over and cover the technical details of these changes.
Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 9:14:01 am
It’s been a fun ride Paul, good luck!
Paul did a wonderful job introducing and inviting the new CEO of VMware, Pat Gelsinger, to the stage.
Pat really does a wonderful job as a public speaker. His energy and enthusiasm show his passion for the technology and the future of VMware as a company. Pat lets everyone know the plans for VMware to create the Software Defined Data Center, which will allow us to virtualize >90% of workloads, deploy these workloads in a matter of minutes (if not seconds) and will include things much more than just our compute resources but also storage, availability, network and security policies. The data center of the future will deliver one common platform for all data center applications, existing and new.
Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 8:56:41 am
Ladies and Gentlemen….Paul Maritz
Paul Maritz started his general session with the change that has occurred over the past 4 years, for example in 2008 only 25% of workloads were virtualized…today 60%. Back in 2008 there were only 25k VMware Certified Professionals, today there are over 125k. And finally, in 2008 #VMworld only had 13k attendees, this year…20k.
He informs us that there are some major drivers of change causing this. Our customers are moving to a real-time model with tons of focus on mobile computing and social media. There is a top to bottom transformation that is required for this to be possible. Servers are moving to Clouds, Applications are being modernized to be more efficient and to support the huge amounts of big data out there, and finally the End-Users are becoming more mobile, they need to access their applications and data in a different way, from everywhere.
Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 8:48:24 am
Rick Jackson (Chief Marketing Officer) comes to stage, welcoming us to #VMworld. He informs us that there are about 20k people here live, and about 10k others online watching live. He tells us that our minds will explode with the amount of information we’re about to learn this week. Then Thanks their Diamond and Platinum sponsors for all they do, then he highlighted the Spotlight Sessions followed by the CEO Roundtable.
Tomorrow morning will be Steve Herrod’s keynote, focusing on the future of End User Computing as well as the VMworld challenge where the Diamond sponsors will be on the stage showing their live demonstrations where the attendees will be able to vote for their favorite with the #VMworld mobile application. From the people that vote they will be choosing a winner that will get backstage passes to Jon Bon Jovi on Wednesday night.
Wednesday night is the #VMworld party, Morning Parade will be opening the concert followed by Jon Bon Jovi and The Kings of Suburbia. Thursday’s general session will include #VMworld’s typical “fun tech” theme with people like, Chris Urmson from the Google Self-Driving Car Team.
In closing Rick pushed the need for communities and social media, throwing out advertisements for VMUG as well as the #VMworld hashtags for Twitter. He then introduced Paul Maritz, which now marks his 5th and final #VMworld as CEO of VMware.
Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 8:38:44 am
8:35am, the first general session of #VMworld 2012 begins. 11 Drummers come out and start banging on the VMworld 2012 logo to the music. Behind them plays a video of hundreds of people doing the same thing. Beat box performers then come to stage and start singing, dancing and performing. In all honesty, it’s cool but also a little weird.
Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 8:33:18 am
Big Brother voice informs us about their NDA disclosure, that forward thinking things are forward and not necessarily real. Some stuff about SEC 10k and how their not guaranteeing anything about anything their about to show. yadda yadda yadda
Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 8:30:37 am
At 8:15am video advertisements began with Cisco, then Dell, followed by EMC. HP had a cute video, showing the power of Social Media and then finally NetApp. The Dell video showed up again, I guess they paid twice for it.
Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 7:19:26 am
Good Morning – Day 1
Just finishing getting ready, going to grab a quick breakfast here in a minute then head over to Moscone to listen to Paul Maritz opening general session. Good Morning #VMworld!
Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 1:12:01 am
Time for Bed – End of Day 0
Although registration was open, the Solutions Exchange opened and HoL were wide open… it still didn’t feel like Day 1 for me, so I’m calling it Day 0. Great day, got settled into my hotel room, received my VMworld Badge and Backpack, attended a couple meetings along with #v0dgeball and the #VMunderground party. Now it’s time for bed and the official start of #VMworld 2012 :) Can’t wait for the keynote in the morning!
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