An event 10 years in the making! 2013 marks the 10th VMworld Conference here in the US and it has officially begun.  I arrived into San Francisco yesterday and have already reconnected with some vFriends, had a great dinner with an awesome customer and even was involved in a high-speed chase (ask me to tell you the story over a couple beers)!

Like I’ve said in prior years, VMworld is by far the best IT conference on the planet. There isn’t one event that captures everything from core infrastructure components and software all the way up the stack through application development and end-user computing devices. One full week filled with education, networking, entertainment and awesome technology!

The networking opportunities have to be the best piece of VMworld, never will you be able to meet with other people as passionate about a single thing as you are. Now that VMware has a clear cut focus on the Software-Defined Data Center I think we’ll learn a lot more about some exciting new products and technologies focused around Storage, Networking and Security. Over the past year VMware has been trimming a lot of fat, and migrating some key products to a joint initiative between EMC/VMware called Pivotal. I think what this means for the industry is that VMware will be laser focused on SDDC and End-User Computing.

So here is my schedule, full of great sessions, fun networking opportunities, awesome parties and completely slammed from morning to evening….boy I love VMworld! At the bottom of the page I’m going to include some “Interested” sessions and Vendors, these are sessions that I wasn’t able to schedule due to conflict but that I’d still very much like to watch perhaps on-demand after the conference.

Legend
	VMworld Session
	VMworld General Session
	Party/Event
	vTweetUp

Sunday, August 26th
2:00pm	EMC Annual #v0dgeball Charity Tournament 2013
	SoMA Rec Center 270 6th St and Folsom St San Francisco, CA 94103
	If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball! This event should be great fun for a great cause. Come see up to 12 teams battle it out. A $5 donation fee is suggested and appreciated. All proceeds go to The Wounded Warriors Project. If you cannot attend but would still like to donate, click here to donate.
4:00pm	#VMworld 2013 Welcome Reception
	Food, Drinks and Networking….all inside the Solutions Exchange.
8:00pm	#VMunderground Party 2013
	Terra Gallery 511 Harrison St San Francisco, CA 94105
	In its seventh year of existance, the VMunderground Party is the largest party out of all of the festivities all week. Put together by guys who love virtualization and some great sponsors that are down for the cause. This is the Mother of All vBeers, a party not to be missed.
Monday, August 27th
9:00am	General Session
	Pat Gelsinger’s, VMware CEO, Opening Keynote for VMworld 2013
11:30am	BCO5047 – vSphere High Availability – What’s New and Best Practices
	This great technology is only getting better and better. I’m excited to see what this session will get into and where vSphere HA is going.
2:30pm	BCO5065 – VMware vSphere Fault Tolerance for Multiprocessor Virtual Machines – Technical Preview
	Finally! vSphere Fault Tolerance is one of the most sought after features, only if it supported more than 1 vCPU. Can’t wait to see what comes out of this session and when we may see SMP-FT coming out.
4:00pm	EUC5238 – Horizon Workspace: Data Deep Dive
	Big changes are happening in End-User Computing, Horizon Workspace is at the front of this change and will eventually become the next “desktop” for many end-users. I’m excited to see a deep dive of this tech and how it will help my customers.
5:00pm	NET5716 – Advanced VMware NSX Architecture
	Software-Defined Networking is one of the major silos in the Software-Defined Data Center. I’m excited to get a deep-dive into the architecture of NSX and how it will push SDN forward.
5:00pm	#vBeerTasting Craft Beer Tasting
	ThirstyBear Brewing Company 661 Howard Street San Francisco, CA
7:00pm	VMworld Community Tweetup and #vFlipcup Tournament
	Mr. Smith’s 34 7th Street San Francisco, CA
8:00pm	vGeekfest Party
	Infusion Lounge 124 Ellis Street San Francisco, CA 94102
	Awesome party you will not want to miss hosted by EMC’s Chad Sakac.
9:00pm	#CXI Party
	Naan and Curry 336 O’Farrell Street San Francisco, CA 94102
Tuesday, August 28th
9:00am	General Session
	Carl Eschenbach, VMware President and COO, will be presenting his keynote to the VMworld 2013 audience.
11:00am	VSVC4569 – Ask the Expert vBloggers
	Top vBloggers in the industry are on-stage and live answering YOUR questions. Excited that I’ve ran this for 6 years now, and blessed to have some great speakers on the stage with me. Duncan Epping, William Lam, Vaughn Stewart and Scott Lowe join me, this is a session you don’t want to miss!
1:00pm	STO5027 – VMware Virtual SAN Technical Best Practices
	vSAN is an exciting technology on the vSphere roadmap, I’m eager to see some greater technical detail on this product.
2:30pm	STO4798 – Software-Defined Storage: The VCDX Way
	Interested in see what some fellow VCDXs discuss when it comes to the Software-Defined Storage topic.
4:00pm	VSVC5005 – What’s New in vSphere Platform & Storage
	New vSphere?! Tell me more!
4:00pm	#VMworld Hall Crawl
	Open to all attendees, no sign-up needed. Enjoy a refreshing beverage while you see the latest products and services from over 250 exhibitors in the Solutions Exchange.
5:00pm	TEX5316 – Failsafe at PCIe Level: Enabling PCIe Hot Swap
	PCIe Hot Swap is a great new feature in vSphere 5.5, looking forward to getting some more detail on it.
5:30pm	#VCDX / #vExpert Party
	MaSo Restaurant – Westin SF Closed Party to VCDXs and vExperts
8:00pm	EMC Customer Appreciation Event
	Ghirardelli Square
9:00pm	Trace3 VMworld Party
	Infusion Lounge 124 Ellis Street San Francisco, CA 94102
10:00pm	vBacon TweetUp
	Cable Car City Pub & Cafe One Hallidie Plaza San Francisco, Ca 94102
Wednesday, August 29th
8:00am	TEX5350 – Designing Network Virtualization for Data-Centers: Greenfield Design and Migration Scenarios
	Another SDN session, lots of focus here in the industry so this should be a good session to learn more.
9:30am	NET6390 – Software Defined Networking – Approaches to Network Virtualization
	Woah, lots of networking session..here’s another one! Sadly, other good sessions were full so this was the next best thing.
11:30am	EUC5706 – A Technical Deep Dive on VMware Horizon View 5.2 Performance and Best Practices
	Big changes in View 5.2, excited to learn more into it.
2:00pm	VSVC4570 – Ask the Expert VCDXs
	Oh yeah baby! Another Ask the Experts panel session, but this time the VCDXs are out to play! Come ask your questions to Matt Cowger, Chris Wahl, Jason Nash, Doug Baer and myself in this great session.
4:00pm	SEC5894 – Deploying, Troubleshooting, and Monitoring VMware NSX Distributed Firewall
	Should be a good session to learn more about NSX and it’s built-in security capabiltiies.
7:30pm	VMworld 2013 Party
	The party of the year! This year VMware brings everyone to AT&T Park for Imagine Dragons and Train.
11:00pm	VMworld 2013 vStogies
	Occidental Cigar Club 471 Pine St San Francisco, CA 94101
	vTweetUp event at the Occidental Cigar Club, where you can get your stogie and a smooth cognac.
Thursday, August 30th
9:00am	General Session
	This session, Makers and Shakers, will feature three of the brightest stars in hands-on innovation today. Each is unlocking new ways to create and build, and each will demonstrate tools that empower you to do the same. You’ll walk away inspired to program your own bot or prototype your greatest idea or hack the Ficus plant on your desk. Makers and Shakers promises a fast-paced hour of runaway creativity, passionate disruption and even a business lesson or two.
10:30am	TEX4759 – ESXi Native Networking Driver Model Delivers on Both Simplicity and Significant Performance Gains
	Another new feature in vSphere 5.5 is Native Drivers, I’m curious to hear more on this and what type of performance gains could be achieved.
12:00pm	STO5559 – The Future of Storage : A Panel Discussion
	Should be an interesting panel discussion on the state of storage and where things will go over the next couple years.
1:30pm	VAPP1007-GD – Oracle/Storage with Mark Achtemichuk
	Mark is a wicked smart guy and I’m just interested in hearing him talk!

Tons of other great parties:

• There are a ton (literally) of other great parties this week, I obviously cannot attend them all (but I’ll try), and I may have left some off of my calendar. Check out the official VMworld Gatherings page for full details on all the parties this week.

Other Must Watch Sessions at VMworld

• VAPP5180 – Extreme Virtualized Oracle Performance in a Proven Architecture – Sam Lucido
• STO5420 – Software-Defined Storage: The Art Of The Possible – Chad Sakac
• BCO5276 – Next Generation ‘Economical’ Data Protection for Business-Critical Applications – Yossi Assad
• VCM5472 – vCO – Say hi to Razor and Software Defined Storage – Magnus Nilsson
• OPT5489 – Pivot From Public Cloud to Private Cloud with vCloud and Puppet – Mike Norris
• VSVC4886 – Innovations in vMotion: A Technical Preview
• VSVC4605 – What’s New in VMware vSphere?
• STO7449 – Tech Preview: Accelerating data operations Using VMware VVols and Storage Profile Based Management
• STO5638 – Best Practices with Software-Defined Storage
• STO5464 – Leading Edge: Evolving To a Software-Defined Data Center
• TEX5738 – Architectural Changes in vCenter Platform
• VSVC5280 – DRS: New Features, Best Practices and Future Directions
• VCM5781 – Whats New and What’s Next in vCenter Operations: A Tech Preview
• STO5420 – Software-Defined Storage: The Art Of The Possible
• STO4973 – VMware Virtual SAN Panel Discussion
• VSVC5005 – What’s New in vSphere Platform & Storage

Must See Vendors at VMworld

Last year Canopy, SimpliVity and Pure Storage really caught my attention at VMworld, this year I have a new list of vendors that have sparked my interest and I will definitely be checking them out:

• Pivotal
• PernixData
• Virsto
• Code 42 Software
• Piston Cloud Computing
• Puppet Labs

So there you go… A week full of events, sessions, general sessions, parties, vTweetUps and more. This is going to be an amazing week. I can’t wait to see some old vFriends and to meet some new ones!

Be sure to find me while at the show, I love meeting new people and reconnecting with old vFriends, so be sure to keep an eye out on Twitter for my live tweets.