Tag : VMware
Written by Christopher Lewis on September 13, 2017 .
For the second day running at VMworld 2017, I decided to sit outside of the General Session and watch it on the screen whilst sitting at table with my laptop.
General Session
The General Session on day 2 started with an attendee Q&A session with Pat Gelsinger, Sanjay Poonen and Ray O’Farrell. The questions covered all sorts of topics, including:
VMware in the age of the cloud? - Pat and Sanjay gave a consistent message around VMware’s vision of any cloud, any application and any device. Pat talked about how VMware’s partnership with AWS was just the start and Sanjay talked about Horizon cloud.
Written by Christopher Lewis on September 13, 2017 .
Here is the links to all of my blogs covering VMworld 2017 in Barcelona:
- VMworld 2017 – My Schedule
- VMworld 2017 – My Tips For First Timers
- VMworld 2017 - Getting there and Getting registered
- VMworld 2017 Day 0 - Partner Exchange
- VMworld 2017 Day 1 - General Session
- VMworld 2017 Day 1 - Sessions
- VMworld 2017 Day 2 - General Session
- VMworld 2017 Day 2 - Sessions
- VMworld 2017 Day 2 - VMworld Party!
- VMworld 2017 Day 3 - Sessions
Written by Christopher Lewis on September 13, 2017 .
After a good evening at the #vRockstar event, Partner Exchange (PEX) day was kicked off early for me with a session a couple of sessions.
Session 1 - #PAR4376BE - NSX Assessment Led Selling
The purpose of this session, with Atif Qadir and Dan Watson, was to get partners to think about how to position VMware NSX by understanding the IT and Business problems of a customer’s physical network. This is initially delivered by completing a VMware Virtual Network Assessment (VNA), but is not just about selling VMware Network Log Insight (vRNI). Understanding and interpreting the information provided by vRNI for the customer is key to identifying the use cases for VMware NSX. Customers are often surprised by the detail of the information generated. Still one of the biggest blockers to the adoption of VMware NSX remains the fact the customer doesn’t realise (or acknowledge) there may be a problem.
Written by Christopher Lewis on September 12, 2017 .
This year I decided not to sit in the General Session but watch it from the hang space to see what that was like. I think I prefer the General Session Room as it is more of an immersive experience. However, the ability to use a table/desk to take notes does help lots!
General Session
The General Session, with Pat Gelsinger, was very similar to the one in Las Vegas - it was only 2 weeks ago after all . There we obvious changes for the European community, especially with the reference customers. The key message was consistent from the previous years at VMworld and continued to be around Any Cloud, Any Application, Any Device.
Written by Christopher Lewis on September 11, 2017 .
I previously attempted the VMware Certified Implementation Expert 6 - Network Virtualization and, unfortunately, I wasn’t successful . It was the same old story with most VCAP exams, time simple ran out.
As I am at VMworld this week it seemed rude not to take a second attempt for 1/2 price.
The exam center had a few issues, both with overbooking (it seems the PEX keynote is the ideal time for everyone to take exams!), internet issues (which meant I had time added on by pearson) and missing cursors during the exam. On the plus side, the computers and screens in the VMworld exam center are a significant magnitude better than a normal exam center.
Written by Christopher Lewis on September 10, 2017 .
This is the first in a series of posts covering my time at VMworld 2017 in Barcelona.
Flights
I decided to fly in earlier this year, so after a 0700 start I got to London Heathrow and got on the 10:45 BA flight to Barcelona! The flight was relatively smooth but as I don’t fly as much anymore, I forgot those in cattle class don’t get fed for free anymore!
Written by Christopher Lewis on September 7, 2017 .
Skills and Abilities
Objective 4.2 - Configure and Manage Service Composer
- Create/configure Service Composer according to a deployment plan:
- Configure Security Groups
- Configure Security Policies
- Configure Activity Monitoring for a Security Policy
- Create/edit/delete Security Tags
- Create a Security Tag
- Edit a Security Tag
- Assign a Security Tag
- Detach a Security Tag
- Delete a Security Tag
- Configure Network Introspection
- Configure Guest Introspection
Objective Prerequisites
The following prerequisites are assumed for this Objective:
Written by Christopher Lewis on September 7, 2017 .
This post is a number of posts that make up a VCAP6-NV Study guide .
In this post we will look at how to work with NSX Security Tags.
What are NSX Security Tags?
Security Tags are labels which can be associated with a Virtual Machine. Security Tags can then be used (amongst other things) to populate dynamically populate Security Groups with objects.
Adding or removing Security Tags to a VM can be done dynamically in response to various criteria such as antivirus or vulnerability scans, and intrusion prevention systems.
Written by Christopher Lewis on September 6, 2017 .
This post is a number of posts that make up a VCAP6-NV Study guide .
In this post we will look at how to generate a Self Signed SSL Certificate on an existing VMware NSX Edge Service Gateway (ESG) or NSX Edge. Once generated, the SSL certificate could be used for SSL VPN or Load Balancing.
Prerequisites
- A working deployment of VMware NSX.
- A deployed NSX Edge Services Gateway
Generate Self Signed SSL Certificate
Note: These steps assume you are not even logged into vCenter Server. Skip the first few steps if you are!
Written by Christopher Lewis on August 29, 2017 .
With VMworld US started and VMworld EMEA just around the corner, I thought I would share my top tips for those people attending their first VMworld in Barcelona!
Travel
Getting to / from the Airport
- VMware put on air conditioned coaches to and from the airport.
- Check the VMworld pages for the times they run in between. Most people arriving Sunday or Monday and leaving Thursday should be covered.
Metro
- Download the Barcelona Metro Map in PDF or JPG and save it on your phone.
- Don’t forget to ask for the free metro travel pass - I didn’t spend anything on metro travel last year because of this!
- Fira Europa (L9 or L8) is slightly further away from the venue than the Fira Metro station but both are within walk-able distance.
- If you are staying along L9 then go to Fira, if you are staying at Placa D’Espanya (L8) or anywhere else that means you want to change at Fira Europa to go one stop to Fira, then don’t bother.
Taxi
- There is a taxi rank outside the conference venue, but queues form quickly.
- Taxi’s are good value, but not as cheap as the metro.If you are out and about prefer to get around by taxi, then try downloading the Hailo App which was used by a few people last year.
Conference
General
- Download the VMworld 2017 App!
- Bring comfortable/worn in shoes for the days - last year I clocked up ~40k steps in 4 days.
- If you insist on wearing swanky new shoes,** bring lots of plasters**!
- If you want to buy VMware merchandise, go get it early in the week. I left it to the last day and there wasn’t much of a selection left!
- Last year food queues were a little silly. They have changed the layout this year to make that better. There is normally plenty of food though so don’t worry!
- VMware HOL are an** #awesome** way to spend your time if you want hands on experience. The majority of the HOL staff are also experts and consultants too (and some are even human!).
Sessions
- Don’t worry if you don’t make it to all the sessions you have booked into. Last year, by Wednesday afternoon I was worn out and wanted to just chill a bit, so I skipped a couple of the sessions and hung out in the hang space.
- Remember that most, if not all, of them will be recorded and you can download them to watch at your leisure after the event.
- Remember to ask questions - sessions should be interactive and you don’t normally get the opportunity to meet with these titans of the industry very often.
- If you want to change your session last minute because something else takes your fancy, then do it. It’s your time, use it as you want to. There is always an overflow queue for all the top sessions, so join the queue and you may just get in. (if you don’t see previous point)
- If you didn’t get booked into a session you wanted to because it was full, turn up a little early and get in front of the queue for overflow. I got into every session I wanted to last year, even when I didn’t book up front.
Solutions Exchange
- Take time to talk to the vendors you want to. That’s what they are there for!
- Some of the people on the booth will be titans of their field and you wont get the opportunity to talk face to face with them very often!
- Grab as much swag as you want, but remember you will have to carry it! Last year I tended to collect a solid carrier bag and fill one up a day then filter the stuff I want to keep back at the hotel!
- If you get your badge scanned, you will more than likely get a follow up phone call!
The Tourist Thing
Barcelona is a wonderful city with so much colour and beauty. If you’re staying around after VMworld, then be sure to check out the following:
- Operating a Private Cloud - Part 3: Creating a Pricing Card in VMware Aria Automation
- Operating a Private Cloud - Part 2: Creating a Pricing Card in VMware Aria Operations
- Operating a Private Cloud - Part 1: Understanding Pricing Cards in VMware Aria
- Zero2Hero - Using Aria Automation to Deploy Multiple Machines with Multiple Disks - Part 5
- Zero2Hero - Using Aria Automation to Deploy Multiple Machines with Multiple Disks - Part 4