Xtravirt — A round up of VMworld 2017

1.5M ratings
277k ratings

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna

A round up of VMworld 2017

by Simon Eady

Having missed VMworld 2016, I was looking forward to attending this year, especially after the big announcements from the 2016 events and VMworld US 2017.

Hardly surprising, VMware on AWS featured heavily and the available sessions to attend were numerous. But, due to the current and future projects I’m engaged with, my primary focus this time was on vRealize Operations and vRealize Automation.

Of all the key note announcements made, the HCX one was the most impressive. Available in late 2017 via IBM and OVH, HCX will allow you to connect your private cloud to any VMware cloud vendor, allowing you to seamlessly move your apps easily into the cloud and back.

I’ve heard it said that whoever nails the flexibility of moving around in the cloud will be a huge success. So, I believe HCX will be a very attractive offering to those businesses looking for an option to easily “burst” into the cloud when required.

The first session I attended was “How to build a software defined DR practice with vSAN and SRM”. This was very useful as nearly every customer I have visited in the past 12 months was using either one or both products so it was good to understand how they can be used together with great effect.

Some key take-aways from the session were:

  • vSphere Replication is free with Essentials Plus and higher
  • vSphere Replication is not limited to just SRM you can get a little creative with it if you wish
  • The SRM Roadmap finally as an appliance on it
  • For SRM to work the products need to be the same version
  • SRM supports vSAN stretched clusters, this is great to be able to move VMs to other DCs in separate vCenters (migration workflows)
  • vSAN Stretched Cluster requires 5ms RTT 1-Gbe (works on L2 and L3 networks) a 3rd site is needed for the witness server.

 Another area I am upskilling in is PowerShell/PowerCLI so it was beneficial to get along to the “Introduction to the PowerCLI Repository” session presented by Kyle Ruddy. If automation and daily operations is your thing, then you need to get your head into Powershell and PowerCLI ASAP.

So why Powershell/PowerCLI? Well, in this rapidly changing industry the cloud is king and it functions via automation and there are many products and languages that enable this. From a VMware point of view, PowerCLI is extremely powerful and fortunately relatively straight forward to learn (if you invest some time). The bonus here is that Powershell (which is what PowerCLI sits on) works very nicely with Azure, so if you can get competent with it you will effectively be killing 2 birds with one stone. If you are a sysadmin or consultant and have not yet made the jump to learning a language then now is the time. Staying relevant and valuable as an IT professional, and learning a language is key because automation has arrived and it is here to stay.

As someone who does not personally find coding easy, I have found a great deal of value from learning it, however, I have also found it to be a reasonable learning curve.

A key feature of VMworld events are the Design Workshops and this year I was fortunate to be invited to attend a vRealize Operations Design Workshop. While the content is under an NDA I can say that VMware have really got a good handle on getting feedback from experts and customers alike. I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop and am really looking forward to what comes next for the product. On a similar product theme, I was also invited to attend a TAM session focused on vROps.

Taking a break from the main sessions, I had my first experience of a hackathon. It was an excellent learning experience as well as a chance to meet new people from the wider vCommunity. The team I was a part of was called “one pod to rule them all” which focused on automating the deployment of various VMware products, to which we made some good progress but the 4 hours quickly disappeared. My key take-away from this, is that the Hackathon is a fun learning exercise along with being a great way to meet new people. So, if you have an opportunity to attend a hackathon near you, I would strongly encourage you to try it out.

The solutions exchange AKA the vendor hall provided another aspect to VMworld. I always enjoy wandering around the solutions exchange as I like to see what is new from the vendors and it helps get a feel for where the market place is right now. I made sure I visited a few vendors with whom I have worked with in the past and present, such as Blue Medora but also took time to check out anything new that caught my eye. This year I found a product and company called Morpheus. If you are looking at implementing your own in house and hybrid cloud solution they are very much worth a look.

For anyone that has attended before you will (I hope) be keenly aware of the fantastic networking opportunities at the conference and of course the evening activities.  If I was not in a session or in the Solutions Exchange, then I spent most of my time in the VMTN area (community’s area) catching up with and meeting new people from the wider vCommunity. I have no doubt in my mind that one of the huge strengths to the VMware eco-system is the community behind it. Having the VMTN lounge apart of the vBrownbag stage was a genius idea as you could blog, chat, network and learn all at the same time.

For me personally, aside from the sessions, the key strength to VMworld is the networking component. It is what you make of it, so getting involved and meeting people brings such great value to the event.

Rounding up, it was an excellent VMworld, good solid announcements and superb sessions to attend and as always, the networking and evening events were absolutely worth the trip.

To find out more about how your organisation can benefit from VMware products and solutions, please contact us and we’ll be happy to use our wealth of knowledge and experience to assist you.

**About the Author **

Simon Eady is an Xtravirt Senior Consultant with over 20 years’ experience in the IT industry. He has delivered a wide range of projects including solutions for server consolidation, data centre migration and upgrade, and deployment of Microsoft and VMware product sets.  His specialist areas include VMware virtualisation products and Microsoft Server Technologies and solutions. Simon is also a vExpert 2017 and leader of the South West UK VMUG (VMware User Group).

xtraSEady virtualisation virtualization cloud vmware vmworld vSAN vSphere IBM vRealize Automation vRA vRO SRM PowerShell

See more posts like this on Tumblr

#xtraSEady #virtualisation #virtualization #cloud #vmware #vmworld #vSAN #vSphere #IBM #vRealize #Automation #vRA #vRO #SRM #PowerShell