Meet me at the VMworld 2017 US PEX and HCI Zone booths, or at the TinkerTry Virtualization Hardware Discussion Zone in the VMTN Community Blogger area Tue. Aug. 29 11am-2pm

Posted by Paul Braren on Aug 17 2017 (updated on Sep 2 2017) in

I'm super happy to have just been approved to have an informal TinkerTry meetup of sorts, over in the new VMTN Community area of VMvillage, as part of VMworld 2017 Las Vegas being held at Mandalay Bay again this year.

One of my favorite things about meeting hardware enthusiasts is hearing more about their own challenges when implementing a home lab, and the tips and tricks and stories that often only get shared, in person.

I will be there for 3 hours. Last year was amazing, hoping this year is even better! I get quite a kick out of talking about whatever home geekery you fancy. I will have lots of tiny little storage bits and pieces with me, including various M.2 adapters and drives, and a sample PLP/SuperCapacitor equipped M.2 NVMe drive. Who knows, there's a slight chance I'll even be be able to have an Intel Optane P4800X SSD with me, or available for demo remotely, we'll see! Follow me @paulbraren for the latest updates and announcements.

Here's the session description that was just posted on the VMworld Gatherings page:

Virtualization Hardware Discussion Zone

featuring Paul Braren from TinkerTry IT@ home

If you’ve ever visited the TinkerTry.com blog for home virtualization lab enthusiasts, come by and meet the Founder! Paul will even have one of his compact Xeon D servers with him, running vSphere 6.5 Update 1. He’ll surely enjoy nerding out with you over the latest hardware and software advances, including M.2 NVMe gumstick SSDs, and the fastest-storage-in-the-world Intel Optane/3D XPoint! Feel free to also ask Paul about vSAN 6.6.1, VMUG Advantage EVALExperience license keys, and which 10GbE networking and routing equipment he uses.
Paul Braren @paulbraren has been blogging about a variety of virtualization topics for over 6 years, has been a vExpert since 2014, and recently joined VMware as a Software Defined Storage Systems Engineer.

VMware Booths

I can't tell you how exciting it is to talk about enterprise storage with VMware customers who are also quite interested in a change. Wait, I can tell you! Stop by and introduce yourself, and tell me about your datacenter challenges, we can talk about the wonders of the latest vSAN 6.6.1, running on whatever x86 server brand of vSAN ReadyNodes you prefer. Or we can just talk about all-things-vSpherey, like how easy the latest VCSA 6.5 Update 1 is to deploy and update, including the built in VUM that now handles vSAN too. But please be sure to stop by when I'm actually at the VMware booths. Here's my schedule, all at Mandalay Bay:

SUN AUG 27 01:00pm-03:00pm - PEX (Partner Exchange) - Assessment Lounge
MON AUG 28 03:00pm-05:00pm - PEX (Partner Exchange) - Assessment Lounge
TUE AUG 29 11:00am-02:00pm - TinkerTry demo at Blogger Area of VMTN VMvillage
TUE AUG 29 02:30pm-06:00pm - VMworld HCI ZONE
WED AUG 30 01:30pm-05:00pm - VMworld HCI ZONE