My VMworld 2017 US Experience

Posted by Paul Braren on Sep 24 2017 (updated on Sep 25 2017) in
  • Presentation
  • Virtualization
  • VMworld

    • If you're at all curious about how my VMworld 2017 US experience went, it just so happens I captured many of the highlights with pictures on Twitter. I made the most of every minute, my first time going as a VMware Employee. I went to as many customer events as I could, prioritizing those events over internal-only parties. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting old friends, colleagues, and new friends. It was a fulfilling few days.

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    Highlights included a chance meeting of a guy who happens to live near Ithaca NY, a beautiful small town I lived in for 5 years. This happened at the VMUnderground breakfast, where VMUG Indianapolis co-leader Ken Nalbone kindly invited me to sit at his table to enjoy a great meal and conversation, together. By the way, Ken can apparently dance!

    The next day, none other than Mike Foley invited me to join him for breakfast, where we talked about home lab equipment and security. It was awesome. I've had the honor of knowing Mike for years.

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    Later on, I got to meet Aaron Buley for the first time. He actually asked me if I was willing to record a little video about the Intel Ruler SSD. You can guess what I said!

    Then there's the chance meeting with a VMware Sysadmin guy who enjoyed talking about vSAN with me at the HCI booth I was helping out at, back at the VMware area in the Solutions Exchange. We went into the weeds together, talking about NVMe and cache sizes and so much more. Just as we were wrapping up, Duncan Epping just happens to walk by. Emboldened by having briefly met Duncan earlier this year, I privately asked him if he happened to be available to talk about some of the intricacies of vSAN with us. Thankfully, he jumped right in! It was awesome, with the VMware customer thoroughly enjoying the attention, and of course, the technical details. Connecting people feels great, especially when value is added to their VMworld experience.

    The best moment of all

    A slightly nervous but super friendly guy who came up to meet me at one of my presentations because he'd been reading my stuff here at TinkerTry for years, just starting out in his IT career. He wanted me to know how much he appreciated my articles, going to great lengths to explain how truly helpful my articles and videos have been to him. This meant the world to me, and I was truly moved by his appreciation.

    All the moments

    How about the rest of the stuff I did and place I went at VMworld 2017 US? Well, here's the right Twitter search that'll pretty much captures it all!

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    Timelapse - Southwest 737 flight into McCarran Airport Las Vegas, and back out again, August 2017.

    See also at TinkerTry

    TinkerTry - PCs, EVs, home tech, efficiency and more, including virtualization. My opinions here, not my employer's.

    Paul Braren, MCSE in 1998, VCP #2681 in 2005, vExpert 2014 to 2024, Veeam Vanguard Emeritus, 2015 to 2019.

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    After 6 successful years testing then shipping well over 1,000 Xeon D Bundles, Wiredzone had to stop selling them in mid-2021 due to cost, supply, and logistics challenges. The Xeon D-1700/2700 (Ice Lake D) was a minor refresh for 2023, with Xeon D-1800/2800 (Granite Rapids D) refresh slightly better in 2024, and hopefully Xeon 6 (Granite Rapids-D) much better in 2025 featuring PCIe Gen5, MCRDIMMs, and 100GbE networking, wow! I'm glad it's Pat Gelsinger at Intel's helm in these challenging times, and grateful to have had the honor of working at VMware when he was the CIO there. I'll leave it at that, given the whole Broadcom thing.