Tag: vmworld

Calling the EMEA #vCommunity for a Monthly Virtual #vBreakfast EMEA!

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For years Fred Hofer has been organizing the vBreakfast for VMworld EMEA across the street of the Fira in a very nice place. A big thank you to Fred to do this every year!! Due to the mess this world currently is in we couldn’t do it in person this year and we moved virtual. Big thanks to Runecast for organizing the virtual space we could use but sadly we had to do it without the vWorldfamous Grumpy Waiter. I really like the way it was setup with separate tables and everything. The only issue was that it seemed to use whatever Microphone, speaker and webcam that where configured in Chrome and switching was almost impossible.

During this meeting we came up with the idea to organize a monthly virtual vBreakfast for EMEA. Kev Johnson offered to do it again on the site that Runecast used for this but I think it would be more flexible if we used something like zoom. Luckily I can use a paid license so it’s no problem to make this a 2 hour long come and go whenever you like session. The talk can be tech, it can be non-tech whatever you like!

When?

Every Last Friday of the month (yes we’ll move the december one!)

How late?

7.30am UK time to 9.00 (8.30 Amsterdam to 10.00, 9.30 Israel time to 11.00, you get what I am saying)

How do I attend?

Drop me an email at vbreakfastemea at gmail.com and I will forward you the invite

But I don’t live in EMEA can I still attend?

Hell yeah, I don’t give a flying F..K where you are from, everyone is welcome and the more the better!

I don’t use VMware but Nutanix or Hyper-V or Citrix?

Didn’t I just say everyone is welcome? Yes I also don’t care what hypervisor or EUC platform you use!

What do you talk about?

The Question is: what do we NOT talk about? Sometimes it’s tech, sometimes its the upcoming weekend. How to become a vExpert etc etc.

I work for company XYZ and want to sponsor this!

I think the only way of sponsoring that could work is if you organize a real breakfast for everyone that signs up. If you are prepared to do that we won’t offer more in return than a mention and a thank you as this is an organized unstructured meeting to meetup with friends.

New Horizon API explorer posted (new queries!)

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While watching the VMworld US 2019 video of Sean Massey presenting about getting started with the Horizon API’s I decided to check if the API explorer has been updated. To my surprise it was and it is good to see that several queries have been added besides the method’s that I previously found.

The new queries that I found are:

  • DesktopAssignmentView
    • Description:
      • Desktop id + Desktop assignment data which will include desktop pool information, operation system, global entitlement.
  • DesktopHealthInfo
    • Description:
      • Desktop health Information. This data will be populated only for the desktops which support application remoting.
  • GlobalEntitlementSummaryView
    • Description:
      • Summary information about Global Entitlements.
  • MachineSummaryView
    • Description:
      • This View includes summary data of all entities related to this Machine

So the DesktopAssignmentView seems to give a lot of similar data to what the DesktopSummaryData query already gives. They both give global entitlement data plus user assignment data. The big difference is that it gives way more detailed information about the desktop pool itself like vGPU settings. The names should have been DesktopInfo in my opinion.

Desktophealthinfo is created for the new Windows 10 App remoting and the monitoring for that. The globalentitlementsummaryview and machinesummaryview are linked to GlobalEntitlementInfo and MachineDetailsView from which they give a subset of data.

I hope to have a new blog post soon with more detailed information of what the new method’s and queries will bring but I wanted to update you with the fact that the api explorer has been updated as soon as possible.

5 things I will be looking forward to at VMworld

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This year will mark my 4th (yes only 4) trip to VMworld. With San Francisco replacing Vegas I will return to Barcelona for what should be my ‘home’ VMworld since I live in the Netherlands. This post might look a bit like last year’s 5 vCommunity tips but hey, I love the community!

  1. vFootball

    Last year I took part in the first vSoccer at VMworld US and it looks like we might be organizing a vFootball in Barcelona as well, football being the correct name for the sport obviously. On Tuesday night after the vExpert party we went to an indoor sports center where we had 2 fields that we could use for approximately two hours. We had loads of fun in there despite one injured player (he headbutted a wall and had a nasty cut in his eyebrow) my fitness level was definitely not on par but I have started preparations for this year back in January.

  2. Presenting at the vBrownbag stage.

    Just like previous years I submitted a session for vBrownbag stage it will be about a couple of VMware flings for Horizon View. I thought I also submitted for a [Code] sessions but it seems like that was official sessions so I have no idea yet about the status of that. If you think you can fill a 10-12 minute (a bit less is acceptable as well) with something even a bit related I advise you to sign up over here).

  3. Hackathon

    I have no idea yet if I will be forming my own team. If I don’t I will definitely be joining another one in having a night of great fun. It doesn’t matter if you have coding experience, just join a team when signups are opened and I can guarantee that you will learn something new.

  4. Meeting up with old and making new friends.

    One of the best things about the vCommunity is having contact with each other over the interwebz. It even gets better when you can meet in real life for the first or the gazillionth time. I don’t care if it’s in a session, while waking up with a coffee or at a party with beer in hand I always have fun talking to people. The subject doesn’t really matter, it’s all about connecting with people.

  5. learning new things

    While I take it easy with my session schedule I always look to learn new things. This could be either in the Hands-on Labs, Instructor led labs, Solutions Exchange, vBrownbag, {Code}, regular session or someone from point 4. Knowledge gaining for me doesn’t need to be tech per se. Learning how people engage customers or projects is very interesting to me.

VMworld US 2018 report day 0 – T-Rex with a beer

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So before things really start on Monday there’s always day 0 for VMworld. The VM village opens up and, in the evening,, there is the welcome reception at the Solution Exchange. For me things started after a rough night without a lot of sleep by registering and getting the badge. Things really looked like they were messed up and there where awful queues with people waiting for their badges. Luckily something went wrong with mine and I was helped by the staff at the assisted check-in pretty fast.

https://twitter.com/AngeloLuciani/status/1033751920005931013

After spending some time in the VM village with some awesome people it was time to head out for my first real thing: an expert led workshop on pulse & IOT. This was really interesting, and I even managed to put in some feedback that was appreciated.

In the afternoon I visited the EUC Inside track event at Top Golf (please stop me from walking that way again) before heading out to the Solution Exchange for a small vExpert gift scavenger hunt. I closed out the evening at the VCDX Wolfpack part at the Cosmopolitan.

Day 0 ended with just over 26000 steps registered.

Sign up for the @VMworld VMware Design studio sessions

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Intro

You might have already seen them around on your local VMUG but this year at VMworld the VMware Design studio can also be found in the schedule builder. Last year it was a case of knowing people who knew the right person with the sign up sheet but once you where in it was a blast. I have heard from multiple persons that it was one of the highlights of their VMworld experience. I had already done a couple of sessions remotely using zoom with these folks but it was an even better experience in person.

What is the VMware Design Studio?

The people from the design studio are specialist in creating  interfaces and they make sure that when they are involved in creating a gui that the User Experience is the best available. Now they aren’t evolved in all the VMware gui’s yet (Yes I am looking at you Horizon admin console) but they have touched most of the recent ones as far as I know.

The sessions

Before starting you need to sign an NDA so make sure your employer allows you to, once you get past that it’s time to introduce yourself to your host(s) and get started. How the sessions go depend on how far the studio already is with the interface itself. I have seen ones that where nothing more than a few drawings, maybe some static images, or even some program that lets you click in certain places or even an almost completely working interface. You are asked to constantly speak out on how you expect things to work or what you think you should or would be doing next getting a task done.

No feedback that you give is wrong, in these sessions, some might not be used but things can’t improve without as much feedback as possible. During the sessions I did remotely I even had the current version of the same GUI in front of me so I could correct some pull down menu’s because they where in a different order in the test version and that totally annoyed me so yes please let you’re OCD kick in!

Yes I want, how do I book the sessions?

Please go to VMworld.com and select under session type Design studio workshop.

Will there also be sessions at VMworld EU?

This is not 100% sure yet but there’s a good chance that the sessions will also be happening in Barcelona, just like last year!

So in short:

What’s (in) my backpack for @VMworld US 2018

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I did a similar post for Nutanix .Next in Nice last year and there won’t be a lot of differences with that one. There will be some differences though since I need some world plugs for my european equipment plus I changed employers so I have a new laptop with new stickers (please help me to stay away from paper stickers, those are hell to remove). With less then two weeks to go for the event I don’t think a lot will change after this post. There’s a good chance that I will take a pass on the official VMworld backpack since I have enough of them now + there’s now the option to choose a charity over it.

First my bag, while I normally sport the 2016 Cohesity vExpert Timbuk2 backpack or a more recently received Nutanix Wenger backpack for daily use I decided to go with the XD Design Bobby backpack that I received the day that I started with my current employer AnylinQ. These have a great surface for customizing them with stickers as you can see below.

For the tech in it some things have changed, the laptop has been replaced by a newer generation so now I have the HP Probook 440 G5 + a Microsoft designer mouse has been added to replace the Xiaomi mouse. For the rest it’s still the Sony MDR-ZX770BN headset, an older Xiaomi 10k battery pack, Roundcube Rewirable  USB Travel adapter and the good old (hey, it’s over a year old now!) Samsung A5 2017 phone. All loose stuff will again by packed into the same Bubm DIS-L case.

 

 

The art of planning your VMworld sessions

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The content catalog for VMworld has opened last week and I already know I marked way to many sessions as favorite for my own good. That’s why I decided on writing a couple of tips to the art of planning your conference. This might help you when the schedule builder opens on July 19th.

Levels

For each session there is a level listed with 100 for beginners, 200 for advanced and 300 for deep dives. My experience is that you might want to take the 200 and 300 levels with a grain of salt sometimes. I have seen deep dives that didn’t get any further than a high level overview but also had advanced sessions that went deeper than deep. Please look at the names of the presenters and check if you can find any old sessions for them to see if they managed to deliver the level the promised back then.

Yes this is my own session, I promise I will dive as deep as possible into those api’s

Workshops

First of all if you want to do any workshops its a case of being lightning fast when they are published to get a spot. Last year most of the workshops were reserved within hours of the schedule builder. Also keep in mind that the expert led hands on labs are mostly nothing different then the regular HOL’s but that there’s someone explaining some extra stuff. Some are unique though like the vCloud Foundation workshop last year where they had real VCF clusters for the students to play with. This is not something that easily done for the regular hol’s.

Regular workshops though will contain live exercises led by an expert that can more or less customize the workshop depending on the audience in the room.

Allow for time between sessions

This has been said before but if you have back to back sessions that are on complete different corners of the conference you will probably not make it. This is something you might only see when you get close to the conference  since rooms will be assigned rather late due to lots of people scheduling them. Thus make sure your schedule will still work when you arrive at the conference itself and when you have a feeling where all rooms are located.

Plan to visit the show floor

If you plan on only visiting the show floor briefly between I can guarantee you that you will be skipping the next session. I always plan a couple of 2-3 hour gaps for the show floor. Don’t expect a lot during the Welcome reception and/or the hall crawl, things will be packed then up to the point that it’s getting really hard to move around. Some of the sessions in the schedule builder are actually on the show floor so don’t get distracted too much when heading out for those.

Don’t plan too many sessions each day

You know that after lunch feeling you have at work or even worse when attending a course? This will probably be worse during VMworld since you will be overloaded with information during the day and parties at night. Personally I kept it to a maximum of four sessions each day or less.

Export your schedule to your personal agenda

While there will be an app released shortly before VMworld it might be handy to track all your appointments and sessions inside your own agenda. This way you can make sure that you have no overlapping between sessions and other activities. In previous years there was always an export function that made this easy.

My Schedule for VMworld EU 2017, or at least one of the versions.

 

 

 

Wouter’s five vCommunity tips for visiting VMworld

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While this year will only be my third visit to VMworld I still think I have some tips to share with the vCommunity. Yes offcourse you need to keep hydrated all the time, have good footwear and don’t party to hard if you have sessions early in the morning but there’s more to VMworld then just that: the vCommunity itself!

Tip 1 : engage strangers

This his already been said at other blogs but don’t be afraid to engage strangers in conversation. If you hear a good conversation going on, don’t be afraid to listen to it, ask questions or even voice your own opinion. If you do this politely no-one will think badly of you. This also counts when heading our for breakfast or lunch, only take a seat at an empty table if you have to. I have made some good contacts after just joining them at their breakfast table. This also counts for the evening parties, I prefer the ones where you can actually have a decent conversation above those where you need to shout to understand each other.

Tip 2 : Join the Hackathon

You don’t need to be an experienced coder or scripter to join the hackathon. Last year I had an almost complete noob (Sorry Hans!) at my team and at the end of the evening he was able to create a small script of his own. This makes him stand very high on my ranking above people who are very experienced and only do their usual trick but just a bit different. Also don’t be afraid that you might make a mistake, we all do all the time and it’s the best way to learn how those script you might have partially copied from the internet actually work.

Tip 3 : Visit the community booth & area

For me both previous years the community booth and the area around it where the highlights of the show. Not only is there awesome content to be found at the communities/vBrownbag theatre, it also seems to be the place where lots of smart people gather to drink a coffee, have fun and share knowledge. This year there it will have an even greater presence with the addition of another theatre for VMware {code}!!

Tip 4 : look for the smaller stands at the solution exchange

You probably already know most of the big brands showcasing their latest and greatest at the solution exchange. To the sides at the smaller and simpler booths you might find some startups that might have a new and awesome product that you didn’t know yet. There’s a good chance you might find a vcdx or vExpert at these booths that really know what they are talking about.

Tip 5 : join the UX Design studio sessions

You might have met them already at your local VMUG but did you know that they also had feedback sessions during both VMworlds in 2017? In these small and sometimes one on one sessions you really have the chance to have an impact on future products of VMware. I did several last year and these where really good. It’s their job to listen to you while you think out loud about how something looks. This can be in the form clicking inside an actual product, powerpoints with visuals or even drawings that they came up with recently.

Bonus tip: be selective on the swag

If you go all out on swag this will fill up your suitcase pretty damn quick and you will come home with at least 60% junk that ends up in the bin because it’s unusable or already broken. So be picky on the shirts and socks you accept, why accept it if you wouldn’t want to wear it anyway? Also make sure to bring some rubberbands to roll the shirts in. I was picky my first two times but still managed to fill up a suitcase each time, just look at the pictures below.

VMworld US 2016:

Top right is a stack of 17!! t-shirts almost all rolled up

VMworld EU 2017

This time I didn’t really roll those shirts.

 

Hopefully I will see you at VMworld!

VMworld EU 2017 Day 3

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Day three, the last one, was a short day for me this year. I had an appointment with the VMware Design studio at 8am but the gates didn’t open until 8 as well and I had to drop my suitcase first so I rescheduled it to 9.15 while talking to the guy that I would have the session with! After this I decided to go to the vmtn area to finish up my powerpoint for the vBrownbag I would be doing by noon. I kept changing and changing stuf and somehow managed to remove the one slide you need when generating output: the output itself. Also during the presentation I never got into a good flow so I wasn’t happy with the end result. After this there where some rumors about horrible queues at the airport so I scrambled to get there but in the end the line to drop off my suitcase took longer then security.

VMworld EU 2017 Day 2

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Holy Guacamole (say that loud, sounds good) what a rush VMworld has been so far for me. After the keynote I was one of the guests on the vExpert daily show which is just a chat about VMworld so far,w hat you expect and any new stuff. The most fun we had was with my answer on my favorite taste of icecream: smurfs.

I did a couple of breakouts today. Both have been about Horizon, one was a good overview about the new stuf to expect from VMware and the other a real deep dive into the Blast Extreme protocol. That one helped me a lot about understanding what happens with it. Later in the afternoon I did a quick hands on lab and a couple of vBrownbag sessions. This was before getting a tour at the Mare Nostrum Supercomputer site. This is the 13th fastest in the world and it was really nice to see how this is build. An even more fun part where the old systems they used in the past over there. I will add some pictures of that in a couple of days.

The evening it was time for the Kaiser Chiefs but after a couple of songs and more beers I decided to tap out and head back to the hotel. Stepcount for the day was 16077.