VMworld 2017 Day 0 - Partner Exchange Day
Hackathon VMware VMworld VMworld 2017
Published on 13 September 2017 by Christopher Lewis. Words: 568. Reading Time: 3 mins.
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.
This was a good session, with good information about the process for delivering a VNA for customer. It was clear that the tools are only a small piece of the puzzle and that how the information is interpreted for the customer is what makes the difference.
Session 2 - #PAR4383BE - Delivering Hybrid Cloud Architectures for Your Customers with VMware Cloud on AWS
In this session, with Adam Osterholt, we were given an overview of the architecture of VMware on AWS. Adam started with providing the key motivations for the use of VMware Cloud on AWS, which included moving DR capability to an OPEX model, being able to move wholesale to the public cloud and remove the need for a physical DC and finally the consumption of traditional AWS cloud services. Adam then followed this with information on vCenter Hybrid Linked Mode (for migrating hosts from on-premises to the public cloud), Elastic DRS (the ability to scale the solution up to its maximum number of hosts), VMware NSX (the overlay network).
The Key takeaways from the session where:
- VMware Cloud on AWS will be available as a bare-metal provisional solution/offering (with a minimum of 4 nodes) on standard AWS hardware, there is no nested virtualization.
- There will be a flexible consumption model that will expand over time to include other payment/subscription mechanisms.
- VMware on AWS is only available in a single US region, but available in all regions by end of 2018
VCAP6-NV Exam
I then had an appointment with the exam center for my VCAP6-NV exam, see how I got on here .
VMworld Europe #Hackathon
The final activity for me on Monday was the 2nd annual VMworld EMEA #Hackathon brought to us by VMware Code. Like last year buses were provided to the venue from Fira. This year, I was on Team 4 where we decided to try and learn Ansible, so that we could construct an Ansible Playbook that deployed and configure VMware Integrated Containers (VIC).
Were we successful? After a fashion. We had written all of the Ansible Modules for this but the lab environment took too long to deploy the solution. This meant we didn’t get to run a full playbook. The main point is we all learned something new, made new contacts and had fun whilst doing it.
Just like last year, I think the #Hackathon will be one of the best parts of VMworld 2017 for me this year but lets see how the rest of the week pan’s out first.
Published on 13 September 2017 by Christopher Lewis. Words: 568. Reading Time: 3 mins.
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