VMworld 2011 Registration

It’s only 2:03 PM and I am already back to my Hotel, and looking at my New VMworld Bag, and SWAG. What does that tell you? It tells you that this year the Registration process was GREAT!!!! Kudos awarded to VMware. It was opened before 2:00 PM, and the whole process only took about 5 Mins. VMware is starting to really get the hang of this Conference stuff. The process included, going to a self check in computer, putting in your name, then off to line 5, then you were out of there.

The Bag this year is really nice, it seems like it is constructed of better quality material than last year. I have been using the VMworld 2010 bag for about 6 months as my primary bag, and there is no problem to tell with the amount of tears it has in it. The 2011 bag seems to have a little less pockets, but it does have a separate compartment just for the laptop, which is a good point. When I get back from VMworld, it may just become my primary bag.

Photo Aug 28, 2 07 08 PM

Photo Aug 28, 1 59 15 PM

The Bag had some goodies inside, the normal stuff from vendors, with discounts and marketing information. But we also have a bound notepad with a good quality pen (that will come in handy), the VMworld 2011 Shirt, the water bottle is the same as last year, a program guide, and a bandana from Intel (Strange)!!

Photo Aug 28, 1 59 52 PM

The only thing, I don’t like is the lanyard for your Registration Card, we no longer have the nice pocket to hold other things, like a pen, guide, Etc.….. however I can see their point, it is lighter which is good in Vegas with all the heat, and plus don’t forget about the VMworld 2011 App, which has everything you need. You can get this app for iOS and Android. You can always download the VMworld 2011 Program Guide PDF, and have it stored on your mobile device for ease of viewing.

Photo Aug 28, 1 58 55 PM

So far my Experience with VMworld 2011 has been great. I’m hoping the rest for everyone else, I am always looking to meet and chat with other vGeeks, if you are looking to do the same let me know.

VMWorld 2011 (Schedule/Misc) #VMworld

Getting pretty pumped about VMworld, It will soon be here!!!!!

I went ahead and did up my Schedule a few weeks ago, I won’t be able to make all these sessions I will be lucky if I get to see at least half of them.

Sessions are not the reason I attend VMworld, I go mainly for the Labs, Parties!!, and getting to talk to people face to face that you would normally never get the chance to see. Plus give it a month or two and all the sessions will be available online. So no need to kill yourself trying to get to all the sessions you have booked, go ahead and enjoy yourself.

Events I will be hitting up

CXI Party Thanks to @CXI

http://cxiparty2-eorg.eventbrite.com/

vStogies

http://www.twtvite.com/vstogies

DellTechCenter and Dell Customer Party

http://dtcugio-eorg.eventbrite.com/

Contact your Dell Rep for the Customer Party

VMworld 2011 Party!!!

http://www.vmworld.com/community/conference/us/

If you spend a fair amount of time on twitter, and plan to twit about VMworld, get yourself over to this link and add yourself.

http://vmware.com/go/vmworld-twitter

My Schedule

Monday
VSP1682 VMware vSphere Clustering Q&A
VSP1823 VMware Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler
VSP2360 VMware vCenter 5.0: What’s New, What’s Cool
VSP3866 Performance Best Practices and Troubleshooting
VSP2296 What Everybody Ought to Know About Reporting the VMware vSphere Environment with PowerCLI
Tuesday
VSP2347 What’s New with VMware vSphere 5.0
VSP2447 Understanding Virtualized Memory Performance Management
VSP1882 Managing VMware ESXi with VMware vSphere PowerCLI
VSP4060 VMware vSphere 5.0 License Management
BCA1709 Successfully Running Active Directory in a Virtualized Environment
VSP3867 Top 10 Virtualization Support Issues
Wednesday
CIM2449 Introduction to VMware vCenter Operations
VSP1926 Getting Started with VMware vSphere Design
VSP3255 VMware Storage vMotion Deep Dive and Best Practices
VSP1700 VMware vSphere 5.0 Storage Features
VSP2884 What’s New in Performance for VMware vSphere 5.0
VSP3868 VMware vStorage Best Practices
Thursday
BCO2874 vSphere High Availability 5.0 and SMP Fault Tolerance – Technical Overview an…
EUC2103 Storage Tips and Best Practices for VMware View Desktop Deployments
VSP2227 VMware vCenter Database Architecture, Performance and Troubleshooting

ESXi 4.1 u1 WhiteBox Home Lab

This all came about from the amount of testing and learning I have been doing from home. Decided I needed to create a better environment for this but on a very small budget.

Before this I used VMware Workstation for all my testing needs (which is great by the way) and will still use it, but it started to get more and more difficult to accomplish my testing with this limited setup, and multiple systems running VMware Workstation. I wanted a more centralized setup where I could manage all and with some ease.

System Information x2

Model: OptiPlex 755 SFF
CPU: Intel Q6600
Memory: 8 GB of RAM, upgraded from 2 GB’s
Nic: Onboard Intel 82566DM, PCIe Intel Pro 1000 CT
PSU: 275 Watt
Hard Drive: 80 GB SATA

These systems take up very little room and consume a small amount of power.

Shared Storage: OpenFiler, NAS Appliance.

Network: NetGear ProSafe GS108, 8-Port, which supports Jumbo Frames, and VLAN’s.

Software

Installed ESXi 4.1 U1 on both systems, and for 60 Days (vCenter Evaluation) get to enjoy a HA/DRS Cluster, which will make this setup very green with full DPM support which allows one system to go into Standby when not needed.

This setup provides me with 16 GB’s of Memory, and 19 GHz of processing power. It will provide me with the ability to run several VM’s at once, without affecting my Desktop System, which in turn will give me a much better lab experience.

This solution allowed me to stay in a limited budget, with being able to source the Dell OptiPlex systems for very cheap, and only having to add extra memory, network cards, and a switch. I got this all up and running for less than $400.00.

VMworld 2010 Registration (SWAG)

All registered and ready to enjoy VMworld 2010.

Registration

I have to say it went pretty good. Arrived at the Moscone Centre around 1:55 PM and a line was starting to form. Right at 2:00 PM the line started flowing, and everyone was in the process of registration. By 2:15 PM I had my Badge and was on the way to Room 101 for my Materials. Now this was a little bit Slow, thanks to my Friend Twitter and all the people twiting I found out they were have Techinical difficulties with the RFID scanners, they went to pen and paper to recorf everything. Around 3:00 I was in and getting my SWAG, but by this time they had the scanners fixed and were really starting to flow through the people. So all in all only took about an hour to get registered.
One thing that would be nice. Is when you register into the Hotel, your SWAG and badge is sitting for you and waiting in your hotel room. Now I know that is a dream, but Dreams sometimes come true.

SWAG
The normal thing, some sort of Bag, t-shirt, and Misc other things. But I have to say I like this bag. I’m not going to say to much just look at the pictures.

VMWorld 2010

VMworld is just around the Corner and I am getting pretty excited about it.

This is what I plan to see, the question is how many will I actually get to see. ; -)

 What are your sessions?


Monday
9:00 AM-10:00 AM BC6701 VMware Data Recovery – All You Need to Know!
10:30 AM-11:30 AM EA6705 Best Practices for Virualizing Active Directory
12:00 PM-1:00 PM ALT3003 VMware vSphere™ Performance & Tuning
1:30 PM-2:30 PM EA7849 Design, Deploy, and Optimize Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 on vSphere
3:00 PM-4:00 PM SP8543 Backup & Disaster Recovery – How to Protect Systems and Applications Across Physical, Virtual, and Cloud Environments
Tuesday
11:00 AM-12:00 PM EA7850 Design, Deploy, and Optimize Microsoft SQL 2008
12:30 PM-1:30 PM SS1002 Accelerating the Virtual Era with Dell
2:00 PM-3:00 PM TA8233 Prioritizing Storage Resource Allocation in ESX Based Virtual Environments Using Storage I/O Control
3:30 PM-4:30 PM TA7750 Understanding Virtualization Memory Management Concepts
5:00 PM-6:00 PM TA7805 Tech Preview: Storage DRS
Wednesday
9:00 AM-10:00 AM MA6580 Bridge the ESX/ESXi Management Gap Using the vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) – Tips & Tricks Included
10:30 AM-11:30 AM TA8133 Best Practices to Increase Availability and Throughput for VMware
12:00 PM-1:00 PM BC7773 VMware Site Recovery Manager: Misconceptions and Misconfigurations
1:30 PM-2:30 PM TA8270 Get the Best VM Density From Your Virtualization Platform
3:00 PM-4:00 PM TA8065 Storage Best Practices, Performance Tuning and Troubleshooting
4:30 PM-5:30 PM TA7743 ESX iSCSI News, Configuration, and Best Practices
Thursday
10:30 AM-11:30 AM TA6944 PowerCLI Is For Administrators!
12:00 PM-1:00 PM TA8900 vSphere Administration For The Average Admin
1:30 PM-2:30 PM EA8547 Disaster Recovery of Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, and Sharepoint Server
3:00 PM-4:00 PM TA7805 Tech Preview: Storage DRS