It’s Friday night in Las Vegas and my flight is about to depart. I’ve had most of today to think about VMworld 2018 and put my thoughts together for my second VMworld conference.
Announcements –
There were many announcements made at VMworld this year, but only a handful of those will have a direct impact on what I’m currently working on. Perhaps the most exciting announcements, for me, are vSphere Platinum and vSphere 6.7 Update 1.
vSphere Platinum is yet another SKU for VMware. It bundles both vSphere 6.x Enterprise Plus and AppDefense into a single item. Read more about it here.
AppDefense appears to be getting some traction from VMware which is exciting. Some of the roadmap features of AppDefense that were discussed in Tom Corn’s keynote, like Adaptive NSX and a vCenter HTML5 plug-in, are particularly exciting for the next release of the product. Hopefully, you’ll get to see more about AppDefense here as I start to get more involved with the product.
Aside from performance and general improvements, one of the most important parts of vSphere 6.7 Update 1 is the Convergence Tool (not sure if that’s right yet…). This will allow external Platform Services Controllers to be installed into the VCSA and the VCSA to be repointed to the now-internal PSC. This allows the PSC to benefit from vCenter High Availability. With Update 1, embedded deployments also support Enhanced Linked Mode. With this code, there really isn’t any reason to use an external PSC any longer.
vRealize Automation 7.5 was a neat announcement that I think was made before the conference. vRA is my new focus at work. I’m excited to see the facelift of the UI and investigate a little further into the intricacies of the release.
Sessions –
I attended several sessions last year and felt a twinge if regret in doing do. At the end of the conference last year, I felt that a lot of those sessions would have been more fruitful to watch a recording of. This year, my goal was to attend the non-recorded, more personal sessions. In all honesty, I only remember a handful of these sessions. The week was packed with information.
William Lam (Twitter) has done as he has in previous years. See this tweet to get access to all sorts of session goodness.
Personal Achievements –
As VMworld began, I found my first major achievement – I had a demo on the floor in the Solutions Exchange! Even more exciting is that my company put it on our website! You can see it here if you’re interested. Read more about my involvement and my journey to this point here.
I had intended to attend a VCAP6.5-DCV Deploy workshop on Sat/Sun before VMworld. It was cancelled days before the conference. I was let down. I stopped by the Education Services booth and learned that before I could receive VCAP6.5, I needed to upgrade to VCP6.5.
I scheduled and took the VCP6.5 Delta without much thought for preparation. I’m happy to report that I passed! It felt good to feel confident about my skills.
Riding the confidence high, I scheduled the new VCAP6.5-DCV Design Exam. I figured that 50% off at VMworld was a great way to identify what I needed to focus on. I ran into Adam Fisher (Twitter) and shared my nervousness about the exam. He shared an article by Rebecca Fitzhugh (Twitter) which gave me some insights and clarified some important concepts for the exam. I’m happy to report that I passed my first VCAP!
Next steps for me will be to study for and take the VCAP-DCV Deploy but I’m unsure of when I’ll take that. The exam is over three hours long and is a grand total of 17 questions. That’s… fairly daunting and the main reason that I really wanted to attend the Deploy Workshop before VMworld. There’s only one way to find out if I’ve got it in me, though… soon!
In a post to follow (when I can adequately get Twitter to respond), I’ll provide a recap of my community engagements. These were by far the most important parts of VMworld for me. Looking forward to cataloging the names and people that I saw!