Inspired by Mister Yellow Bricks himself, here is a list of 10 interesting sessions that I’ve scoped out while browsing this year’s VMworld 2015 Content Catalog. My picks are pretty heavily slanted towards automation because that’s how I roll! 🙂
In addition to the three sessions that I’m presenting, I’m going to do my best to attend the ones below in-person … and then watch the ones I miss using Luc Deken’s PowerShell download script. No offense intended to those that aren’t on this list, as this is just what tickles my fancy and perhaps others are in a similar boat. The list is in no particular order.
- INF5803 Deploy Hundreds of VMs Instantly via Forking – Hopefully we’ll see PowerCLI man? Or at the very least, Alan Renouf and Li Zheng with a live demo. Respect.
- SDDC6541-SPO Workload Consolidation- From Silos to the Software Defined Data Center – Assuming that there are no issues with a muted microphone, a session with Josh Atwell and Jeramiah Dooley sounds awesome. Plus they wear groovy socks that make you run faster.
- STO5704 – Using Virtual Data Services for IO Acceleration in vSphere – SanDisk’s very own Serge Shats. This guy is like the flash whisperer. And I’ve been keeping an eyeball on VAIO (vSphere APIs for IO Filtering) for a long time!
- INF5106 – Content Library – Simple title, interesting synopsis. The Content Library is one of the “hidden gems” found in vSphere 6. I expect some sexy live demos from William Lam and James Chang.
- SDDC4595 – Ask the Expert Industry Titans – It’s hard to miss a panel that features Kit Colbert, Rick Scherer, Chad Sakac, Vaughn “The Hairdo” Stewart, and Nicholas Weaver. They might have well named this session OG Nerd Squad.
- INF5432 – Infrastructure as Code – Ban Snowflake Deployments – I’m once again a sucker for the promise of live demos and the mention of Puppet. Plus Jonas Rosland and Reid Vandewiele don’t disappoint. And they get bonus points for being the only session at VMworld to use the word snowflake. 🙂
- INF5211 – Automating Everything VMware with PowerCLI – Deep Dive – It’s Luc Dekens and Alan Renouf. Talking about PowerCLI. What else is there to say?
- INF5800 – ‘Zero Touch’ ESXi Deployment, Configuration & Upgrades with AutoDeploy and Host Profiles – I’m a bit of a Host Profile hater … so perhaps Brian Graf and Salil Suri can convince me otherwise, or at least teach me the error of my ways!
- INF4535 – 5 Functions of Software Defined Availability – An offer to “get into the trenches of workload availability” from the dynamic authors of the VMware HA/DRS books is something you shouldn’t pass up on. Pretty sure this one will need a repeat because Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman always draw a huge crowd.
- INF5093 – vSphere Web Client – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow – What I like about this session is the honesty around how horrible the web client has been, along with offers of tips, tricks, and UI usability highlights. I’ll give Yavor Boychev and Dennis Lu a chance to tell us all when VMware is moving to HTML5. 🙂
