VMworld 2019 will mark my first edition as a VMware employee. Thus, I will be working more and have less time to attend sessions myself. However, there are always things to look forward to! As many know, it’s not only about the break-out sessions. I love visiting the Solution Expo and the bloggers area and most of all; meeting old and new friends!
Come meet me at the Meet-the-Expert tables, at the TAM customer day or during one of my break-out sessions. I will be presenting the following sessions:
In my previous post, I mentioned the part 3 of the Host Deep Dive session at VMworld 2018. The ‘3’ is because we ran the part 1 and 2 at VMworld 2016 and 2017. We had the chance to try a new way of discussing Host Resources settings by the way of creating levels of performance tuning. The feedback we received will test-driving this session at the London and Indianapolis VMUG, was really positive.
As we always stated, the out-of-the-box experience of VMware vSphere is good enough for 80-90% of common virtual infrastructures. We like to show how you can gradually increase performance and reduce latency with advanced vSphere tuning. That’s why we came up with the Pyramid of Performance Optimization. Delivering the content this way allows for better understanding on when to apply certain optimizations. We will start with the basics and work our way up to settings to squeeze out the maximum performance of vSphere ESXi hosts.
Due to session time constrains, we will focus on compute (CPU and Memory) and virtual Networking. The following pyramids contain the subjects about content we will discuss in our session.
Pyramid of Performance Optimization – Compute:
Pyramid of Performance Optimization – Networking:
We will go trough all these levels in detail. We very much look forward to VMworld and hope to see you there! Be sure to reserve your seat for this session!
The following VMworld sessions are all based on the Deep Dive series:
vSphere Clustering Deep Dive, Part 1: vSphere HA and DRS [VIN1249BU]
vSphere Clustering Deep Dive, Part 2: Quality Control with DRS and Network I/O Control [VIN1735BU]
vSphere Host Resources Deep Dive: Part 3 [VIN1738BU]
Countless hours has gone into it; researching, writing content, updating content, discussing a lot, creating the cover designs, creating a logo, having fun!
It was my second time as a co-author after releasing the Host Deep Dive book last year with Frank. I am humbled that I got to work with two of the most regarded individuals in our vCommunity. What these guys did for making the daily life easier for everybody working with VMware solutions, is incredible.
Also, a big thank you to all our reviewers, people who helped realizing this release and Chris Wahl for writing an inspiring foreword.
Clustering Deep Dive
I am a big fan of the previous releases of the Clustering Deep Dive series. When thinking about that, back in 2010-11, the first release helped me a lot to fully understand all clustering constructs. One might say it helped to fuel my enthusiasm for working with VMware vSphere.
Couple years fast forward and here I am working together with Duncan and Frank on the latest release. A big thank you to them for letting me get onboard and be part of this amazing series! As there are a lot of changes since the 5.1 release, we hope this book can help you getting a thorough understanding about all VMware vSphere 6.7 clustering features. The new version of the Clustering Deep Dive covers vSphere HA, DRS, Storage DRS, Storage I/O Control and Network I/O Control. In the last chapter of the book, we bring all the theory together and apply it to create a stretched cluster configuration.
Where Duncan worked on the HA parts and Frank on the DRS parts, I primarily focussed on the Quality Control parts. I feel that these features are often enabled or disabled without really understanding how they can help you managing and enforcing quality control. At least, that is my experience with them. While knewing high-level what NIOC and SIOC are all about, a deeper understanding can lead to new insights on their impact and how to use them. We feel that this addition to the book helps to gain these insights.
Logo & VMworld sessions
The idea is to provide you with a vSphere Resource kit to fully understand all features from the hardware components and everything involved all the way up to the vSphere clustering service on top of that.
Host Deep Dive book + Clustering Deep Dive book = vSphere Resource kit
The following VMworld sessions are all based on the Deep Dive series:
vSphere Clustering Deep Dive, Part 1: vSphere HA and DRS [VIN1249BU]
vSphere Clustering Deep Dive, Part 2: Quality Control with DRS and Network I/O Control [VIN1735BU]
vSphere Host Resources Deep Dive: Part 3 [VIN1738BU]
Now the Host Deep Resources Deep Dive, Part 3 might be a slightly confusing title. It is part 3 because we already did Part 1 at VMworld 2016 and Part 2 in 2017. We will bring a new awesome way of delivering host resources knowledge in that session. More on that later.
With the arrival of the new Clustering Deep Dive book, we came up with a new logo to accompany the Host Deep Dive logo. There will be a limited number of shirts + stickers (pushing for on-time delivery) that we will bring with us to VMworld. We will give some away in our sessions so make sure to attend!
It can be a bit of a hassle; working on cool projects as a contractor and finding the time to take days off to visit and/or present at a VMworld, VMUG or other industry events. And that is next to putting in the hours to co-write some pretty awesome books if I may say so myself.
Busy but fun times! However, it is really important to me to keep attending industry events. I genuinely love to visit and present as I really see it as a investment in myself and our community. Meeting new people is always fun and interesting, and listening in on sessions is very educational. While doing so, I get the chance to practise public speaking.
It’s only been 2 years since I’ve started to (co-)host presentations. It was the NLVMUG in 2016. I can relate to the excess of rehearsing as Duncan described in his article. I was pretty psyched but mostly nervous to present at a VMUG. I talked in front of customers a lot, but public speaking felt like a totally different ballgame.
But there I was, presenting in front of peers. Looking back at the recordings, there are so many points I want to improve on. And the best way to learn and improve is to do it more often. Around that time, Frank and I started writing our Host Deep Dive book. We got the chance to present some of the content at both VMworlds in 2016.
I remember that VMworld US 2016 was the second or third time I was on stage, but the first time not speaking native tongue. We had a big room and something in the range of 800 registrants! Once we walked to our room, Oceanside D, we witnessed a large amount of people waiting to get into the room. I managed to film the part when they opened the doors:
Very cool to witness, but a little bit scary as well. I kicked of the introductions only to stumble on the very first sentences and had trouble pronouncing our own session title. Talking about #speakerfail. Once I was up to do my part, the nerves settled and I had a lot of fun presenting. Afterwards, people who attended the session were positive and we scored a top-10 session which was awesome!
Since then, I had the chance to do several VMUGs with Frank next to the NLVMUG and both VMworlds again in 2017. We presented at the German, London, Italy and the Nordic VMUG.
Moral of the this short write-up;
If I can do it, you most certainly can!
I talked to a lot of people who want to present at a VMUG or other events, but it looks like they worry far too much to go through with it. It’s okay to be nervous, but don’t let it get you. It’s that thing about stepping outside your comfort zone and into the zone where the magic happens… Presenting is a great opportunity to share your knowledge and experience, and in the process, put your name on the charts.
Upcoming Schedule
Hopefully, I’ll get the chance to present at VMworld 2018. Two session are submitted, session ID 1738 and 1735. Pretty cool as one session will be together with a lead-engineer who works on Network DRS within VMware!
With the support of the VMUG organization and our friends at Rubrik, we will attend the Indianapolis VMUG at the 10th of July. Attending and presenting at one of the largest US based VMUGs will be a very good experience.
Also, the VMUG at Prague on the 24th of May is on the schedule, really looking forward to that one!
There are some other opportunities that are work in progress.
To Conclude
I honestly hope that my experience can encourage others to take the leap of faith and contribute at an upcoming VMUG. Think about that project you’re working on and the design choices you made for it to succeed. Or what about that issue you ran into and solved. All very good content to convey to our VMware community.
Like the Nike campaign launched in 1988 stated; Just do it!!
VMworld is upon us. The schedule builder went live and boy am I excited about VMworld 2017!
SER1872BU
This year Frank and I are presenting the successor of last years session at both VMworlds. We are listed in the schedule builder as SER1872BU – vSphere 6.5 Host Resources Deep Dive: Part 2. We are planning to bring even more ESXi epicness with a slight touch of vSAN and networking information that allows you to prep ESXi to run NFV workloads that drive IoT innovations. Last year we were lucky to have packed rooms in Vegas and Barcelona.
The enthusiasm about our book witnessed so far shows us there is still a lot of love out there for the ESXi hypervisor and ‘under-the-hood’ tech! We are working hard on having an awesome session ready for you!
VMworld Session Picks
This year I want to learn more about NFV, IoT and Edge as I find innovation in these areas intriguing. I found some sessions that look to be very interesting. I supplemented these with talks held by industry titans about various topics. If my schedule lets me, I want to see the following sessions:
Leading the 5G and IoT Revolution Through NFV [FUT3215BU] by Constantine Polychronopoulos
vSAN at the Edge: HCI for Distributed Applications Spanning Retail to IoT [STO2839GU] by Kristopher Groh
VMware Cloud Foundation Futures [PBO2797BU] by Raj Yavatkar
Machine Learning and Deep Learning on VMware vSphere: GPUs Are Invading the Software-Defined Data Center [VIRT1997BU] by Uday Kurkure and Ziv Kalmanovich
Managing Your Hybrid Cloud with VMware Cloud on AWS [LHC2971BU] by Frank Denneman and Emad Younis
The Top 10 Things to Know About vSAN [STO1264BU] by Duncan Epping and Cormac Hogan
There are way more interesting sessions going on! Be sure to find and schedule your favorite ones as rooms tend to fill up quickly!
While being extremely busy to complete our upcoming book, Frank and I are planning to deliver our vSphere 6.5 : Host Resources Deep Dive sessions at several VMUG’s. Just last week we had a blast presenting some Compute and Networking content at one of the largest UserCon VMUGs in the world, the NLVMUG. It was one of the best VMUG UserCons I have ever visited. I do love these days as you really get to connect with your peers and share knowledge and experiences! You can’t afford to miss your local VMUG.
It was very good to see that our room was packed! We got loads of positive feedback which is always nice. It is pretty rewarding to see that the VMware community is taking great interest in our content which is basically about the VMware vSphere layer and how host resources are consumed in ESXi 6.5. To give you some impressions of our session last week, check the pictures below:
After thoroughly enjoying the NLVMUG day, we were on the lookout to attend more VMUGs. So, after having contact with several VMUG leaders, it looks like we are presenting at the following VMUGs:
Belgium VMUG in Mechelen, 12th of May (Didn’t work out planning-wise)
German VMUG in Frankfurt, 14th of June
UK VMUG in London, 22nd of June
If everything follows through, it will be a very good way to meet up with even more people. Be sure to mark these dates your agenda’s, the listed VMUGs are going to be epic!
VMworld 2017
In other news, we also submitted a session for both VMworld US and EMEA 2017. It will be a sequel to our VMworld 2016 top 10 session. Keep an eye out for session ID 1872, vSphere 6.5 Host Resources Deep Dive : Part 2.
We will get the book done long before VMworld, so we are really excited to see the reactions on it. We are working effortlessly, as are our reviewers, to get create a book that can help everybody working with virtual datacenters in their daily job!
Hope to see you at a VMUG or at a VMworld conference!
