Continuation of Jon’s pre-VMWorld 2010-conference post). I will be the first to admit that I had no idea exactly what to expect when going to VMworld 2010. The signage and advertising used during VMworld was awesome. This year’s theme was “Virtual Roads. Actual Clouds.” Utilizing this theme, all signage was based around road signs. You will see a few examples in the blog. My first stop was Moscone Center West. This is where the LabCloud was being run. Only part of the datacenter was actually local to VMworld, the rest was being hosted by Terramark and Verizon remotely. Using Cloud Computing as an IT platform, we were able to deliver over 15,000 labs which required over 145,000 virtual machines to complete.
Just a little further down the road, Moscone North and South held the rest of the weekly activities.[/caption] The previous comparison to E3 or Tokyo Games show felt very appropriate. The ‘Solutions Exchange’ (Expo) contained demos of all shapes and forms, many vendors showing their product, and even a few “booth babes” along to entice the crowd. My actual contributions were shown in the very middle of this floor. The VMware Genius Bar was used to provide technical assistance on all VMware products to attendees of the conference. My specialty is VMware Lab Manager, as well as VMware vCloud Director. Yes, I said VMware vCloud Director. It might have been the best worst kept secret ever, but we announced VMware vCloud Director during the VMworld keynote. If you wish to see more specifics, take a peek here: http://www.vmware.com/products/vcloud/
Not everything was work while in San Francisco. I would definitely recommend going to the ‘Little Delhi’ Restaurant while in town, as it is just a short walking distance from most of the hotels. There were a couple super cars spotted at different locations, like a Bugatti Veyron. After having been there, everyone that is in IT and uses VMware product should go at least once. VMworld Europe 2010 is in about a month, but we should all be planning a trip to Las Vegas for VMworld 2011!
About the Silicon Halton Member Blogger
Jonathan Hemming is a VMware staff member based in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. By day, he works as an Escalation Engineer at VMWare’s offices in Burlington, and works on some of the more complex problems with software like VMware Lab Manager. You can find Jon on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter @vJonHemming.