What seemed like forever to get here was over in a blink of an eye. VMworld 2010 in San Francisco was once again an incredible event with over 17,000 people in attendance. Now that I have had a little time to reflect on the past week, I wanted to share my thoughts on the week and the event itself. The weather in San Francisco was unseasonable warm for San Francisco standards during the event but as a person from Florida who enjoys warmer weather the temperature for me was absolutely wonderful. I arrived in town on Sunday afternoon and enjoyed taking advantage of the power of twitter from the San Francisco Airport. Once I landed I sent a tweet out to see who else may have landed and who might want to share a cab to the hotel. Denis Guyadeen (@dguyadeen) responded right back and once we grabbed are luggage we were off and on our way.
Once I got checked in to the hotel and got unpacked I ventured out to the VMworld Registration booth to get registered and pick up the event backpack and swag. Although the event did not officially start until Monday the unofficial start of VMworld was set for Sunday night at the Thirsty Bear for the VMunderground Warm-Up Party as a Service (WuPaaS) pre-party. This was a fun event in itself as well as being a great start of the week with the first opportunity to meet up with my friends and peers that I only seem to see once a year.
vLabs:
The VMworld labs were one of the biggest talking points of the event. The labs were set up in Moscone West and in the course of the event over 150,000 virtual machines were created and destroyed. The labs were running on 3 different hybrid clouds and were really done right. There were even a couple of people who pretty much spent the whole week in the lab completing all 30 labs in that time frame. The labs were really a sight to see and the fact that they were all at Moscone West helped to keep the North and South halls from being too crowded.
HyTrust:
It is worth mentioning some of the technology that left an impression. First off, one of my personal favourite is the HyTrust security technology. A quick look at a couple of features will show how the product speaks for itself:
- Unified Authentication: Intercepts virtual infrastructure management requests over any access method, including SSH, programmatic APIs, and vSphere Client (vSphere-Client-to-ESX or vSphere-Client-to-vCenter) to provide consistent access control enforcement.
- Directory Server Bridging: Natively integrates with Microsoft ActiveDirectory–as well as any LDAP v3 server–so that organizations can leverage a pre-existing repository of users, roles, and groups to provide unified access across heterogenous infrastructure.
- Two-factor Authentication: Native support for two-factor authentication solutions, including RSA SecurID, enabling organizations to achieve strong authentication without requiring manual configuration or integration of each individual virtualization host.
- Root Password Vaulting: Locks down privileged host accounts and provides passwords for temporary use to enable time-limited privileged account access.
- Wide platform support for VMware: Compatible with VMware vSphere and ESXi (ESX 3.5/4.0; ESXi 3.5/4.0). Support for vCenter Server 2.5 and 4.0.
Xsigo:
I got to spend some time checking out the Xsigo technology and have to admit I really think they may be on to something. The Xsigo I/O Director dramatically reduces the capital and operational costs of server connectivity. By dynamically connecting any server to any network — both Ethernet and Fibre Channel — Xsigo virtual I/O enables a simpler, lower cost infrastructure that eliminates the limitations of cards, cables, and switch ports. With Xsigo virtual I/O, you can move, add, or change connectivity on demand. Configure up to 64 isolated connections per server through a single cable. Networks and storage all connect to the I/O Director, which in turn connects to each server via a single cable (or two for redundancy). Xsigo offers both InfiniBand and standard Ethernet options for server connectivity. Unlike any other virtual I/O or unified computing solutions on the market, only Xsigo lets you converge server I/O using the ports your servers already have. This should really help clean up the cable messes I have seen in some Datacenters and can really help reduce costs in cabling. I think it will be interesting how Xsigo technology catches on and makes its way into the Datacenters.
Veeam:
Last but definitely not least was the VMworld 2010 Best in Show Award winner Veeam Software. Congratulations to the Veeam Team for winning 4 awards at VMworld 2010 – the first company ever to do so!
- Veeam Backup & Replication™ v5: Best of Show
- vPower™ : Gold award in New Technology
- Veeam ONE™: Finalist in Virtualization
Management 2-time award winner! - Veeam Backup & Replication 4.1: Finalist in Business Continuity and Data Protection 2-time award winner!
What a week and what a show. Next year, Vegas!! Hope to see you all there.
Virtualization is a journey, not a project