Today was the partner day at VMworld EMEA taking place in Barcelona Spain.
I started off by taking the short walk from my hotel in the beautiful morning sunshine a bit of a difference to the cold of Copenhagen last year, or indeed the rain in the UK at the moment!
The conference this year is taking place at the Fira Barcelona Gran Via, a large conference centre located between the airport and the centre of Barcelona
Upon reaching the conference centre there appeared to be some confusion about where the hands on labs were and if anyone other than partners were allowed access. We were soon pointed around the corner from hall 8 and shown into the tradesman’s entrance of halls 6&7. When the conference is open to all tomorrow you will be able to access the hands on labs and the other halls by a bridge from hall 8.
My main goal for today was to attend some of the partner sessions, but as I arrived early (8am) I wanted to get some labs in prior to the sessions starting at 10. This year was the first year that you could not only take a lab in the traditional fashion (a dual screen Wyse P20 with a view session to the lab) but also in a BYOD fashion. The labs can be ran either from a laptop or a tablet but recommendations on twitter from some of he US attendees were to use laptops only, as I have only bought my Nexus 7 tablet I went for the traditional labs.
I sat three labs in total in the time I had, my first lab was HOL-EUC-03 troubleshooting and optimising VMware View, some elements of this were very basic but I did like the tuning PCoIP section which used PCoIP Config by Mind Flux Inc. This free tool isn’t something I had seen before, but I really liked the way it allowed you to play with the PCoIP tuning settings to see the effect. Perfect to use when tuning your settings before putting the finalised tweaks in the PCoIP group policy.
My second was HOL-EUC-07 the SocialCast lab giving a good overview from not only an end users perspective but also an admin, including implementing in your private cloud.
My final lab was HOL-EUC-04 Horizon Application Manager, I have done a small amount of work with applicaion manager since it was released but it was nice to run through all the aspects of management from an administrators perspective. I do wish this lab also covered the implementation and configuration from the ground up though.
That was it for my labs today I am pleased to report they were running well as we have come to expect and any queries were dealt with quickly and easily by the ever dedicated lab staff including a few familiar faces. Over the next few days I will be aiming for some of the vCloud Director labs. My only wish for the labs was that for every lab I take there was an option for me to receive a summary of what I have covered with links to white papers etc.
My day continued with a number of partner sessions many under NDA so I can’t go into much detail.
The sessions closed today with a keynote from Pat Gelsinger who was attending not only his first VMworld EMEA as CEO but was actually his first ever VMworld EMEA.
Pat Gelsinger was followed on stage by Carl Eschenbach Chief Operating Officer and Co President who discussed the software defined datacenter and the VMware partner network.
Finally on stage was Andy Hunt Vice President EMEA of Partners and General business who has now been working for VMware for 10 years! Andy discussed the important relationship between VMware and its partners as well as the trends and opportunities for the industry.
The partner day was followed by the partner welcome party, including live music by a local band Sinaed and the Sinners, drink , food, awards and games.
The partner day has been a great kick off and I’m really looking forward to the keynote by Pat Gelsinger and CTO Steve Herrod tomorrow followed by some more sessions and labs.
Virtualised Reality 