The second day at VMworld EMEA started with the Steve Herrod’s keynote speech this time focusing on end user computing a great passion of mine.

The keynote discussed the importance of flexibility and allowing the end users choice in devices to ensure they were able to be more productive.

Steve Herrod recapped the improvements in the View 5.1 release, going over functionality such as the storage accelerator and enhancements in PCoIP.

He went on to introduce the Horizon Suite, a collection of solutions we have previously seen or been aware of, but now coming together into a comprehensive suite of end user computing focused solutions.

For the first time we saw Project Octopus renamed as Horizon Data, we will also see tight integration with Horizon Application manager and this will offer the first opportunity for for us to see the HTML5 remoting technology AppBlast in action for tablet users connecting into their View desktop via the Horizon Suite. No dates were announced for the availability of the Horizon Suite but it is currently in Alpha.

The next subject of the keynote was VMware Mirage which has come from the Wanova acquisition, as we have come to expect Vittorio Viarengo, Vice President Marketing for End User Computing came on stage to show us how Mirage works from an end users perspective. The demo entailed a laptop being upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7 whilst the user was still using it, a simple reboot and the laptop booted into Windows 7 with the applications and data still in place, the desktop was then moved into a view desktop when then laptop was damaged and finally from View to VMware Fusion.

I really enjoyed hearing about the announcements surrounding end user computing, it proves VMware are no longer a one trick pony in the end user computing space and that this is a serious direction for VMware.

Finally we saw a new addition to the CTOs keynote with the diamond sponsors being invited to stage for a quick fire demo, the audience were then given a chance to complete polls and vote for their favourite demo, with the winner getting a $10,000 to a nominated charity. Dell, Cisco, HP, EMC and NetApp all took part and EMC won with a VVol demo on the EMC vplex by storage god Chad Sakac. EMC will be donating the money to a down syndrome foundation in Madrid. However VMware announced they would also donate to all the other charities.

Following the keynote I spent a lot of my time in the Solutions Exchange talking to various vendors, I had a long chat with Devin Hamilton of Nimble and it was really great to see how far they have come in the last year, their team has grown substantially, they have recently announced the ability to add disk shelves to their SANs to allow not only grid based expansion but now frame based to allow you to have the flexibility to grow the environment to your needs. They have also worked with a number of partners including Cisco to have their SANs included in many of the VMware Rapid Deployment Program solutions for View. I’m looking forward to doing some blog posts on the Nimble SAN shortly.

I also spent some time with the guys from Fusion IO, they seem to be doing very well at the moment with their cards being featured in a number of solutions and reference architectures for VDI, one example of this is how it is being utilised in the Nutanix solutions. I will hopefully be working with Fusion IO to do a blog post on using their product in a View solution shortly.

I was also given the opportunity to speak with David Angwin marketing director of Dell Wyse and Rafeal Colorado Cloud Client Computer Marketing Director to discuss end user computing with Dell. Dell had a very large end user computing presence at VMworld EMEA in my personal opinion this was at the loss of the storage division who had little to no presence at the show which was a big shame especially with all the competitors being heavily represented in that space.

Dell were announcing 2 major new products at VMworld EMEA the first was its new Desktop as a Service solution now available within Europe from its Slough based datacenter, the solution is built around VMware View and pricing starts at £29 per month. I’m going to be interested to see how this works and how partners will be able to integrate with it to build complete cloud solutions for their customers, watch this space.

The second as mentioned yesterday was the announcement of the new Tera 2 thin client, the new P25 and the unfortunately named for the UK market P45 are now available, with the P25 being dual screen and the P45 being quad screen. They have also expanded support for their T50 ARM SoC thin client to include PCoIP support.

I was only able to fit one lab in today and that was the delivering optimal performance with VMware vSphere 5.1, there was some good content in this lab but I think it spent a bit too long covering the Java application that we were using to cause the problems that we were then fixing. But overall I felt I recovered ground that I had previously looked at but equally it was good to refresh these skills and there were a number of elements that I was able to take away.

The focus on the evening was a number of parties, the first being a small Xsigo champagne reception where it was good to catch up with a number of friendly faces on a balcony room near the conference centre. The second being the VMworld party making place in a transformed hall 8 at the Gran Fira venue, the party had an 8 bit computer game theme, there was pedal kart racing, costumes, retro games, pool tables and more. There was also a live band ‘black rock’ who in my opinion weren’t that good, more screaming than singing and didn’t fit well with the theme of the party, I think a good DJ would have gone down better if there wasn’t going to be a big name band. All together I did enjoy the party their was good food, a memorable theme and it was good to catch up with other VMworld attendees.

Today was the first day of VMworld EMEA in Barcelona after yesterdays partner day. The morning kicked off with a keynote by Pat Gelsinger CEO and Steve Herrod. The keynote started the same as VMworld US earlier in the year with live music and drumming coming from the large VMworld 2012 drums.

See the video below

During the keynote there were several announcements mostly around the vCloud Suite management, including VMware vCloud Automation manager which comes from the acquisition of Dynamic Ops.

I really liked the look of this product and it will be interesting to see how in the future it integrates more highly with vCloud director. There were also live demos of vCloud director and its refreshed UI and lots more.

My first session was regarding Zimbra 8 VMware’s mail and collaboration platform. This session was a little basic but gave a good overview of the latest version and the updated UI. I also liked the UC elements that have been integrated utilising partnerships with Mitel and Cisco.

After my first session I headed over to the labs via the solutions exchange hall

My first lab of the day was surrounding vCloud Director, i really enjoyed this lab it gave a good overview not only from and administrators perspective but also as a cloud consumer.

I spent a lot of my time today in the Solutions Exchange hall chatting to many of the companies. Next generation storage has a heavy presence, Tintri, Nimble, Violin Memory and Fusion IO are amongst the ones I have enjoyed learning more about the most. It certainly is becoming and increasingly crowded market place though.

Whilst in the solutions exchange it was good to catch up with Dell and see the new quarter height blades unfortunately the Equallogic storage blade wasn’t on display.

It was also good to catch up with the Embotics and see their latest release of vCommander, they definitely win best USB stick award.

I stopped by the Teradici stand who were displaying a pre release of RDSH utilising PCoIP for a brokered RDS session. This is something that I think some of my customers would use when available. They also had a collection of the now available tera 2 thin clients available including the 4 DVI Wyse P45

Probably my favourite session of VMworld so far was VMware View Storage and Thinking outside the box, covering the usage of local flash based storage to bring down the costs of VDI. Wish one fusion IO card they could comfortably get 200 users per box and 500 when pushing to the Max. They also had a live environment white box for us to connect to and test it.

My final lab of the day was auto deploy where we utilised auto deploy to upgrade a vSphere 5.0 host to 5.1. Most of this was done through the new vSphere web client with the repository configuration etc being completed via Powershell. I haven’t done much with Auto Deploy but compared to my experience with it during previous VMworlds and training courses the improvements in 5.1 seemed to have made it easier to use than ever before.

Day 2 kicks off tomorrow with a second end user computing focused keynote.

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.

My appologese for the delay with this post, things have been a little manic since I got back from VMworld Europe, I have previously blogged about my experience of the first 3 days at VMworld Europe. The 4th and final day for me started with Paul Maritz’s keynote.

The keynote started with three of VMware’s customers presenting their uses of VMware’s products, first on stage were Ducati talking about their server virtualisation, Ducati are now approximatly 97% virtualised and all ontop of VMware.

Next on stage were NYSE Euronet, describing how they were building a private Cloud for their customers, the cloud that they are builing uses a dedicated worldwide network for their industry and doesnt touch the internet.

The final customer on stage was SAP, SAP started virtualising some 10 years ago, they now have over 25,000 virtual machines and 1000 ESX hosts. Over 80% of new server are built as VM’s (I wonder what the restriction is that stops this being nearer 100%?)

Next on stage it was Paul Maritz, Paul took us on a journey throigh the cloud era, starting with the mainframe. Paul’s first job in the IT indusrty was working with a mainframe in London.

Paul went on to explain how VMware are working on a complete suite for operational effciency at the infrastructure level, they have a product in every area now and are working on maturing these products as we have seen through VMworld.

Finally Paul talked about the reveloution of the end user, explaining that the consumer industry was now dictating the devices that users hold in their hands and now business. VMware are working towards any application, any device, anywhere, anytime.

I enjoyed the keynote and although a lot of it had been heard before in some form it is always good to hear it in person from the industry leaders.

The most of the remainder of my day was spent in the labs and Solution Exchange.

The first lab I sat was building a hybrid cloud, this was a really good insight for me into vCloud Director and how it is working behind the scenes.

Next was deploying vCloud Director with Nexus 1000V, for me I looked to take this lab to get some experience with the Nexus 1000V to which I wasnt disappointed, although it has highlighted that I want to get this setup from scratch in my home lab. The lab didn’t start from scratch, in that aspect the 1000V was already installed.

Next I wanted to sit one of the labs that was completly out of my comfort zone, so I chose Exploring your core email and collaboration services migration, this lab covered migrating users from Exchange to Zimbra, I have never been heavily involved with Exchange (More Domino in the past) so this was really a completly new topic for me, I was pleased to see how easy it was to migrate from Exchange to Zimbra with the built in tools. It was also a good oppertunutity for me to have a look around Zimbra and I wasnt disapointed, I will be interested to find out more about Zimbra in my home lab.

My final lab before the labs closed was controlling SaaS and Web Application with Secure Access to Your Cloud Applications, this covered Horizon App Manager amongst other techniques, having sat this lab I cant wait for Horizon App Manager to be avaialable in the UK, it was a very easy way to be able to manage the distribution of your ThinApp packages and integration with SaaS providors for single sign on is growing to be a must have service for business.

Once the labs were closed I spent the remainder of the afternoon in the solution Exchange visiting vendors I hadn’t spoken too and speaking to various people on the VMware stand about vSphere 5, View and the new products coming from the Shavlik aqcuasition.

This bought to an end my first ever VMworld experience and I thoughly enjoyed it, I didnt get to attend as many sessions as I would have liked but I will look forward to catching up what I have missed out on when the sessions are available. Copenhagen was a fantastic location for VMworld and I hope I get to attend next year in Barcelona. I feel in my possition within a reseller being part of leading my company in the right direction and speaking to my customers about the benefits of the various products and what is happening in the industry this event is a must.

My main role post VMworld is to research the technologies that impressed me, ensure that what I learned during VMworld is put to use not just by myself but my other collegues. My company is hosting a number of customer seminars and my role is to present what happened at VMworld and what direction VMware are heading in as well as building a mobile enviroment to support the seminar on tour.

I will leave you with a few photos I took from my journey to Copenhagen for VMworld Europe 2011