VMworld kicked off this morning and to capture the feel of the event I have decided to create a photo stream which I will update regularly throughout the week with updates on the various sights at the event and around the conference area in general.  I have also included a live Twitter feed for the hashtag #VMworld – this is a great way to keep up with the play on what people are saying and doing regarding the event. So keep this page book market and and refresh this page for regular photo and live VMworld Twitter feed updates. 

REGULAR LIVE STREAM PHOTOS

• Photosets

LIVE TWITTER FEED

Hey all you TechHeads!  Eric Siebert, Simon Gallagher and myself have our session at VMworld San Francisco today(Monday, Midday (noon) Moscone West, Room 2007) called, “Building an Affordable vSphere Environment for a Lab or Small Business”.  In our session we will be covering the many subject areas around building a successful vSphere SMB or home/work lab solution, including server hardware, storage, network, and licensing, and of course no self respecting session would be complete without a demonstration on how to bring it all together.

So if you’re attending VMworld hope you come along, ask questions and don’t forget to say “Hi!”.  More details below. 

Title:
Building an Affordable vSphere Environment for a Lab or Small Business

Abstract:
This session will cover how to build a vSphere home lab or an environment for use in a small business. It will cover the following areas:
1) How to choose the hardware, including white box hardware, brand name hardware, network components and storage
2) What the hardware compatibility guide means and the consequences of using unsupported hardware
3) Making sure the hardware you choose will work with vSphere
4) Using VMware Workstation to run
nested hypervisors and virtual machines
5) Using ESX or ESXi to run nested hypervisors or virtual machines
6) Installing ESXi on to a USB flash drive
7) How to choose and use affordable shared storage devices
Using free ESXi and free administration tools to manage it
9) Using the affordable Essentials editions to gain big features at a reduced cost
10) Putting it all together to make a virtual environment

US Speaker:
Eric Siebert Senior Systems Administrator
Boston Market
Simon Gallagher Infrastructure Architect
vinf.net
Simon Seagrave Senior Technical Consultant/vSpecialist
EMC Corporation

Technical Level:
Technical

Track:
Virtualization 101

Subtopic:
Business Benefits of Virtualization

Area of Interest:
SMB, Education

Length:
60 minutes

Schedule Information

Time:
Monday 12:00 PM

Room:
Moscone West Room 2007

It’s been a busy morning so far with couriers dropping off my own copy of Eric Siebert’s new VMware vSphere book this morning called ‘Maximum vSphere’ which I fortunate enough to write a couple of chapters for (ie: Performance and Building vSphere Labs chapters – see my earlier post here for more details. Also, the first of the book reviews have started rolling in – Check out vCritical’s review here ) and also my TechHead polo shirts arrived all ready for VMworld San Francisco!

During the day at VMworld I will of course be wearing my fetching (I’ll let you decide) EMC vSpecialist bowling/NAScar style shirt, though I thought why not put together some TechHead shirts for a those “more casual” evening and weekend events where wearing my vSpecialist outfit wouldn’t be entirely appropriate.  Besides, I only have one vSpecialist shirt at the moment and I need to make that last as long as possible – though apparently (I hope) we do have more on the way, which will be good for everyone involved. 

For those of you attending VMworld San Francisco this year why not come and say “Hi”, it’d be great to meet you! 

Things I know I’ll definitely be involved in at this stage whilst at VMworld are:

Saturday 28th August @ 7:00pm	vBeers – Relaxed, social gathering of virtualization enthusiasts.  Everyone welcome and no registration required – just rock on up!  Good opportunity to meet with your peers and discuss anything from the weather through to virtualization.  See my post here for details of the venue and other information around this vBeers event.
Monday 30th August @ Midday	V18328 Building an Affordable vSphere Environment for a Lab or Small Business Session – Presenting with Eric Siebert & Simon Gallagher.  Thinking of running your own vSphere environment in a lab or SMB area then don’t miss this VMworld session (or course I’m going to say that).
Monday – Thursday @ Various Times	EMC vSpecialist Booth and Lab duties – I’m looking forward to this as it is always fun working on a stand talking about IT tech that I am interested in and excited about.  Swing past and come and say “Hi”.
Thursday Morning @ 8:30AM	vChat – A special breakfast vChat VMworld wrap-up episode with David, Eric and myself. Place for recording TBC – though watch this space for details if you’d like to come along a be part of a vChat.

The last before heading away whether it be on holiday or to a conference event is always something of a manic affair, trying to tie up loose and ends and ensuring that appropriate handover of information and clients has taken place. On that note, I had better get back to things…

Hope to see you at VMworld San Francisco or Copenhagen!