VMworld 2009 - Day 1

I must say Day 1 of VMworld was pretty sleepy. Seemed like most of the day was meant for partner track stuff or self-paced workshops, all of which seemed pretty basic.

The main activity of the day for most folks seemed to be the vendor floor opening at 5:30. Lots of booths, although this being my first time I can't comment on how it compares to previous years (anecdotal evidence seems to indicate its a bit smaller this year). Nonetheless, if there's one thing I know it's that free beer and food will bring the geeks out in droves :)

It was pretty easy to pick out a couple of major themes on the vendor floor. Desktop virtualization and continuous availability/protection seemed to be the two major themes. I did have a couple interesting conversations:

1) I was ecstatic to learn that Symantec NetBackup 7 will finally allow for incremental block level backup and file-level restore for Linux guests. This has been in their roadmap for awhile, but I was starting to worry that like most roadmap features it would turn out to be vaporware. I was less ecstatic to learn that it will not support *all* Linux filesystems right away, rather they will be putting out updates to 7.0 as they slowly add support for more filesystems. Really hoping they support ext3 right out of the gate.

2) Had an interesting talk with the Dell storage guys about EqualLogic. They were demoing forthcoming 10GigE arrays. Interesting (but unsurprising) note: When we were sold our two arrays (a PS 6000XV and a PS 6000E), we were told that the controllers could easily be swapped out as new features (such as 10GigE) became available. While this is true it sounds like replacing the controllers in any PS series array would be about as expensive as buying a new array.

I humored a few other reps, but nothing else really sticks out in my mind. The floor was packed, and soon the prospect of shoving my way through more aisles just for another free beer seemed unpalatable. Now to find a quiet bar where I can have a couple of (hopefully) cheap drinks and get ready for my instructor-led workshops tomorrow. I'll be attending:

1) The morning key note with VMware CEO Paul Maritz

2) Incident Tracking in a Virtualized Data Center

3) Deploying vSphere Management Automation Technologies: Dependency Mapping, Root Cause, Configuration & Compliance, ITIL

4) Hypervisor Competitive Differences: What the Vendors Aren't Telling You

5) Understanding Host and Guest Memory Usage and Other Memory Management Topics

Should be a great day of tasty vm-ness.