Maybe next year I will do some live blogging from the show, but this time I decided to assemble a summary of my week instead.  I did fire off an unusually high number of tweets during the week, thanks in no small part to Rich Brambley’s #vmworld3word game.

Day 0 — Monday

Monday morning I drove up to San Francisco — nice thing about VMworld being local to VMware HQ.  Along with others on my team, presented to the Partner Technical Advisory Board (PTAB).  Somehow, one of my key slides did not make it into the final consolidated presentation deck there, which was unfortunate — had to wing it.  Got to meet Scott Lowe and Rich Brambley face-to-face for the first time.  Also met some other partners who liked our presentation content and were interested in follow-up sessions for their teams.

During lunch at Chevy’s with some of my teammates, we ran into a former coworker who had joined the dark side.  He is a really nice guy and I wish him the best — even if he was wearing a fluorescent yellow shirt all week.  This is business, not personal.

Monday evening I wandered the solutions exchange during the welcome reception — it was very crowded.  Hung around the Community area and met some of the bloggers and customers like Jason Boche, Eric Siebert, Colin Steele, Joep Piscaer, Lars Trøen,and Mark Ylvisaker.  Joined the tweetup organized by John Troyer on Monday evening, after the welcome reception closed.

Day 1 — Tuesday

Opening keynote from Paul Martiz.  Plenty of others have already summarized the keynote; I won’t do it again.  I’ll just say that it’s great to have Paul Maritz at the helm of VMware.  I thought the hardware integration demos from server partners were excellent.  IBM demonstrated detailed monitoring of power consumption — including power per virtual machine.  HP’s Insight Control that integrates with vSphere is nothing short of awesome.

Spent a lot of time walking the solutions exchange floor.  Really enjoyed talking to VMware partners that offer deep integration with vCenter, such as NetIQ and eG Innovations.  I also see a lot of promise in the vCloud Express partners — got a nice demo from Terremark which started me thinking…  Then, at the Tripwire booth, Steve Beaver and Ted Gary were both there, so I stopped in to say hi.

In the afternoon, I rehearsed a few times for the session I had to deliver on Wednesday.  I wanted it to go as smoothly as possible for the attendees that would allocate a portion of their valuable time to hear what I have to say.

Tuesday evening there was a team dinner with my coworkers at Espetus Churrascaria.  In an interesting coincidence, the cabbie that drove me to the restaurant was from Brazil — he said I definitely had to try the chicken hearts.  They were not so bad.

Day 2 — Wednesday

The keynote from Steve Herrod was cool, with great demos delivered by some of the other VMware guys like Mike Coleman.

Delivered my session (VM3085 — Top 10 Reasons Why vCenter is the Best Platform for Virtualization Management) in the afternoon.  It went off without a hitch, and I enjoyed fielding questions from customers afterward.

Later in the day, HyTrust CEO Eric Chiu gave me a demo of their security appliance. It is an impressive product, and that’s not just my opinion — it won Best of Show this year.

Also got to meet Gabrie van Zanten face-to-face in the VMware Communities area.  Almost met everyone listed on my blogroll now.

The VMworld 2009 party was Wednesday evening and Foreigner put on a great show — despite the criticism leading up to VMworld, it appeared to me that most people were having an excellent time.

Enjoy it again for just 99 cents: Juke Box Hero

Day 3 — Thursday

Ears still ringing from the concert, started off the day with a proper breakfast at Mel’s.  Sorry, VMworld planners, those muffin-and-banana breakfasts just do not provide the nourishment a person needs for a grueling day of walking around Moscone.

Decided to head over to the Marriott first thing and take a shot at the VMware Certified Professional 4 (VCP4) exam.  While I was there I bumped into Duncan Epping — finally got to chat with him face-to-face.  He gave me the idea to review the vSphere Configuration Maximums document before taking the exam — that was time well spent.  Passed (hello 400) the VCP4 with flying colors.  Literally — check out the flashing glasses.

Back at Mosone, I stopped by the VMworld Book Store to meet PowerShell guru Hal Rottenberg — he was there signing copies of his book on managing VMware Infrastructure with PowerShell.  I was one of the reviewers for that book last year, so it was good to meet him in person.  After that I went to a couple of sessions and took one last walk through the Solutions Exchange looking for must-have schwag.  I picked up some USB flash drives from HP (hello 2GB), Dell, and eG Innovations — thanks!

Conclusion

The highlight of VMworld for me this year was the chance to meet so many people face-to-face for the first time after getting to know them online via blogging and Twitter — the reason I decided to mention so many individuals in this post.

In addition, I am impressed by the vibrant community that has grown up around VMware, especially the management products that integrate deeply with vCenter — on both the back end and in the vSphere Client.

Enjoy the long weekend, we’ll resume regular VCritical programming soon.

Related posts:

1. How to get to VMworld 2009
2. Developer Day at VMworld 2009
3. Is SCVMM 2008 R2 really banned from VMworld?
4. 140 vSpheres/hour

As you can see, there are minor changes to the font — well, if you are a graphic designer you probably don’t think the changes are minor — but the biggest difference is the removal of the “three boxes.”

The old logo is dead!  Long live the new logo!

Not quite –from what I hear, the new logo will be phased in over time in a cost-effective way.  I’m sure the shareholders appreciate that.

For comparison, here is what the old logo looked like:

What do you think of the new logo?

Related posts:

1. When does your “free” Hyper-V Server cost $1304?
2. Get a better font for PuTTY
3. Exclusive: Hyper-V 2013 Product Roadmap
4. Need $57,000?

I first read of this particular issue on Network World today.  But unlike the official Microsoft Virtualization Team Blog, NW actually includes some details about this supposed ban — like this quote from an official VMware spokeswoman:

Yes, competing vendors are allowed to exhibit, including exhibiting competing products.

The VMworld contract was big news — back in May — but since then, like it or not, most competitors and industry watchers have conceded that the fine print in the VMworld contract is industry standard.  Just read the comments in that Virtualization.info article referenced by MSFT.

While it does make for pretty good drama, you should know that VMware has not banned Microsoft from exhibiting SCVMM 2008 R2.  I do admit, “Try the virtualization manager that VMware doesn’t want you to see!” does sound a lot more intriguing than “Here’s SCVMM R2, it does mostly the same stuff as the first release, and it can manage vSphere now — if you count VI3 feature parity.”

See you at VMworld.

Related posts:

1. Hello, SCVMM 2008 R2
2. How to get to VMworld 2009
3. What’s New (and What’s Vapor) in SCVMM 2008
4. Wild SCVMM 2008 R2 rumors and speculation

What if such an event was conveniently scheduled with VMworld 2009 in San Francisco on August 31st?

Too good to be true?  Not at all — it’s called Technology Exchange Developer Day and is just $249.

Check out the VMware Developer Center Blog for more details.

Related posts:

1. Is SCVMM 2008 R2 really banned from VMworld?
2. My VMworld 2009 Experience
3. How to get to VMworld 2009
4. Book Review: VMware VI and vSphere SDK

Something new in my budget this year is explicit funding for several people to go to VMworld. Over the last few years I’ve been able to attend as part of my organization’s training budget. With budgets shrinking I want to ensure that some folks get to go in 2009, so I’m building it into my service fees.

Sounds like excellent advice.  In his artice he also explains where the extra money in his budget will actually come from.

Related posts:

1. My VMworld 2009 Experience
2. Developer Day at VMworld 2009
3. Is SCVMM 2008 R2 really banned from VMworld?
4. What is Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization?