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London VMUG – January 2013 = EUC + VXLAN + BigData +Certs = Register Now!

January 15th, 2013 No comments

The London VMware User Group (VMUG) gathers again following the great success of the UK National VMUG last November. The meeting is on the 24th January 2013 at:

London Chamber of Commerce and Industry
33 Queen Street
London,
EC4R 1AP

It’s a free to attend full day event packed with interesting useful content with even lunch included and certainly worth a day out of the office. You can register at http://www.vmug.com/e/in/eid=695.

Brian Gammage who is VMware’s chief market technologist will be speaking about VMware’s vision for End User Computing (EUC) in Journey to the Post-PC Era and will also be chairing what promises to be a very interesting panel discussion EUC Panel with VDI Gurus which I’ve been asked to participate in.

From VMware, we have Spencer Pitts doing a What’s Here and What’s Coming Soon all about VMware’s EUC products and Kim Raynard will be talking about ex-Dynamic Ops, now vCloud Automation Center (vCAC).

Dan Senior who is Colt’s lead architect for their vCloud platform will be speaking about Deploying vCloud Director 5.1 and VXLAN.

VMUG regular presenter Stu Radnidge will be talking about Big Data for the Uninitiated.

Gregg Robertson will be letting you know about VMware Certification Updates.

Eric Sloof will also be jetting over from the Netherlands to give us an HA deep dive.

There are also sponsor presentations from Nutanix, Zerto and 10Zig.

You can see the full agenda here.

After filling your head with superb technical content, it’s time to fill your tummy with a tasty beverage so we’ll all be heading on to the pub to catch up and solve the worlds EUC and cloud  issues!

See you there.

Categories: VMUG, VMware Tags: , ,

vSphere Networking and Converged IO with Blade Servers – a UK VMUG presentation

November 15th, 2012 No comments

I have had the pleasure today of presenting at the second  UK VMware User Group. at the National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull, near Birmingham.

My presentation was titled vSphere Networking and Converged IO with Blade Servers.

I discussed how converged networking incorporating 10GE and FCoE is become more important as we try to utilise bandwidth more efficiently which is especially important with blade servers which have limited IO expansion. I explained the architecture of Cisco UCS and HP Virtual Connect as examples and how they can work with vSphere.

I went through some of the IO convergence options and also how to still protect your traffic by using either physical or logical separation or software.

No need to repeat everything else in this blog post, you may as well have a look at the presentation and best of all plan to attend a VMUG near you!

UK VMUG – 15 November 2012 & I’ll be presenting

October 30th, 2012 No comments

Update: 11 November – WIN A FANTASTIC PRIZE!!!

During my session I will be giving away a voucher for FREE access to all on-demand recorded VMworld 2012 sessions and content which includes:

  1. Videos (general sessions and super sessions)
  2. Flash presentations w/ audio over slides (all breakout sessions)
  3. PDF downloads (all sessions and labs)
  4. MP3 podcats (all sessions)
  5. Demo videos and scripts (select sessions and labs)

Just attend my session and have a chance to win this amazing prize, worth more than £500!!

Registration is now open for the second annual combined national UK VMUG is being held on Thursday 15th November 2012 from 8am-5pm with a pre-event vCurry reception the night before from 7pm-9pm.

The location is the same as last year:motorcycle

National Motorcycle Museum
Coventry Road
Bickenhill, Solihull, West Mids,
England
B92 0EJ

The day promises to be packed full of in-depth technical sessions, demonstrations and partner exhibits with a speaking line-up that can only be beaten by VMworld itself.

There are presentations by some of VMware’s premiere knowledge experts, including resource and availability gurus Duncan Epping & Frank Denneman, VCDXs Hugo Phan & Aidan Dalgleish, Mr. VMware Storage, Cormac Hogan and automation luminaries Alan Renouf and William Lam along with many others.

You can hear all about VMware’s vision of the Software Defined Data Centre from VMware’s European Chief Technologist Joe Baguley as well as Staying Sharp in IT from well known EMC industry expert Scott Lowe.

What is also exciting is there are a large number of community presentations by independents giving you the real how-to from the trenches sans the marketing.

I’ll be presenting a session on vSphere Networking and Converged IO with Blade Servers. I will be going through how blade servers bring converged IO to vSphere Networking and what design options you have to ensure high performance and availability.

The other community presentations are:

Ricky El-Qasem | Creating VMware Apps for Novice Programmers

Chris Dearden | A Techie’s Guide to Getting the Most Out of IT Support

Mike Laverick | Building my vCloud Director Home Lab

Tom Howarth | Deep Dive on Desktop Design for VDI

VMUGs are fantastic days filled with information that is invaluable to any IT person working with virtualisation. It’s not just the presentations that are useful but the chance to network with fellow IT people and share problems and solutions. Every time I attend I come back with a list of things I’ve learnt.

You can see the full agenda and register here: http://www.myvmug.org/e/in/eid=106&source=5

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Categories: VMUG, VMware Tags: , , ,

Help, My VDI Project is Hell! – a London VMUG presentation

May 17th, 2012 2 comments

Today I have the pleasure of talking at the London VMware User Group.

My presentation is called Help, My VDI Project is Hell!

There are many complexities with VDI projects causing many to fail at the planning stage, at the POC or testing stage or even worse during the implementation phase.

I go through some of the Magic Fixes that VDI is meant to solve and what the reality often turns out to be with all this new technology you need to consider.

Looking at some research stats, many companies are doing VDI for the wrong reasons with many thinking they should do VDI to save costs and then realising this often isn’t the case.

VDI is great for many use cases, remote connectivity, security, quicker provisioning, containing your VM info, maybe availability, maybe easier management but can be also terrible in many circumstances with performance, user experience, cost, peripherals, licensing, flexibility, support and general complexity issues.

I then go through the 3 things you need to work out, your strategy, your apps and your users.

Read more…

Categories: VDI, VMUG, VMware Tags: , ,

I’m talking VDI at the London VMware User Group, 17 May 2012 – register now!

April 27th, 2012 No comments

Check your diaries, the next London VMware User Group will be on the 17th May 2012 at the.

I have the lucky task of presenting again at one of the sessions. I’m going to be talking VDI with a presentation I’ve  called for fun “Help, My VDI Project is Hell!” I’ve found many VDI projects fall apart at some stage so I’m going to be dolling out some of my strategic musings on tackling the VDI minefield and then hopefully offer some practical & useful tips to help you make your project a success if you decide VDI is for you.

Even if you don’t want to hear me drone on again and VDI isn’t something you are interested in, there’s plenty more to find out during the day with presentations from 6 community members! I think this may be a London VMUG record which I’m very proud to be part of. I’m very keen on ensuring there’s plenty of U being put into VMUGs  along with all the other presentations from VMware and other vendors.

The presentations by users are:

  • Darren Woollard: Over to You: Design Me a Highly Available Virtualised Infrastructure
  • Chris Kranz: Flexpod: The Flexible Converged Infrastructure
  • Ricky El-Qasem: Writing VMware Apps for Novice Programmers
  • Neil Mills: The vMarket – Skills in Demand for the Next Five Years
  • Steve Bryen: Management and Orch’n – What, Why & How

Read more…

Categories: VMUG Tags: ,

WOW, thanks to the VMware community and London VMUG!!

February 14th, 2012 No comments

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend the London VMware User Group meeting on the 26th January, the first I’ve missed in a quite a while but hopefully I had a good enough excuse!

However, I was surprised and extremely honoured to hear I had been awarded “Best Community Presentation 2011” award for one of my presentations during the year, Upgrading from vSphere 4 to 5 at the first ever UK VMware User Group. This was a combined meeting of the London, Northern and Scottish VMUGs held in the National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull.

I am a fervent believer in the power of community and the VMware user groups in particular do a fantastic job of bringing together people with a passion for IT and virtualisation in general and in their simplest form allow information to flow and fantastically it’s not just from VMware’s side as the VMUGs are independently run and so are designed to get to please YOU, not VMware. Networking on a human level at a VMUG is not handing out your business card at a cocktail party but rather it’s all about community spirit, sharing ideas, asking questions, getting involved and hopefully getting something out of it at the end of the day. I’m just glad that I’ve been fortunate enough to have a chance to empart some information and give back a little of the deluge of awesome info I have received in the past.

I was going to write a post on how important user groups are and how you really should get involved in any way you can and even take the plunge and put together a presentation yourself or with a colleague or friend but Jonathan Medd, a fellow prize winner and all-round community guru has done such a great job already in his post: Your Local Technical User Group Needs You. All I would add is take the plunge and go for it, mix the knowledge you have gained from others with your bit of magic sprinkle and share it for the greater good. Yes, putting together a presentation takes a huge amount of time but you may surprise yourself with what you learn in the process and it is actually great fun standing up and showing off your work, honestly!

Thanks to the committee of Alaric,  Jane, Simon and Stu who do a phenomenal amount of work behind the scenes to put together such a fantastic day…all for free by the way. They should be getting awards every time.

Hopefully I will have some time this year to contribute to the VMUGs in any way I can but I’m secretly wanting to hear there are no speaking slots available as they have been snapped up already by eager community people who have great stories to tell.

Thanks again!

Categories: VMUG, VMware Tags: ,

Upgrading vSphere from 4 to 5 – a UK VMUG presentation.

November 3rd, 2011 2 comments

NationalMotorcycleMuseum (1) I have the pleasure today of presenting at the first ever UK VMware User Group. This is a combined meeting of the London, Northern and Scottish VMUGs in the cool National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull which is apparently the “finest and largest motorcycle museum in the world”!

My presentation has nothing whatsoever to do with motorcycles unfortunately but is rather about upgrading your virtual infrastructure from vSphere 4 to 5. In hindsight I should have taken some more inspiration from the surroundings and somehow worked a motorcycle angle into my presentation, I should plan more carefully in the future!

Upgrading to vSphere 5 doesn’t actually have to be a particularly complicated procedure if you have all your ducks in a row and understand all the pre-requisites. This is a good thing as it means you can take advantage of all the cool new features without necessarily having to drastically re-architect your vSphere 4 environment but also means some of the old issues like vCenter availability haven’t changed.

Read more…

Categories: ESX, vCenter, VMUG, VMware Tags: , , , ,

United Kingdom VMUG User Conference agenda now live

October 5th, 2011 No comments

The first ever combined national UK VMUG is being held on Thursday, November 3rd, 2011.

It’s going to be a packed day starting at 8am with some breakfast to fuel your brain and continues with some fantastic content.

There’s a mix of partner sessions where some great companies have a chance to tell you about their wares and community sessions which is what the VMUG is all about, where fellow virtualisation users get to share their experiences.

I’ll be presenting a session on everything you need to know about upgrading from vSphere 4 to 5.

but lucky for you, that’s not all…

Joe Baguley, VMware’s Chief Cloud Technologist will be delivering the keynote, Joe is a great presenter so I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say.

We’re also extremely lucky to have THE undisputed VMware experts, Duncan Epping & Frank Denneman doing a Q&A on vSphere 5.0 Clustering.

Simon Gallagher, a fantastic presenter at multiple VMUGs (who must live in Inception!) will be showing what’s new with his vTardis which is a phenomenal lab/training environment in which he is running VMs on both ESX & Hyper-V which themselves are VMs on a single ESXi host!

Cormac Hogan, Mr. VMware Storage will be talking about the New Storage Features in vSphere 5.0.

Dan Watson, also from VMware will be presenting on Security in the Virtual World.

Mike Laverick, our homegrown globetrotting VMUG veteran will be wrapping up the day with “Cloud Journey – Bumps in the Road”.

VMUGs are fantastic days filled with information that is invaluable to any IT person working with virtualisation. It’s not just the presentations that are useful but the chance to network with fellow IT people and share problems and solutions. Every time I attend I come back with a list of things I’ve learnt.

You can see the full agenda and register here: http://www.myvmug.org/e/in/eid=106&source=5

See you there.

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Thinking, Building and Scripting Globally – a London VMUG presentation.

July 14th, 2011 2 comments

I have the privilege today of presenting at the London VMware User Group.

My presentation is split into two parts, first of all looking at why setting standards, creating processes and adding automation is now more important than ever as we work towards building an infrastructure for cloud computing.

I go through how “cloud thinking” is not just about the cloud being used to solve an IT problem but rather the cloud being a busines transformation to increase your business flexibility.

Your ESX(i) host build is the foundation of that cloud.

Then I head into the technical details of how to create a single PowerCLI script to build ESX or ESXi anywhere in your organisation. Using PowerCLI removes the dependency on any Service Console scripting so you can move towards an ESXi only infrastructure as that is the only hypervisor option for vSphere 5.

Having a single global script allows you to set standards and gives you way to reduce complexity & errors.

Read more…

I’m presenting at the London VMware User Group, 14 July 2011 – register now!

June 15th, 2011 2 comments

The previous London VMware User Group may still be fresh in your mind with a fantastic cloud focused day but the next one is already planned and scheduled for the 14th July so off with your head if you can’t make it!

This VMUG follows the great format of the previous cloud gathering, starting at 10am, features two tracks, multiple sponsors (Arista Networks, Embotics and Vision Solutions), a VMware vCenter Operations focused lab and a VMware staffed Genius Bar to get all your questions answered.

I have the honour of presenting again at one of the afternoon sessions: “Thinking, Building & Scripting Globally” which will hopefully leave you with some practical ideas and solutions for designing and building a standardised global infrastructure, ready for your private cloud…all with PowerCLI.

Read more…

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