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Dean’s top 10 session picks for VMworld 2020

I thought I’d add to the deluge of posts of recommended VMworld Sessions.

Here are my top ten picks!

Remember VMworld is fully virtual and free this year. So what’s stopping you from registering?

The Sessions

Finding my way – Who am I, and what can I offer? – ETPD1986

  • Katherine Skilling, Senior Consultant, NEMEA SDDC, VMware
As technical people, we spend a lot of time working on our technical skills and knowledge, whether it is playing with the latest technology in our lab or studying for certifications. How much time do we invest in our personal skills, and do we really understand how important they are for our career and personal development? In this session, the speaker will share their story of personal discovery and development from the last 12 months as they attempted to understand who they are as an individual, and the contribution they could make to their team and company. The session will highlight the importance of understanding your own strengths, and the powerful results that can be achieved by making small changes to our mindset over time.

Session Type: Breakout Session
Track and Subtrack: Vision & Innovation: Professional Development
Pass Type: General & Premier Passes
Level: Business 100
  • Kostadis Roussos, Principal Engineer – vCenter Architect , VMware
  • Ben Pfaff, Principal Engineer, VMware
The first phase of Software-defined Data Center control planes was the creation of discrete and distinct control planes that mimicked the operational behavior of the physical data center. We are now working on integrating existing control planes more deeply, in effect, creating a new kind of control plane for managing infrastructure at scale. Join us to provide your input on VMware's control plane strategy.
  • Yasen Simeonov, Senior Technical Product Manager, VMware
  • Ali Al Idrees, Lead EMEA SDDC Solutions Architect, VMware
Join this session to learn about VMware NSX-T and VMware NSX Container Plugin—the solution behind VMware vSphere with Tanzu. It also powers other different Kubernetes solutions, including vanilla Kubernetes. We will quickly refresh the basics, and then dive deeper on how you can secure, observe and manage your microservices workload.
  • Nabil Quadri, Product Line Manager, VMware
  • Sazzala Reddy, Chief Technologist, VMware
Join Sazzala Reddy (co-founder of Datrium, ex-CTO of Data Domain) & Nabil Quadri (VMware Product Manager of DRaaS) as they detail the newest member of the VMware Cloud family. Traditional data protection and DR solutions have many moving parts which makes things complex, expensive and unreliable. Newer cloud backup solutions promise lower costs but force a compromise on recovery time, scale, and performance. Meanwhile, ransomware is increasingly causing large-scale outages and these other solutions can't help. Dive deep into how DR with VMware succeeds where others fail, with the Datrium solution’s powerful DR workflows wrapped in a super-simple, modern SaaS experience and the operational consistency of VMware Cloud. Learn about continuous compliance checks, immutable backups & always-on data integrity, and see the service in action.

Technical Deep Dive on Cloud Native Storage for vSphere – HCI2160

  • Myles Gray, Senior Technical Marketing Architect, VMware
VMware vSphere now comes with an enriched storage control plane to provision and manage storage for containerized applications orchestrated by Kubernetes. In this session, you will learn how cloud native storage enables stateful applications running on Kubernetes to be deployed on the vSphere platform using any of the vSphere persistent storage options. Now, VI admins can easily manage containerized applications with the same operational consistency of managing virtualized applications. Using Kubernetes native CLI and VMware vCenter, you will see how storage can be deployed with policy-based management, how you can monitor these container volumes in vCenter, and how to remediate faults.

A deeper look at the Kubernetes Cluster API – KUB2470

  • Tim Carr, Staff Cloud Native Field Engineer, VMware
  • Scott Lowe, Staff Cloud Native Architect, VMware
The Kubernetes Cluster API is a powerful open source project leveraged by a number of products in the VMware Tanzu portfolio, such as VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid and VMware Tanzu Mission Control. In this session, you will gain a better understanding of what the Cluster API is, how it works, and how it’s leveraged by products such as Tanzu Kubernetes Grid and Tanzu Mission Control to help solve customer problems.

Introduction to Infrastructure as Code – MAP2419

  • Kyle Ruddy, Senior Technical Marketing Architect, HashiCorp
Infrastructure as code is the process of managing infrastructure in a file or a set of files rather than manually configuring resources in a user interface. A resource in this instance is any piece of infrastructure in a given environment, such as a virtual machine, security group or network interface. This session will focus on how to make the process of getting started with infrastructure as code as easy as possible. We’ll walk through some of the core concepts, such as what tools are available, some of the lingo and any requirements. Then, we’ll dive in with demos showing how to manage a VMware vSphere environment, VMware NSX-T and more using only code.

I have a kubernetes cluster, whats next? – KUB2129

  • Richard Lander, Senior Kubernetes Architect, VMware
Products such as VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid are making it trivial to stand up a Kubernetes cluster. That’s great, but a bare, unused Kubernetes cluster does not transform your business or modernize your application deployments. Kubernetes is not the modern application platform; it is merely the foundation. Learn what needs to be connected to and installed on top of Kubernetes to make it a consumable, productive platform for your enterprise’s application developers. Drawn from extensive production experience with Kubernetes, we will cover the critical concerns, popular open-source tools and common patterns that will allow you to make cloud native technology successful in your organization.
  • Scott Lowe, Staff Cloud Native Architect, VMware
  • Dustin Scott, Senior Cloud Native Field Engineer, VMware
The early adopters of Kubernetes have run into all forms of obstacles in getting to production, and we’ve been there with them every step of the way. In this session, our hands-on architects will reveal the most critical lessons they have learned in helping hundreds of enterprises make the best use of Kubernetes.
  • Philip Buckley-Mellor, BT TV Infrastructure Architect, British Telecom
  • Robbie Jerrom, Tech Lead – Apps & Platforms NEMEA, VMware
Virtualization and Kubernetes are two of the biggest tech trends in the past 20 years. Both are hugely disruptive to industries and see huge ecosystems grow out of them. With VMware vSphere 7 and vSphere Add-on for Kubernetes, VMware brings these two heavyweights together in the biggest crossover seen since the Avengers assembled. This session explores the real-world value of these worlds coming together, further extending VMware’s relevance in IT and, through VMware Cloud Foundation, delivering one platform to run all the things—from legacy to modern. Robbie Jerrom is joined by Phil Buckley-Mellor from British Telecom (BT), where he heads up the platforms team for BT TV, a complete TV business that provides everything from set-top boxes to studios and content to almost 2 million viewers in the UK.

Summary

As you can see a no fuss quick ten list mainly focusing on the work we are doing around Kubernetes, but I am also looking forward to what we are doing with Datrium as well.

Remember, VMworld is free this year for over 800 on-demand sessions, a number of live sessions and keynotes.

There is a premier pass to give you access to technical guided labs, roundtables and such if you want that more live in person VMworld feel.

Enjoy!

Regards

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