Another VMworld USA has come and gone and with it a TON of awesome memories and cool opportunities to learn. This year was my first
year to work along side our VMware brothers and sisters in the VMware Hands on Lab (HoL). If you recall, the HoL was something I missed all together in 2010 and the opportunity Chris Horn (vSpecialist Tech Enablement Manager) gave me was too good to pass up. As with all things like this, the planning started months in advanced. Simon Seagrave as well as Chris 
poured their heart and soul into our Lab. (Team pict to the left Alex Almedia, Matt Cowger, Bas Raayman, Erin Banks and minus me and Jase McCarty – this was the calm before the storm on Sunday) This year, VMware asked that we create a “story” around our lab. In our case, it was a story of “Bob” the IT Hero (and looks strangely enough like Mr Horn 
) and the company “Umbrella Corporation” that was about to launch a new Tablet to rival that of Apple iPad !! VMware told us we had about an hour to put in as much as we want. Not wanting to waste that time, and the pure amount of technology we had available to us we decided to embrace the theme of “Big Data” and created a story line around it. When we were done, our solution consisted of our VNX Storage Array’s Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI), Isilon, Avamar and the new vShield 5 RSA Data Loss Prevention (DLP) capabilities. For the nerds that like to see what is behind the scenes here is a breakdown of what we worked with to pull this together.
- 3x VMware ESXi 5.0 Hosts
![IMG_1399]( "IMG_1399")
- 1x EMC VNX Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA)
- 1x EMC Celerra Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA)
- 1x EMC Isilon Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA)
- 1x VMware vShield 5 Manager
- 1x VMware Virtual Center Server
- 1x Microsoft DC, AD and DNS
- 1x Windows XP (CEO PC)
- 1x Linux (WebServer)
- 1x Linux (FTP Server)
Needless to say, it was an amazing endeavor and Simon and team pulled it all together. I heard from more then a few people that our specific lab was outstanding and well put together!!
That was half the battle for our team, the real herculean effort was by VMware’s Irish Spring (seen passed out in Bas Raayman’s wheel chair), Fred Stark (No relation to Tony Stark – at least 
as far as I know), Chris Romano, our fearless Lab Captain Mr Jarod Martin and the Core Team. This was one of the most ambitious Hands on Labs I’ve ever seen. 420 dual monitor workstations all utilizing VMware View desktops connected into “the cloud”. We 
had 3 datacenters. One in Vegas, One in Miami and the other one in Amsterdam. It was AWESOME. We had 27 different labs and I think I heard something like over 5000+ unique people came through the HoL and while the lines looked long, they moved pretty fast. I think I also heard something like 148,100+ VM’s created and destroyed during that week !! It was probably one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had here at EMC. Not to mention is was great working with the VMware team !!
Finally, for the first time (as far as I know) EMC Cloud Team launched a Social Media focused game called #vHunt. I wrote about it here: https://vtexan.com/2011/08/22/the-great-scavenger-vhunt-at-vmworld/ . I think it was a fantastic success and it was a blast to participate in it. I even got to wear a Cowboy hat which made it even more fun One of my favorite #vHunt task was the following:
We had so many cool people participating and while I’m not a big fan of getting my picture taken, it was really cool to get stopped in the middle of the HoL floor and asked to take a picture. Below are a couple of ones I could find – I should have done a better job of saving the photos. If you happen to have one, post it on my facebook page at www.facebook.com/storagetexan and tag me (Vee Texan) in it !!
Again, what an awesome opportunity and an extremely busy and fun week. All in all I spent 8 days in Vegas and logged over 145,000+ Steps (love my BodyBugg) and met some incredible people including VMware CEO Paul Maritz and CTO Steve Herrod (Fellow Texan !!). I hope to post more pictures as they come in. Now – fingers crossed that I might be able to help in VMworld Copenhagen I wouldn’t mind packing up my Cowboy hat and heading to East East Texas (Denmark)
Here’s to looking forward to next years VMworld !!
