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VMworld EU survival guide – 2019 Edition

It’s just a few weeks ago that VMworld US took place in San Francisco. Attendees and (remote) spectators received loads of first hand information. New releases, new roadmaps, new acquisitions, new platforms… wow!

I haven’t finished a fraction of all session recordings I wanted to watch. But yet there’s more to come (shhhh! seven! nudge, nudge). It’s only a few weeks until VMworld EU will open its gates at the Fira Gran Via in beautiful Barcelona.

If you’re considering to go there and you’re not decided yet. Just two words from my side: “do it!“. I’m working with VMware products since…. like forever, but my first visit to VMworld Barcelona was in 2017. And there’s only one thing I really regret: That I haven’t been there in 2016, 2015, 2014, etc…

Last year I’ve written a VMworld Europe survival guide. Most of the information is still valid today. If you’re a first time visitor, feel free to read the blogpost. I’m sure you’ll get some useful information for trip planning, accommodation and getting around. Oh, by the way: the price for an airport return ticket has dropped a little. 🙂

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vSAN Homelab Cluster Ep.2

If you’ve missed it read part 1 – Planning phase.

Unboxing

Last Tuesday a delivery notification made me happy. Hardware shipping is on its way. Now it was time to get the cabling ready. I can’t stand Gordian knots of power cords and patch cables. I like to keep them properly tied together by velcro tape. To keep things simple, I’ve started with a non-redundant approach for vSAN traffic and LAN. Still eight patch cables that had to be labeled and bundled. Plus 4 cables for the iPMI interface. I found out later that the iPMI interface will make a fallback to the LAN interface if not connected. That’s nice. Saves me four cables and switch ports.

Host Hardware

All four hosts came ready assembled and had accomplished a burn in test. The servers are compact and have the size of a small pizza box. They’re 25,5 cm wide, 22,5 cm deep and 4,5 cm high. But before I’m going to press power-on, I need to have a look under the hood. 🙂

Let’s start with the rear side. As you can see in the picture, there are plenty of interfaces for such a small system. In the lower left corner there’s the 12V connector which can be fastened by a screwcap. Then there are two USB 3.0 connectors and the iPMI interface above them. The iPMI comes with console and video redirection (HTML5 or Java). No extra license needed.

Then we have 4x 1 Gbit (i350) ports and four 10 Gbit (X722) ports. Two of which are SFP+. In the lower right there’s a VGA interface. Thanks to console redirection this is not necessary. But it is good to have one in emergencies.

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Kubernetes Academy goes live

There’s a new learning portal about containers and Kubernetes. VMware has launched https://kubernetes.academy to share knowledge around the container ecosphere. It is meant for newcomers and advanced learners.

Registration is free. VMware wants to spread the word about containes and container orchestration to the community in order to gain momentum for these future technologies.

If you’re unsure which tutorial to watch, there’s a short assessment quiz that will offer you a personalized course recommendation.