Spring is finally here, not only with blue sunny skies, blossoming flowers, and buzzing bees but also with the traditional VMworld Call For Papers Voting!
Breakout Sessions are one of the highlights and the backbone of every VMworld edition, together with Hands On Labs, Solutions Exchange and the incredible amount of networking opportunities. The technical level of the Breakout Sessions and the expertise of the speakers is typically quite high and the featured topics cover a very broad range, from Infrastructure to End User Computing, from Cloud Computing to Customer Cases and so on.
So, how are sessions selected?
Well, far from knowing all the details (I’m no VMware insider), my understanding is that VMware opens a Call For Papers a few months before the event: VMware employees, partners and recognized members of the community have the chance to submit one or more sessions. I presume there’s some initial screening involved, but shortly after the CFP closes, all the valid candidate papers are publicly presented for VMworld attendees to vote. Only a portion of these sessions will be selected to be included in the event’s final agenda. I might be wrong, but I understand that public voting is one of the parameters (i.e. not the only one) that VMworld staff considers when compiling the final list of featured sessions. Nevertheless, your vote is extremely important, because it will contribute to shape up the next event.
You have a say in what will be presented at VMworld 2013, so be sure to head to VMworld website an make your thoughtful choice!
I have voted for past editions and, even if I am still not sure if I’ll be able to attend also in 2013 (budget! budget!), I cast my ballot this year as well. My voting technique is to filter sessions by track, so that I don’t have to go through a endless list of sessions I know I will not be interested in. Then the session’s title usually captures my attention: when this happens I check the abstract as well, then I decide whether or not to give it my vote. Only afterwards I check the speakers’ name as I do not want to be influenced by them.
This year is a bit special though as this will be my first VMworld where I will be representing VMUG Italy and also because a few VMUG Italy members have submitted their sessions to the CFP! Besides being friends, all of them are among the best Italian IT Professionals and have a lot of experience and technical knowledge to be shared with the seasoned VMworld audience. I do really hope all of them will have their sessions approved as they deserve to be on that stage!
I have voted for their sessions (among many other excellent ones) and I’d be happy if you will consider voting for them as well.
Let me then introduce them to you, hoping that they all get your vote…
Fabio Rapposelli (VMware) co-submitted this session with VMUG-IT friend Massimo Re Rerre’ (VMware):
Session 5383: How to skin Puppet with Razor: a practical guide to vSphere automation
This session will cover two great open-source products for automation and provisioning: Puppet and Razor. The session will initially give a bird-eye overview of how the tools work and their prerequisites, and what can be accomplished if we mix the capabilities of both. The session will then move to a technical deep-dive with a practical example on how to automatically provision and manage a vSphere environment from scratch using Puppet and Razor.
The audience for this session are vSphere administrators as well as Architects in general, with a medium to advanced knowledge of vSphere as a prerequisite.
Luca Dell’Oca (Moresi.Com SA) submitted one session:
Session 5141: A Multi-Tiered approach to Data Protection for virtualized environments
SSD and Flash storage are rapidly changing the storage landscape in virtualized environments. By mixing different technologies, each with their own performances and prices, virtualization designers can create several storage layers to accomodate virtualized workloads based on their performances and availability requirements, and at the same time guarantee an adequate TCO without over-priced storage solutions.
But what about storage for Data Protection?
In the past, tape has been the only available solution, thanks to its unbeatable price per Gigabyte. But in more and more situations tape has failed in guaranteeing Data Protection SLAs for the most demanding workloads. Thanks to the evolution of production storage, many improvements have been ported also to backup storage, so we are now able to design well-structured and flexible data protection solutions, capable to satisfy even the most demanding RTO and RPO requirements.
We will explore the different types of solutions available, when we can use them and when they are useless, and how we can combine each of them in a multi-tiered Data Protection solution, in order to sum their own strenghts and minimize their weaknesses.
Finally, Andrea Mauro (Assyrus Srl) has submitted not one but three different sessions!
Session 4644: Cloud and Data Protection: the advantages of native solution
Virtualization and cloud are changing the backup and data protection technologies and aspects (we can talk about a Next Generation Data Protection era) due to the limitation of traditional approaches.
In this session we will cover some design aspect of a data protection solution for a virtual or cloud environment, considering why, what, where and how save the data.
Backup, archiving, snapshots, replicas solutions are analyzed and will be explained how they could be combined to have a multi-level and efficient data protection solution.
The session will be product agnostic and will considered more the technologies and the different aspects and approaches and the design aspect of a data protection solution.
Session 4867: How design services for End User Computing using VMware Horizon Suite
End User Computing (EUC) has different challenges starting from the different access devices (including BYOD cases), the security aspects, the business needs, to arrive to the different type of required services (apps, applications, webapp, desktops, etc).
Virtualization offers different type of technologies and approaches: desktop virtualization, presentation virtualization, server virtualization, application virtualization, user data and state virtualization …
With the new VMware Horizon Suite we can see how design and choose the right solution according to the different requirements and scenarios, considering also the migrations issues and mixed physical/virtual approaches.
Session 4868: Top 10 design aspects for a successful virtual infrastructure in SMB segment
SMB market segment needs, usually, enterprise solutions to guarantee and satisfy business requirements. Public cloud could be an interesting approach, but not for several cases, where a virtual infrastructure (maybe with hybrid cloud option) could be a common approach. A good infrastructure design could best fit the solution with the customer requirements and the constraints
In this session we will discuss the top 10 design aspects for a successful solution.
I hope you will find all the above sessions interesting and worth of your vote. If this is the case, you know where to find me in Barcelona!