A necessary preamble

I had in mind to write something about Tanzu CE for a while: I felt the itch immediately after its release and even more after having played with it a bit. The initial idea was to write about my testing experience but then I realized that I would have produced another useless how-to post. At the same time, I began thinking “above the keyboard” and I put together a few thoughts and personal considerations about how VMware got to this point and came up with a small dissertation instead! So, please forgive me for the length and mind though that these are just my personal, free thoughts based on what I have understood “from the outside”; I might be completely wrong or inaccurate… any feedback is welcome and I’d be happy to change my mind if it will make sense… so without further ado…

More »

This post is a follow up to last week’s one on Dell Technologies PowerStore, which was featured – among other products from the vendor’s portfolio – as part of Tech Field Day’s special two days event. Here we will focus on VxRail and I will briefly go through a few things that raised my interest, once again with a specific emphasis on its integration with the VMware stack. As usual, if you want to learn more, my recommendation is to head to the TFD event page where you can find plenty of videos, including demos, where the solution and its capabilities are presented in detail.

More »

Brief but necessary intro: Tech Field Day recently held a two-day special event focused on Dell Technologies storage and compute/HCI solutions, specifically PowerStore, PowerMax and VxRail (with bonus content on APEX and CloudIQ). Most of the topics were relevant to VMware admins and architects as the interoperability of Dell’s solutions with the vSphere (and above) stack was a common theme that accompanied the audience for the whole duration of the event.

If you want to watch the many presentations and the very cool demos, all the videos are available as usual on the event page for your async consumption. In this post (or perhaps series?) I’d like to gather a few ideas and impressions I collected as a delegate. This by no means will be an extensive and detailed analysis as I will stick to what impressed me, bookmarking concepts for my own reference. If you want to dig deeper or check other specific topics I am not touching here, go ahead and check the online videos, the nice people at Tech Field Day will appreciate it!

More »

In my previous post on Tanzu, I explained how easy is to start consuming Kubernetes workloads from within vSphere 7, thanks to the newly introduced “vSphere with Tanzu”.

As discussed, this comes with some limitations but at the same time enables customers to deploy and consume modern apps on a tried and tested platform without the need to invest into more advanced technologies like VSAN or NSX-T.

For those who are ready to take a significant leap and have a richer, more complete experience, then the way to go is “vSphere with Kubernetes”.

More »

At VMworld 2019 VMware announced “Project Pacific”, officially entering the Enterprise Kubernetes market and putting an end to the speculations that had been running wild about vSphere becoming a platform for native Kubernetes workloads.


The Tanzu branding was introduced at the same time, revealing a whole portfolio of solutions covering the complex life-cycle of Modern Applications, from development and build, to operations and management. A number of products all branded as Tanzu were presented, either coming from recent acquisitions, the re-branding of existing solutions or the development of new ones. This caused some initial confusion among customers about what Tanzu really was about: put simply, Tanzu is an “umbrella” beneath which VMware positioned the many solutions aimed at building and running modern applications, not just on-prem but on any public cloud, with the same level of experience regardless of their location.

More »

The vTrailMap is a gift that the Tech Level Up Project (LinkedInTwitter), the lovechild of Yadin Porter de León‘s volcanic brain, brings to to the #vCommunity. While TLUP’s objective is to mentor, help and enable IT community members so they can boost their career opportunities, the vTrailMap is specifically aimed at using VMworld as the opportunity to bring together IT Professionals and Community volunteers and contributors in a single directory easily accessible and rich of readily available resources.

More »

It’s that time of the year again, when IT professionals and vCommunity members head to San Francisco or (and?) Barcelona to gather for the yearly ritual called VMworld. Except this year is different…

We all know well how our life has changed (hopefully only temporarily) in the past few months because of the pandemic and how we had to adapt our lifestyle to cope with the situation. IT conferences were also impacted and VMworld had to change its format to a virtual one.

More »

A few months ago I began my journey to learn Kubernetes, the reason being that, besides it being a controversial technology, it will soon became a “must know” piece of technology for old VMware admins like myself. Project Pacific is a clear indicator that Kubernetes will become a first class citizen in vSphere infrastructure some time in 2020.

I took the Linux Foundation LFS458 Training and I am studying to pass the CKA – Certified Kubernetes Administrator exam. This exam is not based on questions that can be easily answered to with some prior cramming efforts, but it is lab based, with tasks to be completed in a real environment and with the clock ticking fast. So, real hands on experience is needed.

More »

One of the highlights of TFD19 was the visit at VMware’s Palo Alto HQ to hear the latest from the Cloud Management Business Unit. The day was split in two, with the first half focused on the latest advancements of vRealize Operations Manager (a.k.a. vROps) and the last part completely dedicated to Cloud Automation Services (CAS).

Both sessions were demo-heavy and focused more around showing the real capabilities of the products rather than killing the audience with endless PowerPoint decks. John Dias and Cody De Arkland did a terrific  job in presenting their respective solution, I recommend you to visit the TechField Day website and watch the videos: seeing is believing.

Both topics were equally interesting. From my point of view and being a long time vROps user, John’s presentation was useful for taking notes of the “what’s new” features to be tested soon back at work. After an exhausting TFD week, I saved what was left of my energies to focus on CAS. Below are some of my thoughts on it.

More »

After discussing the technical side of VMworld 2017 in my previous posts, it is finally time to shift focus to my favorite topic: networking and community.

The real added value of VMworld is the infinite opportunities to interact with peers and build your own professional and personal network. I remember my first VMworld in 2011: I was nobody and I knew nobody. In 2017 I can list the achievements I “unlocked” as a direct consequence of that trip to Copenhagen:

1. I started attending VMUG meetings
2. I became a VMUG Leader and got the VMUG President’s Award in 2016!
3. I became a vEXPERT
4. I landed a job with VMware (although I am not there anymore, that was a life achievement!)
5. I started blogging
6. I became a Tech Field Day delegate
7. I attended VMworld 2017 as an Official Blogger
8. I learned a lot and became a way better professional
9. I met and shook hands with the best minds in the industry
10. I made lots of friends in the community <== This one’s the best!

Going to that VMworld in 2011 on my own money and leave days (my employer at the time wasn’t interested in having me attend conferences) was the best career and personal investment I could do, it all started from there.

More »