Daily Session Log

Monday, 08/28/2017

General Session #1 (Mandalay Bay Events Center): Good Technologists Solve Problems. Great Innovators Create Opportunities (on-demand replay can be found here).

Achieve Maximum vSphere Stability with PowerCLI Assisted Documentation: From Buildout to Daily Administration: vSphere is the core product on which all other VMware technologies depend on. Adhering to the HCI, whether inbox or partner async, defining, documenting and verifying host and vCenter settings are critical for vSphere stability. In this session we will talk about the experience and lessons learned of managing enterprise environments in a multi-vendor ecosystem, controlling settings drift when scaled to hundreds of hosts using PowerCLI, and producing relevant documentation that could not be produced otherwise. Likewise, this session will help define what is not achievable through a scripting language, but is nonetheless important to document to achieve stability. Sample decision trees and real vendor examples will be presented, as well as generic, freely available PowerCLI scripts that will ease the lives of administrators and consultants.

Review: This session was led Ariel Sanchez and Edgar Sanchez (no relation to one another). The main purpose of this session was to enforce the concept of TEAM (eliminate individualism and function as a unit). Eliminate the stereotypes found in IT. For example, "I'm the VMware guy", "I'm the network guy" or "I wasn't hired to do this or that guy". This includes working collaboratively and NOT as individuals. Examples include vDocumentation, best practices as it applies to PowerCLI and cross training. An on-demand video for this session (SER2077BU) can be found here.

Ask the Experts: Practical Tips and Tricks to Help You Succeed in EUC (End User Computing): Boost your end-user computing (EUC) knowledge by attending this panel discussion. Five experts in the area of EUC will be on hand to give you their latest tips and tricks and answer your questions about EUC deployments. Bring your notepads and your toughest questions!

Review: I found this session useful because it allowed the participants to ask the experts questions in person to gain a real live perspective as it applies to best practices in EUC. The experts provided their knowledge and any suggestions that can be used in a real world environment to improve on EUC. No on-demand replay is available for this session.

Best Practices in Migrating Windows 7 to Windows 10: Over the next two years nearly 750 million PCs will be migrating to Windows 10, if they have not done so already. When evaluating and migrating to Windows 10, it is critical to understand the use cases and benefits of various deployment choices and to determine the enrollment options that best suit your organization's devices and use cases.

Review: This session will explore the best practices you need to adopt for your Windows 10 migrations. An on-demand video for this session (UEM1359BU) can be found here.

Delivering New User Experiences with Digital Workspaces: Whether this is your first journey at VMworld, or your tenth, you won’t want to miss our FIRST-EVER EUC Showcase Product Keynote. Attend the EUC keynote and be the first to hear major innovations and preview technical demos for VMware Horizon®, AirWatch® and Workspace ONE™.

Review: In this showcase, the presenter provided us examples of customers, partners, and innovators at VMware who are building on intelligence to transform the way their organizations securely empower the workforce for a better user experience and how forward-thinking IT organizations are creating digital workspace strategies to harness the power of new apps, devices, and connected things to transform business processes and drive engagement and productivity for every employee. No on-demand replay is available for this session.

VMware User Environment Manager - Getting Started Workshop: Discover how User Environment Manager manages profiles and policies as part of the Just-In-time Management Platform (JMP). Configure shortcuts, printer mappings, and folder redirection using context based conditions. Complete exercises in application and privilege elevation, Horizon Smart Policies and see how the user experience can be controlled based upon changing context.

Review: This session covered how to incorporate the UEM as a replacement for Windows GPO's as it applies to printer mappings, shortcuts and folder redirection. It also methods to implement privilege elevation via Horizon Smart Policies. No on-demand replay is available for this session.

Hackathon Audience: Didn't get signed up for the Hackathon? Don't like to code? Come cheer on your favorite teams, eat food, drink, win an Amazon Echo, and be merry.

Review: I was fortunate to attend this session as an audience member. This allowed me to observe how the respective teams (15 in all, roughly 10 members/team) worked together from 8-11pm. Starting at 11:15pm, each team was given 1:30 minutes to demonstrate their hacking abilities and what tools were used. Congrats to TEAM #1 for winning. No on-demand replay is available for this session but more information about this session can be found here and a participant's experience/perspective can be found here.

During my spare time in between sessions throughout the day, I took advantage of any labs available in the VMware Hands on Labs area and checked out the various vendor booths available at the VMworld Solutions Exchange area.

Hands on Labs (HOL's) information can be found here: https://www.vmworld.com/en/us/learning/hands-on-labs.html

VMworld Solutions Exchange information can be found here: https://www.vmworld.com/en/us/solutions-exchange.html