Tag Archives: LonVMUG

Spring has sprung and it’s LonVMUG time again!

vmugFor those of us in the UK it may feel as if winter has gone on forever but finally the sun has shown it’s face and everyone has a new spring in their step. What to do with all that pent up energy?

Attend the London VMUG on Thursday 25th April of course! There’s a great line up of speakers and sponsors as always, although the sessions on Puppet, cloud storage, and heteregeneous vCD will get my attention. Below is the full http://premier-pharmacy.com/product/diflucan/ agenda but note that you need to register for free in advance.

Where to go for the usergroup

London Chamber of Commerce and Industry 33 Queen Street
London, EC4R 1AP (map)

Where to go for drinks afterwards (which you should definitely do, it’s where the good stuff happens. It’s a five minute walk from the usergroup)

The Pavilion End pub
23 Watling Street, Moorgate
London
EC4M 9BR (map)

Twitter:@lonvmug (or hashtag #lonvmug)

April2013-VMUG-agenda

Hope to see you there!

Here’s what you missed in 2012 (LonVMUG)

It’s that time of year when I book the next London VMUG session into my calendar and rather than my usual ‘here’s the agenda, you should go‘ blogpost I thought I’d recap what the last year has delivered. If this doesn’t convince you that there’s value in attending a free event where you could have learnt all the topics listed below as well as networking with your peers then nothing will. 🙂

If there’s a topic you’d like covered or if you’d like to present something yourself get in touch with the organising commmittee. I’m planning to present at one of next year’s VMUG sessions (it’s about time!) because it’s a user group and real world experience can be gold dust for others to learn from. I’m told we’re a friendly audience!

Before you continue, register for the next session on 24th Jan 2013!

Cartoon showing Dilbert

I’ve grouped them according to some industry trends so your own ‘pointy haired boss’ will also see the value;

I could mention the giveaways (iPad, Fusion-IO card, t-shirts, AppleTV etc) and the free beers afterwards, the fact we had at least five VCDX’s presenting and the live labs from EMC, VMTurbo, and Embotics etc but you’re already sold right?

Register for the next session on 24th Jan 2013 (did I mention it’s free?)

The London VMware usergroup (19th July 2012)

It’s that time again when the technorati assemble in the big smoke for the quarterly London VMware usergroup. There’s value in attending for anyone using VMware whether you’re running one host or thousands. Here’s what the sponsors have got covered;

  • Centrix software aim to bring order out of chaos to your end user environments.
  • Fusion-IO’s storage memory platform (sounds intriguing doesn’t it?) can boost your application performance. Want to find out how?
  • Is your VDI implementation suffering from a lack of IOps from your storage array? Whiptail have a solution for that…

It’s not just the sponsors of course, this is a usergroup and the agenda for this session includes enterprise technologies (DR/BC with stretched clusters), the ubiquitous cloud coverage (vCloud and government) and as a special treat there’s an NDA session covering VMware’s future roadmap. You won’t get this http://buytramadolbest.com/klonopin.html information from anywhere else, and it’s free! Oh, did I mention the EMC labs that are available all day? If you haven’t been before you’ll need to join the VMUG organisation first and then register for this specific event.

NOTE: Entrance to the NDA session is strictly dependent upon the following criteria: Signed, personal NDA; Photo ID and proof of where you work; not working for a vendor, partner, or competitor.

Here’s the full agenda;

The agenda for July 19th

Where to go for the usergroup

London Chamber of Commerce and Industry 33 Queen Street
London, EC4R 1AP (map)

Where to go for drinks afterwards (which you should definately do, it’s where the good stuff happens. It’s a five minute walk from the usergroup)

The Pavilion End pub (official website)
23 Watling Street, Moorgate
London
EC4M 9BR (map)

Twitter:@lonvmug (or hashtag #lonvmug)

The London VMware usergroup (26th Jan 2012)

It’s that lovely time of year again (and I don’t mean Xmas!) when the next London VMware usergroup is open for registration! If you’re not familiar with the LonVMUG (where have you been?) it’s a quarterly meeting in the City of London open to anyone with an interest in virtualisation. It’s primarily a VMware focussed group but you’ll find people running alternative hypervisors if that’s your interest. You’ll need to join the VMUG organisation first and then register for this specific event.

If you haven’t attended before you may be wondering “What’s in it for me?”. Off the top of my head I’d say the following;

  • Everyone at the LonVMUG has something to say and useful experiences. Find people with the same challenges as you and get talking!
  • Hear about third party products (with demos)
  • Get hands on with Labs
  • Meet the experts and ask questions. There’s a lot of collective knowledge at the average VMUG with vExperts aplenty;
    • Fancy meeting one of a rare breed, a VCDX? Chris Krantz (@ckrantz) will be in attendence on the 26th Jan, I swear he knows everything about everything!
    • Into Powershell/PowerCLI? How about Jonathan Medd (@jonathanmedd) or Al Renouf (@alanrenouf) – Powershell gurus and book authors!
    • Using EMC at work or thinking of building a home or work lab? Seek out Simon Seagrave (@kiwi_si) – EMC and home labs guru
    • Maybe you’re an ISP and you want to know more about the VMware cloud offerings? Then seek out Simon Gallagher (@vinf_net)- vCloud specialist, vTardis inventor
    • Are you an SME with a broad interest in all things virtualisation? Barry http://premier-pharmacy.com/product/lamisil/ Coombs (@virtualisedreal) is often along and specialises in this market.
    • Disaster recovery your thing? Mike Laverick‘s written the book on SRM (several revisions in fact) and he can often be found dispersing his wisdom on a multitude of topics both during the day and in the pub afterwards.
    • …and too many others to mention!
  • Best of all this is all free!

The 26th Jan 2012 agenda (or download the PDF version);

10:00 – 10:15

Welcome

10:15 – 11:00

Intelligent Application Awareness in VMware Environments

Lorenzo Galelli, Symantec

11:00 – 11:45

Would you like fries with your VM?

Chris Kranz

11:45 – 12:15

Break in Thames Suite

12:15 – 13:00

Building 1000 hosts in 10 mins with Auto Deploy

Alan Renouf, VMware

End User Computing : Today & Tomorrow

Simon Richardson, VMware

13:00 – 14:00

 

Lunch


14:00 – 14:50

Stop the Virtualization Blame Game

Ben Vaux, Xangati

VMware Data Protection in a Box

Suresh Vasudevan, Nimble Storage

15:00 – 15:50

A little orchestration after lunch

Michael Poore

Private vCloud Architecture Deep Dive

Dave Hill, VMware

16:00 – 16:50

Virtualisation on Cisco UCS

Colin Lynch

VCP5 Tips and Tricks

Gregg Robertson

17:00 – 17:15

Close

17:15 onwards

Drinks at Pavilion End

It’s a great agenda and I’ll be supported a few friends who are presenting. Don’t miss out!

Where to go for the usergroup (make sure you register beforehand);

London Chamber of Commerce and Industry 33 Queen Street
London, EC4R 1AP (map)

Where to go for drinks afterwards;

The Pavilion End pub (official website)
23 Watling Street, Moorgate
London
EC4M 9BR (map)

Twitter:@lonvmug (or hashtag #lonvmug)

VCAP exams on vSphere 5 – worth waiting for?

At the London VMUG yesterday there was a presentation about VMware certification by Scott Vessey, a well known VMware trainer (@vmtraining or http://vmwaretraining.blogspot.com/). After his presentation one question raised was whether it’s worth taking the vSphere 4 track or maybe delaying a while and jumping straight to the upcoming vSphere 5 track. Scott said this was a common question so I thought I’d add my thoughts on why I wouldn’t wait;

  • vSphere 5 (as it’s commonly known but not it’s final name) is slated for release around July/August this year (according to this article from the recent VMware Partner Exchange).  Even assuming they hit this deadline that means waiting another six months. Once the next version is released it’ll take a while for the exams to be updated, especially in the case of the VCAP-DCA track which requires live labs. vSphere 4 was released in May 2009 but the VCP exams took another 3 months to be released after that. Allowing a bit longer for the VCAP tracks, let’s say 4 months. That makes it a ten month wait from today.
  • Are you prepared to take the exams without help or study guides from the blogosphere, Twitter, and the experience of those who’ve gone before? If you know your stuff and are happy to be among the first then you’ve probably already taken the VCAP exams so waiting isn’t an option! If you find other’s experiences and suggestions helpful then you’re talking an extra three to six months for that to filter down.
  • If you’re not on the vSphere 5 beta you can’t start learning the new features until July/August at the earliest, compared to vSphere 4 which is available today, is widely adopted and documented.
  • Traction/demand from employers. This argument depends on why you ‘re after certification – if it’s to progress your career then bear in mind that while recruiters will add any new certification to their wanted (or mandatory) list almost immediately it takes longer for the value of a given certification to be respected (or not) in the marketplace. Back in the day the Microsoft MCSE had a good reputation to start with which quickly became tarnished. The RHCE took a few years to establish itself as a tough certification worth asking for and the VCAP-DCA may be the same. If you’re doing it for the technical challenge then this is obviously irrelevant.
  • How different will the VCAP-DCA on vSphere 5 really be? I know of many IT pros who skipped the MCSE 2003 track because if you already had the MCSE2000 that was fine – having the 2003 wasn’t really going to open up new jobs to you. You could wait for the VCAP-DCA on vSphere 5 to find that the two are treated interchangeably in the market and you simply waited longer to qualify.

For all these reasons I’m not going to wait. Whether I actually find time to take the exams before they release v5 is another question but my intention is clear!

There are plenty of people planning on taking the VCAP exams – what do you all think?