House of Brick Principal Architect

VMworld, VMware’s major conference, is approaching very quickly. VMworld 2013 is held this year in San Francisco on August 25-29 at the Moscone Center, and is expecting 21,000 attendees this year. It is quickly followed by VMworld 2013 Europe on October 14-17 at the Fira Barcelona Gran Via in Barcelona, Spain.

I have had the great opportunity to attend two VMworld conferences in the past, and want to share some reasons why I think you should attend. I also want to share some of the conference sessions that I feel pertain to you data professionals who are either looking to virtualize or want to better manage your virtualized business-critical database servers.

Why Attend?

If you do anything at all with VMware, I feel that you must attend this event! VMworld is THE conference for you to get neck deep in the technology, education, trends, and associate with people in the VMware community.

First, the education you receive at this conference is unparalleled. Just look at the content catalog. The show is four days long, and there are currently 393 sessions and 513 speakers listed. You have multiple sessions on virtually (no pun intended) all of the technology that VMware offers, industry verticals, technical levels and tracks, or use cases. Plan your sessions carefully and, when you register, select your sessions immediately. In the past, these have filled up and are subject to a wait list. You will also see multiple time slots for some of the sessions so that you have a better chance to see the sessions you want.

Next, spend some time in the hands-on labs. VMware has done an incredible job of putting together hands-on labs for their product suite so you can get some experience setting up and configuring the different product offerings. I always loved getting up early and heading to the labs. Time spent in these labs has helped me jumpstart my knowledge on some of the new products that I constantly hear about but haven’t yet been able to test-drive.

Next, use your time at VMworld to research industry trends. Given the attendance, you are guaranteed to find other professionals in your industry who use similar technologies and products. Find them, talk to them, and see how others are using the same tech. You might discover ways that you can benefit from their knowledge and experience. Then you can go home and configure or tune a system to make some improvements. You might also find that you know more than other folks. This is a great opportunity to help educate and improve someone else’s infrastructure, or even their job duties, by making things more efficient!

Finally, the networking with industry professionals is priceless. VMware technical gurus, VCDXs, bloggers, and professionals from around the world will be there. I know most IT folks are introverts, but take some time and get to know some of the folks around you. The designated ‘Hang Space’ is a great place to network and talk tech with other folks. Chat with vendors at the Solutions Exchange. Sit next to someone at lunch and strike up a conversation. You would be amazed how the friendships that come from these conferences persist over the years.

And, if you need some help convincing your employer, VMware has put together a great form letter to help you convince your boss. Download it if you need some assistance. It’s pretty funny.

Sessions That Interest Me

As a database-in-the-clouds professional, a number of the sessions at VMworld greatly excite me.

First, our CTO and Chief Evangelist, Dave Welch, will be speaking at a breakout session (BCO5884) that we are very proud of entitled “GE Appliances and Lighting & House of Brick: Making Stretch DR Invisible to Oracle on VMware Workloads.” This session is the technical follow-up to the August, 2012 GE Appliances & Lighting/House of Brick Technologies webinar which focused on the initiative’s business objectives and concept.

Next, Mark Achtemichuk and Michael Webster present VAPP4683 – Maximize Database Performance in Your Software-Defined Datacenter. They are covering how to get the most performance out of Oracle, SQL Server, and Sybase when placed within VMware vCloud Director.

Michael Corey and Jeff Szastak are presenting VAPP4724 – Virtualizing Databases: Doing IT Right. They are going to be discussing how to get the most performance from virtualized SQL Server and Oracle (similar to my upcoming SQL PASS Summit 2013 presentation – Squeezing the Most Performance from Your Virtualized SQL Server).

Finally, Scott Salyer is presenting a session on VAPP5932 – Virtualizing Highly Available SQL Servers. He will be discussing the various options for high availability when using VMware and SQL Server.

Where Can You Find House of Brick?

I thought you’d never ask! First, Dave and the rest of the House of Brick will be at Dave’s GE Appliances and Lighting session listed above. Next, contact us at sales@houseofbrick.com to get informed of our whereabouts at the conference, and let us know if you would like to schedule an informal meeting to get to know us better and see what we can do for you!