On Thursday, May 22nd 2014, I attended my very first VMUG. The meeting took place in downtown Los Angeles at Ace Hotel in the Segovia Hall.
Over the years, I've been to quite a bit of events from various vendors or VARS. VMUG is quite different. For those of you who are not familiar with VMUG, it is a VMware User Group that is independent, global, customer-led organization created to maximize members' use of VMware and partner solutions through knowledge sharing, training, collaboration, and events. Membership is free. More information and membership application can be found on www.vmug.com.
In addition to the free membership, you can sign up to be a VMUG Advantage member and receive pretty good discounts on certification exams, books, software, VMworld, etc.
The event that I attended was a mixture of sponsor and community based sessions.VMUG, being VMware’s community outreach program that bridges the gap between the users (or anyone interested) and the vendor itself. Contrary to what one might think, VMUG is run by the users themselves and receives the backing not only from VMware, but many other vendors such as Symantec, Dell, Puppet Labs, PRTG Network Monitor, Veeam etc. and provide sponsorship to the events. The events come in a multitude of varieties, ranging from User Group Meetings, (Online) Virtual Training and the big User Conferences.
The sponsors for this event were PureStorage and VMware and following is the agenda.
Meeting Highlights:
- Pure Storage Presentation: Rise of All Flash Enterprise
- Member Presentation: Automation Tools – Anthony Chow
- Presentation: Automation - The End of Your Career as You Know It
- Q&A and Networking
Upon my late arrival, I tried to grab an available seat without luck. So I hung around the back area for a bit where I ran into James Reale of VMware. It was such a surprise and pleasure to see him again. I eventually snagged some chairs but was only able to place them where a pillar partially obstructed the view. I suggest arrival on time to get good seats especially if you want to see what is going on up front.
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The first session was by PureStorage, where they discussed an all-flash storage array and showcased the user interface to manage the device. I have to admit I arrived to the meeting towards the end of this presentation. So I can't really report much about it. Fortunately, I'd worked with a demo unit iabout a year ago. A cool feature I remember is the device encrypts all data on the system using self-encrypting SSD and AES-256 encryption and rather than storing the key in a small amount of non-volatile memory on the controller, it encodes the key with dispersal codes and then spreads it across all the SSDs in the systems; recovering the key requires half plus one of the SSDs. This means encryption at rest is good not just for drive disposal but for systems in transit-- as long as no more than half of the SSDs are shipped via any one interceptable route. Another feature is that the storage device "phones-home" every 30 minutes.
This was followed by Tom Chow of Alcatel/Lucent where he discussed automation tools such as Puppet. Tom went over differences and similarities among the tools out there. Although the topics of Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Salt, etc. are very huge in content and matter, Tom was able to give us the broad strokes and exposure.
The next session was presented by Sam Hernandez of VMware. The topic was automation. It was a 3 or 5 slide presentation to guide the topic and conversation surrounding automation of daily tasks and therefore freeing up admin time for something more interesting.
Finally, there was a Q&A session with the panel consisting of VMware heavy-hitters from the industry.
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| From left to right: (Naomi Sullivan, Joe Cook, Charu Chaubal, Sam Hernandez) |
Midway through the conference we took a break and delicious food/dishes were served. A selection of steaks, grilled chicken, couscous, lemon pasta, brown rice mix, potatoes, and others that I can't quite remember were served along with vBeers and vWine (remember don't drink and drive). Yum!
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| Richard Avila, Nelson Lopez, Martin Perez |
The close of the conference ended with drawings for several giveaways including a Go Pro 3. My colleague Nelson put his card in draw the last minute and ended up winning the big prize of the evening.
This is what the t-shirt SWAG consisted of for this conference:
The SWAG pictured below is a smart phone holder/mount that flips out when in use and flips down for storing. To me, it looked like a giant pill splitter. Asking my colleagues if they got their giant pill splitter got a lot of chuckles from other guys who overheard.
In closing if you have not been to a VMUG and you can find the time, get yourself to the next conference and see what it’s all about.
If you're willing to walk up to someone and say hello, they are likely to respond and it’s those networking conversations where the hidden value of the VMUG really lies.
Thanks to the Los Angeles VMUG comittee for putting on a great meeting and I will hopefully be seeing you all again in VMUG conference. Special thanks to Martin Perez for helping my colleagues Nelson Lopez, Richard Avila, and me feel welcome and at our first VMUG.
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| yep, that's me, John Mendoza |
https://www.facebook.com/LosAngelesVmug
http://www.vmug.com/index.php?mo=cm&op=ld&fid=217&gid=121
