VMworld 2015 Recap

VMworld 2015 is over. The US conference is done and everyone is getting ready for VMworld Europe coming in October. If you were like me and didn’t attend VMworld in San Francisco but still want to know a little bit about what went down, then this post is for you. 🙂

Cloud Cloud Cloud. You knew it without even going but VMware has a lot to say about cloud! Whether it was VMware Cloud Air or the Site Recovery Manager Air, VMware is ready to bridge your VMs into it’s cloud based hypervisors. Moving between local based hosts and the cloud based vSphere implementations is getting easier and more cost compelling (Global vMotions Anyone?). Leveraging a vCloud Air based Site Recovery Manager Air to test your disaster recovery plans is becoming a reality. Bridging private and public clouds is going to require some pretty fancy networking!

Enter the NSX. It was everywhere at VMworld. It is being positioned as the gateway to and from the clouds. Security on the NSX was a high point in most of the sessions. Security is not one of these things that should be bolt on but thought of from the very beginning. VMware promised NSX was developed with internet security in mind. I expect to run into more and more NSX implementations at client sites as vSphere 6.x is rolled out at clients.

And there was lots of vSphere 6 stuff. With the exception of missing Update Manager, the vCenter appliance is looking great. Once VMware pushes Update Manager into the appliance, I don’t see myself recommending a Windows based vCenter anymore. I love what VMware is doing with their appliances.

Horizon View was on display (subtle NVIDIA pun!) as well. End user computing in general. Whether you are running View or Citrix XenDesktop/XenApp, VMware wants to be a part of the puzzle. If you are running full blown Horizon or just Citrix XA/XD, VMware thinks App Volumes and Immidio for Profiles has a place in the solution. Citrix is pushing for VMware View take-outs but I don’t think it is going to be as cut and dry as it looks. I think the View solution is a solid platform and holds its own against competitors.

There were tons and tons more cool things like Project Enzo and the NVIDIA GRiD vGPU

but these were the high level topics that caught my eye talking to colleagues.