AKA TAM day 2 for me, I’d got so many TAM sessions planned that it was going to prove difficult to keep the step average up! TAM 3842 – VMware Cloud on AWS Wednesday morning saw me wake up to discover a session which I did not have on my calendar when I planned my sessions, although I was rather pleased to see it there, given that it was about #VMConAWS.

This post will focus on the better part of the VMworld Tuesday, from both a time and an enjoyment perspective. Things didn’t start too well, I’d not gone to bed too late, but it seemed that I was party to Barcelona’s loudest ever relationship breakup which took place outside my window at about 4.30 AM, which meant that I failed to get to the vBreakfast for 7AM (sorry Fred, I definitely will make it one year!

I’m looking forward to the General session today, it appears for once that there is more being announced in Europe than we got from Vegas. Given the early release of some training courses, the forthcoming general session is known to contain the release of vSphere 6.5 (and hence VSAN 6.5 also). The recent announcement of the #VMWonAWS setup, using vSphere Foundation, has also garnered massive interest (there’s not enough sessions on this and VMware are scrambling to put more on to satisfy the clamouring from the masses).

Kicking off the conference in the best way possible is attendance at TAM day (or Partner day if that’s your thing). TAM day is a relatively structured day with a number of sessions and of course, that access to the other parts of VMworld which are open on the Monday. There’s a growing number of people arriving on the Monday who are neither TAM nor PEX attendees, but there’s other conference activities to keep them going too.

Not sure if this was day 0, day -1 or what, but this is where it all begins for a serious percentage of the VMworld attendees that I know. The normal approach for most people who are going to TAM or PEX things on Monday is to get in on Sunday and then head to the vRockstar party. This year I’d got an early flight out of Gatwick so was in BCN before the shuttle buses started running, but there’s lots of ways to get from the Airport to both the conference site (particularly via the new-for-this-year Fira metro station, which is on L9 Sud along with the airport terminals) and also in to town itself, usually by bus.

If you have a Homelab or if you are thinking of constructing a Homelab, if you need to plan on a budget or want to know what everyone else is using, if you’ve wondered if you’re better off with a Cloudlab, but are not sure of the TCO involved, if you are studying for certifications, have a thirst for knowledge or just money to burn, then today sees the launch of a site designed just for you.

The next vSphere beta will be starting pretty soon and like last time, there is a chance for a public signup. If you have deployed vSphere 5.5 and 6.0 in a portion of your environment, then you are a candidate for the beta. The vSphere team will grant access to the program to selected candidates in stages, but as of yet there is no information released on dates or duration. This vSphere Beta Program is, again, subject to a Master Software Beta Test Agreement which you will need to complete before you gain access to private Beta community to download software and share information.

A post to cover my initial fiddling with vRealise Operations Manager 6.2. Considering I have the vExpert licenses to play with, then installing and configuring some additional monitoring seems like a good idea, especially since the alerting and reporting tools that come baked in to vSphere itself are not that extensive. I’ve heard good things about this version of vROps, so let’s see how easy this is. Installing vROps is not difficult, since like most of the current generation of vSphere add-ons that VMware have released, there’s an appliance to use.

They’re fresh out, they contain a whole load of enhancements, and if you’re a vExpert or enthusiast running a homelab, then you’ll most likely want to get a look at the new vSphere 6.0 Update 2 stuff ASAP. Time to quickly upgrade the vCenter Appliance and ESXi hosts to take advantage of the HTML5 interface, built in Host Client, VSAN 6.2 and so on. This is assuming you’re not an enterprise with enterprise ways and means, of course…

Yesterday, VMware announced their list of vExperts for 2016 and I’m both proud and humbled to have been selected for the second time. I’m standing on the shoulders of giants here, as a lot of the people that I have been inspired by and/or helped by over my years in the VMware community are recognised as vExperts again this year, alongside some new faces. Many folks have been vExperts for a long time and their continued dedication to the VMware ecosystem and generosity with their time is rightly recognised.