In a move that I have to say that I did not see coming (but then I think no-one did) VMUG recently announced that subscribers to their VMUG Advantage initiative would also receive EVALExperience licenses for a number of vSphere related products meaning that these products are now available for use with a 365 day license which you can renew as long as you maintain your VMUG Advantage subscription .

Well, well, well. I’m pleased to say that I have been awarded the title of VMware vExpert for 2015, my first time! You can see the full list here on the VMTN site. Congratulations to all the new and returning vExperts named this year. It’s rather humbling to gain this recognition and it really is great to see so many of the #LonVMUG folks who’ve helped me along the way be named as well.

It’s nearly time for the first #LonVMUG of 2015. As usual, a cracking line-up has been finalised for this all-day event, but for myself and 4 other delegates, this will be an extra special day, cos we get to present! Long-time LonVMUG stalwart Mike Laverick put together a #Feed4ward initiative in cahoots with Duncan Epping and Scott Lowe as an attempt to solicit more community content at VMUGs around the world by mentoring would be presenters before their big day in front of an audience.

The final day, an early start to the sessions with no keynote to overrun into the first session, so I went straight into a 9am breakout session. Session: INF2311 - vCenter Server Architecture & Deployment Deep Dive Some good tips here for the folks running (or planning to run) vCenter 5.5 specifically around the placement of vCenter components. Do not, do not, do NOT run your Inventory service on a different server to your vCenter server service!

I’m on a bit of a roll now! The ‘second’ day of VMworld Europe started with another keynote, just the same as San Fran (same general format, same general content). Fortunately for those of us wanting to blog/tweet during this, the doors that were closed yesterday were open by the time I got to the hangspace, so I was in and settled with a coffee and pain au chocolat before 9am.

Admittedly, I’d already been in Barcelona for a while after the TAM day (partner day for most people) on Monday, so we’d already had confusion amongst the bloggers as to what day it was., perhaps we should stick with ‘Tuesday’ and have done with it? Apologies for any tense changes here, this post was mostly written at VMworld, but not published then. Keynote This was my first opportunity to attend a European keynote, so I was hoping to be able to get ensconsed in the hangspace or the bloggers area and tweet or blog from there, whilst hoping it would be different from the US keynote.

I have to admit to being pretty excited to attend my first VMworld in 6 Years, this time with the additional perk of having the Monday lined up as well, as part of the TAM experience. Technical Account Manager, that is. Same day as Partner Day, but for those of us who warrant or buy this level of service, I guess. I work for a large American Company so this was something I get that I was not going to get so often, as my TAM is in the US, whereas I am not!

Wow! I nearly didn’t make it. A particularly “late one at the office” the night before saw me get to bed just short of 4am, with the prospect of a couple of hours train journey for a 9 something LonVMUG start. So, forget all about starting the day at 6am then. The late start to the day turned out to be particularly gutting as the Twitter chat around the event pretty much ceased whilst Frank Dennerman was doing his presentation, so I was pretty miffed that I didn’t catch it live as it was obviously getting everyone’s attention.

Why start a totally new blog about virtualisation topics at this late stage in the game, when there’s already a whole host of excellent sites out there? Sites I use myself regularly, too. I’ve shied away from this before, thinking that I will find it difficult to be on top of the game enough to provide useful content to complement existing sites. Well, there’s this thing… The other day I found out about a website calledCloudCred, which is basically a VMware backed educational website, which incentivises its members to develop knowledge and build collaborative teams via gamification.