Migration to vNotions.com

Hi,

Over time this blog has grown steadily and I’ve decided that I’ve out-grown the free wordpress.com platform and have migrated to using a hosted wordpress.org platform. I’d like to thank everyone that has visited this site and I hope that you to continue to provide resources and content that are useful for other IT professionals.

All existing content has been migrated to http://www.vnotions.com and it is going live as of May 1st 2016. A redirect will be put in place to have all content available on the new site. I ask for your patience as the blog goes through some on-going modifications to get it to the level both you and I expect.

See you over on the new site.

Regards

Derek

Cisco Live Session Review

I gave a recap of Cisco Live Melbourne in another post and had intended on providing a detailed look at each of the sessions I attended as part of that post but it became a bit long-winded so I’ve broken it out into separate posts. I’ve broken the sessions down by each day.

Day 1:

TECCOM-2001 –  Cisco Unified Computing System

As someone that is working towards CCNA and CCNP in Cisco Data Center this extra technical seminar really was invaluable and opened my eyes up to a lot of areas that were unknown to me. This breakout session was an 8-hour, full-on overview of Cisco UCS, the components that comprise the solution and how it all works together. It wasn’t a deep-dive session however so if you’ve a really good working knowledge of UCS and know what’s under the covers quite well then this session wouldn’t really be for you. In saying that however I think there’s always opportunities to learn something new.

The session was broken down into 6 parts.

• UCS Overview
• Networking
• Storage Best Practices
• UCS Operational Best Practices
• UCS does Security Admin
• UCS Performance Manager

Some of the main takeaways from the session were around the recent Gen 3 releases for the UCS hardware including the Fabric Interconnects and IOMs. They also discussed the new features for UCS Manager 3.1 code base release.  Some of the new features of UCSM and the hardware are listed below:

UCS Manager 3.1

• Single code base (covers UCS mini, M-Series and UCS traditional)
• HTML 5 GUI
• End-to-end 40GbE and 16Gb FC with 3rd Gen FI’s
• M series cartridges with Intel Xeon E3 v4 Processors
• UCS mini support for Second Chassis
• New nVidia M6 and M60 GPUs
• New PCIe Base Storage Accelerators

Next Gen Fabric Interconnects:

FI6332:

• 32 x 40GbE QSFP+
• 2.56Tbps switching performance
• IRU & 4 Fans

FI6332-16UP:

• 24x40GbE QSFP+ & 16xUP Ports (1/10GbE or 4/8/16Gb FC)
• 2.43Tbps switching performance

IOM 2304:

• 8 x 40GbE server links & 4 x 40GbE QSFP+ uplinks
• 960Gbps switching performance
• Modular IOM for UCS 5108

Two other notes from this section of the technical session were that the FI6300s requires UCS Manager 3.1(1) and the M-Series is not support on the FI6300’s yet. There was also an overview of the UCS Mini upgrades, the Cloud Scale and Composable Infrastructure (Cisco C3260) and the M-Series. I’ve not had any experience or knowledge of the M-Series modular systems before and I need to do far more reading to understand this much better.

The second part of the session covered MAC pinning and the differences between the IOMs and Mezz cards. (For those that don’t know the IOMs are pass-through and the Mezz are PCIe cards). Once aspect they covered which I hadn’t heard about before was around UDLD (Uni-Directional Link Detection) which monitors the physical connectivity of cables. UDLD is point-to-point and uses echoing from FIs out to neighbouring switches to check availability. It’s complementary to Spanning Tree and is also faster at link detection. UDLD can be set in two modes, default and aggressive. In Default mode UDLD will notify and let spanning tree manage pulling the link down and in Aggressive mode UDLD will bring down link.

The Storage Best Practices looked at the two modes that FIs can be configured to and also the capabilities of both settings. If you’re familiar with UCS then there’s a fair change you’ll know this already. The focus was on FC protocol access via the FIs and how the switching mode changes how the FIs handle traffic.

FC End-Host Mode (NPV mode):

• Switch sees FI as server with loads of HBAs attached
• Connects FI to northbound NPIV enabled FC switch (Cisco/Brocade)
• FCIDs distributed from northbound switch
• DomainIDs, FC switching, FC zoning responsibilities are on northbound switch

FC Switching Mode:

• Connects to Northbound FC switch and normal FC switch (Cisco Only)
• DomainIDs, FC Switching, FCNS handled locally
• UCS Direct connect storage enabled
  
• UCS local zoning feature possible

The session also touched on the storage heavy C3260 can be connect to FIs as an appliance port. It’s also possible via UCSM to create LUN policies for external/local storage access. This can be used to carve up the storage pool of the C3260 into usable storage. Once thing I didn’t know what that a LUN needs to have an ID of 0 or 1 in order for boot from SAN to work. It just won’t work otherwise. Top tip right there. During the storage section there was some talk about Cisco’s new HyperFlex platform but most of the details were being withheld until the breakout session on Hyper-Converged Infrastructure later in the week.

The UCS Operational Best Practice session covered off primarily how UCS objects are structured and how they play a part in pools and and policies. For those already familiar with UCS there was nothing new to understand here. However, one small tidbit I walked away with was around pool exhaustion and how UCS recursively looks up to parent organisation until root and even up to the global level if UCS central is deployed or linked. One other note I took about sub-organisations were that they can go to a maximum of 5 levels deep. Most of the valuable information from this session was around the enhancements in latest version of UCSM updates. These were broken down into improvements in firmware upgrade procedures, maintenance policies and monitoring. Most of these enhancements are listed here:

Firmware upgrade improvements:

• Baseline policy for upgrade checks – it checks everything is OK after upgrade
• Fabric evacuation – can be used to test fabric fail-over
• Server firmware auto-sync
• Fault suppression (great for upgrades)
• Fabric High Availability checks
• Automatic UCSM Backup during AutoInstall

Maintenance:

• On Next boot policy added
• Per Fabric Chassis acknowledge
• Reset IOM to Fabric default
• UCSM adapter redundant groups
• Smart call home enhancements

Monitoring:

• UCS Health Monitoring
• I2C statistics and improvements
• UCSM policy to monitor – FI/IOM
• Locator LED for disks
• DIMM backlisting and error reporting (this is a great feature and will help immensely with troubleshooting)

Fabric evacuation can be used to test fabric fail-over before firmware upgrade to ensure bonding of NICs works correctly and ESXi hosts fail-over correctly to second vNIC. There’s  also a new tab for health also beside the FSM tab in UCSM.

The last two sections of the session I have to admit were not really for me. I don’t know whether it was just because it was late in the day, my mind was elsewhere or that I was just generally tired but I couldn’t focus. The sections on Security within UCSM and UCS Performance Manager may well have been interesting on another day but they just didn’t do anything for me. The information was somewhat basic and I really felt that UCS Performance Manager was really more of a technical sales pitch. I feel the session would have been better served with looking at more high-level over-arching tools for management such as UCS Director rather than a monitoring tool which the vast majority of people are not going to use anyway.

Overall though this entire technical session was a great learning experience. The presenters were very approachable and I took the opportunity to quiz Chris Dunk in particular about the HyperFlex solution. While I may not attend another UCS technical session again in the future I would definitely consider stumping up the extra cash needed for other technical session which may be more relevant to me then. There’s a lot of options available.

After the sessions were completed I headed down to the World of Solutions opening and wandered around for a bit. As I entered I was offered an array of free drink. Under other circumstances I would have jumped at the chance but I’m currently on a 1-year alcohol sabbatical so I instead floated around the food stand that had the fresh oysters. The World of Solutions was pumping. I didn’t really get into any deep conversations but I did take note of which vendors were present and who I wanted to interrogate more later in the week. I left well before the end of the reception so I could get home early. The next day was planned to be a big day anyway.

 

Cisco Live Recap

Last week I had the opportunity to attend Cisco Live in Melbourne and it was awesome. This is the second year I’ve attended Cisco Live but this year I was there as an Attendee so I had access to the breakout sessions. Previously I only had an Explorer Plus pass which was good for the keynote access, partner theatre sessions  and the World of Solutions. While that was fun experience getting access to the breakout session was what I really wanted, and they didn’t disappoint. I’m privileged in that my ticket to Cisco Live was covered by my employer that sees the value in such events and we were also able to leverage Cisco Learning credits. If you wish to attend and have these credits available to you this is a great return on investment and one I’d recommend over a regular 5-day training course.

This year Cisco Live was once again held at Melbourne Convention Centre and it’s a brilliant facility that has a great layout, is large enough to cater for the ever-growing number of attendees and is easy to access via public transport. The breakout sessions are full on and a number of people had mentioned beforehand that going to Cisco Live was like drinking from a firehose. They weren’t wrong. Cisco tee up the sessions and you try to cram as much as you can into your grey matter. I also chose to sign up for an extra day technical seminar which was an 8 hour session on Cisco UCS. There were a number of streams that could be chosen but my focus is on UCS. This was an added extra on top of the regular attendee ticket. During the remainder of the week I tried to cram in as many other breakout sessions as I could and catch a few of the partner sessions as well as have some downtime to network a bit.

Pure Storage – FlashBlade

Pure Storage are just after running their first community event, Pure //Accelerate, and by any measure it can be classed as a success. Pure made a number of announcements about new products in their portfolio but the one that caused the most excitement was the announcement about their new FlashBlade product. More on that in just a moment. Pure made announcements about a new baby flash array, the //M10, to bring flash storage to the masses at under $50k and more details about their collaboration with Cisco on the UCS based FlashStack. Both of these announcements by themselves are substantial enough for most storage vendors but Pure stepped it up a notch with the FlashBlade.

 

I’m not going to go into the components of the FlashBlade, more information on that can be found on the Pure Press Release, a run-down by Alex Galbraith or Enrico Signoretti’s blog post. As with just about every other storage geek out there I got extremely excited when I heard the announcement and imagining the use-cases for the FlashBlade pretty much made my head explode. After a bit of time letting it sink in over a coffee and digesting the cost per GB on the FlashBlade, the scalability and the form factor size I decided that I hadn’t over-reacted in my excitement. 

How To: End-to-End SnapProtect Storage Policy Creation

The example I’m going to give here is for an environment that is already configured but has storage controllers that are not configured as NAS iData Agents for backup or any volumes on those controllers. In this environment the controller I’m enabling backups on is the secondary storage tier which is already a snapvault destination so it is in the Array Manager for SnapProtect. This environment requires new NetApp aggregates to be added as resource pools as new volumes and data have been assigned to the aggregates. The process involves working with SnapProtect, NetApp Management Console (DFM) and the NetApp storage controllers.

Enable backups on a controller within SnapProtect:

Enable Accounts

Before you begin log onto the controller and ensure the login account you require has access to the controller. To do this open a SSH session to the controller and use the following command:

#useradmin user list

If the account used by SnapProtect doesn’t exist then you’ll need to add it as an administrator. Below is a snapshot from a controller where it is added and also a controller where it’s not.

You can add the account via the command line or via the web console. In this instance I added the account via the console. In System Manager go to Configuration -> Local Users and Groups -> Users and click Create. Enter the required details and click Create.

Once completed you can re-run the command from the CLI to ensure that the account appears

How To: Remove a volume from NAS backup in Simpana 10

I have an issue recently where I had to remove a volume from within a NAS client subclient so that I could move it to another location within our environment. Due to the limitations within Simpana10/SnapProtect v10 it’s not possible to select the volume and delete the related snapshots to clean up the subclient. The backup jobs need to be deleted to remove the snapshots. As there are multiple volumes within the same subclient deleting the jobs would delete the snapshots for all volumes, not just the one I need to clean up. Given this, there is only one option and that’s to break the relationships in DFM and clean up the volume manually.

Step 1: Go the the OnCommand server and run dfpm dataset list

C:\Users\derek>dfpm dataset list

Id         Name                        Protection Policy           Provisioning Policy Application Policy          Storage Service

———- ————————— ————————— ——————- ————————— —————

2927 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-45 SnapProtect Back up, then mirror                                                 CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-66

3072 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-46 SnapProtect Back up, then mirror                                                 CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-66

2935 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-39 SnapProtect Back up, then mirror                                                 CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-70

7011 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-42 SnapProtect Back up, then mirror                                                 CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-70

41601 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-72 SnapProtect Back up, then mirror                                                 CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-70

2811 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-7  SnapProtect Back up, then mirror                                                 CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-74

20149 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-68 SnapProtect Back up, then mirror                                                 CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-102

25497 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-83 SnapProtect Back up, then mirror                                                 CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-110

26575 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-102 SnapProtect Back up, then mirror                                                 CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-124

26094 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-98 SnapProtect Back up, then mirror                                                 CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-124

31037 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-122 SnapProtect Back up, then mirror                                                 CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-128

31650 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-41 SnapProtect Back up, then mirror                                                 CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-130

31654 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-72 SnapProtect Back up, then mirror                                                 CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-130

42833 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-59 SnapProtect Mirror, then back up                                                 CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-136

45647 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-128 SnapProtect Back up, then mirror                                                 CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-145

46010 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-127 SnapProtect Back up, then mirror                                                 CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-147

46084 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-43 SnapProtect Back up, then mirror                                                 CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-151

59566 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-4  SnapProtect Back up                                                         CC-SnapProtect-XX_Copy-159

 

Step 2: Pick the dataset you want to manage and display the relationships in DFM suing the dataset list -m command

C:\Users\derek>dfpm dataset list -m  42833

Id         Node Name            Dataset Id Dataset Name         Member Type                                        Name

43325 Primary data              42833 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-59 qtree                                              primary_controller:/users/-

2244 Primary data              42833 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-59 qtree                                             primary_controller:/backup/-

3165 Primary data              42833 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-59 qtree                                             primary_controller:/ctx/-

42965 Mirror                    42833 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-59 volume                                             local_aux_controller:/SP_ctx

51886 Mirror                    42833 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-59 volume                                             local_aux_controller:/SP_users

42968 Mirror                    42833 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-59 volume                                             local_aux_controller:/SP_backup

52126 Backup                    42833 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-59 volume                                             remote_aux_controller:/SP_users

43084 Backup                    42833 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-59 volume                                             remote_aux_controller:/SP_ctx

43087 Backup                    42833 CC-SnapProtect-XX_SC-59 volume                                             remote_aux_controller:/SP_backup

 

Step 3: DFM Backup and CommServe DB Backup

dfm backup create backup_file_name

Run a DR backup in SnapProtect/Commvault

You can also capture a snapshot in vCenter also just to be sure

 

Step 4: Run dfpm dataset relinquish <id of secondary resource you want to remove> to break the relationships in DFM.

dfpm dataset relinquish 43087

dfpm dataset relinquish 42968

 

Step 5: Then, edit the dataset and remove the secondary resource if it is still part of the dataset via the Management Console

 

Step 6: In SnapProtect remove the volume from the subclient so that it’s no longer backed up.

And that’s that. You can now use the volume in other storage policies without it impacting another configuration

How to: Present iSCSI storage from a NetApp vfiler (7-Mode)

As part of a recent data migration I had to enable a vfiler to allow iSCSI traffic as a number of virtual machines in the environment require block storage for clustering reasons. The vfiler already presents via NFS and iSCSI. As this is a test environment I’ve decided to put iSCSI on the same link as the NFS and CIFS. I know this is not normal best practice but given that the vLANs are already in place and that this is a test environment I decided to use the same IP address range. The servers accessing the iSCSI LUNs don’t have access to CIFS or to any NFS mounts already so there should be no traffic cross-over. So onto the steps to set it up:

Step 1: Allow iscsi protocol and RSH on vfiler (at vfiler0)

Check the status of the vfiler using the command

vfiler status -a tenant_vfiler
tenant_vfiler running
 ipspace: tenant_vfiler_NFS_CIFS
 IP address: 192.168.2.1 [a1a-107]
 IP address: 192.168.2.2 [a1a-107]
 Path: /vol/tenant_vfiler_vol0 [/etc]
 Path: /vol/nfs03
 Path: /vol/nfs04
 Path: /vol/nfs02
 Path: /vol/nfs01
 Path: /vol/cifs01
 Path: /vol/iso01
 Path: /vol/iscsi_test
 UUID: 93c62e36-4e76-11e4-8721-123478563412
 Protocols allowed: 7
Disallowed: proto=rsh
 Allowed: proto=ssh
 Allowed: proto=nfs
 Allowed: proto=cifs
Disallowed: proto=iscsi
 Allowed: proto=ftp
 Allowed: proto=http
 Protocols disallowed: 2

Next run the command:

vfiler allow tenant_vfiler proto=iscsi

vfiler allow tenant_vfiler proto=rsh

Step 2: Start iSCSI protocol on vfiler (at apaubmwvfi01)

vfiler context tenant_vfiler

iscsi start

Step 3: Create a new volume at vfiler0

vfiler context vfiler0

vol create iscsi_test_vol -s 20g

Step 4: Migrate the volume to apaubmwvfi01 and log into the vfielr to check the volume status

vfiler add tenant_vfiler /vol/iscsi_test

vfiler context tenant_vfiler

vol status

Step 5: Set priv advanced and modify the exports to the correct settings as below

To modify the exports read the current /exports and write it back. Once done run the exportsfs -av command to push the changes out

rdfile /vol/tenant_vfiler_vol0/etc/exports

/vol/nfs01 -sec=sys,rw=192.168.1.0/24,anon=0
/vol/nfs02 -sec=sys,rw=192.168.1.0/24,anon=0
/vol/nfs03 -sec=sys,rw=192.168.1.0/24,anon=0
/vol/nfs04 -sec=sys,rw=192.168.1.0/24,anon=0
/vol/iso01 -sec=sys,rw=192.168.1.0/24,anon=0
/vol/iscsi_test -sec=sys,rw=192.168.1.0/24,anon=0

vfiler run tenant_vfiler exportfs -av

Step 6: Create a lun from the volume (iscsi_test)

vfiler run tenant_vfiler lun create -s 10g -t windows2008 /vol/iscsi_test/iscsi_lun

Step 7: Change filer and run lun show

Step 8: Verify iSCSI network within VMware has been assigned to the VM

Step 9: Enable iSCSI Initiator – grab the iqn

Step 10: Create an igroup with the iqn of the server

igroup create -t Windows2008 ds_iscsi 
igroup add ds_iscsi iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:microsoft:server.domain.com

Step 11: map the lun to the group name

Step 12: run lun show -m to check the mapping

Step 13: Run a quick connect to the IP address of the controller

And now your disk should appear in the disk manager on the server. It’s not too different to setting up a normal iSCSI connection but RSH must be enabled otherwise it can’t tunnel the iSCSI  request to the vfiler iqn target.

Cisco HyperFlex – Welcome to the HCI Party!

Cisco has finally decided to bring the vodka to spike the punch at the Hyper-Converged Infrastructure party. And it tastes pretty damn good. There have been rumours for a while now that Cisco was working with Springpath and as a major third round investor it’s not surprising to hear about their entrance into the HCI arena. The Register’s Chris Mellor reported about Something bubbling up at Springpath back in early December.  So what is the offspring of Cisco and Springpath called? Cisco HyperFlex!!

The Play:

Hyper-converged systems so far have delivered on simplicity and scale but there’s been a massive gap in  the lack of network integration in existing solutions. Yes you can use top of rack fast switches. In some cases customers use Cumulus on whitebox top-of-rack switches for software defined networking but networking is not a built in feature of the two leading hyper-converged solutions, Nutanix and Simplivity.

HyperFlex joins the comprehensive DC portfolio along with UCS, MDS and Nexus. It means that Cisco now has a play in traditional component based infrastructure, converge infrastructure and now hyper-converged infrastructure. Cisco is adding HyperFlex to provide it with another string to its software defined infrastructure. It will now have:

• UCS – compute (service profiles, APIs etc.)
• ACI – for software defined network
• HyperFlex- software defined storage, compute and network

On the initial release Cisco HyperFlex will support file storage and VMware. There are a number of other storage types, such as block and object, and hypervisors on the roadmap.  There’s also going to be container support. Given that Springpath was hypervisor agnostic I’d expect a quick ramp up from Cisco and fast feature release cycle.

The Potential:

Like pretty much every other hyper-converged solution Cisco sees its expected use-cases to be:

• VDI
• Server virtualisation
• Test and development
• Large remote branch offices

UCS Manager is already familiar to multiple thousands of customers worldwide and the server and network deployment settings in HyperFlex come from pre-configured Service Profiles. Service Profiles are well and truly familiar to anyone that has worked with Cisco UCS.  Given that customer base and the familiarity with existing management tools there’s massive potential for Cisco HyperFlex here. There are some well developed existing incumbents in the hyper-converged market with Nutanix leading the way and HyperFlex will allow Cisco to gain a foothold in that rapidly growing market.

The Deep-dive:

Melbourne VMUG Review

Once again the Melbourne VMUG UserCon was a massive success and had some great speakers and sessions. Given that there were such IT heavy hitters as Scott Lowe (@scott_lowe), Chris Wahl (@chriswahl) and Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor) as well as a number of local IT stars such as Frank Fan (@frankfan7), Anthony Burke (@pandom_), Anthony Spiteri (@anthonyspiteri) and Craig Waters (@cswaters1) it’s not surprising that it was a great event

One of my goals for the day was to attend a number of the community sessions. I found the vBrownBag sessions conducted by Alastair Cooke (@demitassenz) to be the most informative and entertaining sessions of the day, along with those of Chris Wahl. The award for the funniest session of the day went to Simon Sharwood (@ssharwood) from the Register as part of the vBrownBag session. It wasn’t just entertaining but a great insight into how content is derived for the site.

I missed one of the sessions I had intended on getting to but here’s a break down of the sessions I did attend.

Melbourne VMUG – Preview

 

The annual Melbourne VMUG UserCon takes place this Thursday, 25th February. It’s also an important day for me as it’s my wedding anniversary. I know which one my wife is more interested in! But, for the IT community in Melbourne all eyes will be on the VMUG. This years event has moved location from the old Hilton on the Park to Crown on Southbank. I think this is a good move and makes the VMUG even more accessible than in previous years. Last years guest speakers were excellent with Chad Sakac, Vaughan Stewart and John Troyer and this year it’s been lifted another notch again. This year the enterprise IT giants include Scott Lowe (@scott_lowe), Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor), Brad Tompkins (@VMUG_CEO) and my own personal IT hero Chris Wahl (@ChrisWahl). There’s also going to be vBrownBag sessions being hosted by Alastair Cooke (@demitassenz). If you’ve been following twitter you’ll have seen that Scott’s been having issues with flights and has had United basically crap all over his plans. Hopefully things work out for him and he can make it on time to the Sydney VMUG on Tuesday 23rd but it looks like it’ll be a close call. I wish him safe travels from here on.

VMUGs are all about the community. It’s the primary reason it exists and we’re incredibly fortunate to have the organisers volunteer their time to put on such a great event. Melbourne has some of the finest at its helm and that has been recognised globally. If you haven’t attended before I’d highly recommend fitting it into your calendar. You’ll be glad you did and your employer will be glad you did too. It’s really worth getting to the keynotes at the UserCon as unlike keynotes at other events they are not strictly vendor focused and they can provide some real insight into your industry as a whole and even your career path. But the main focus should be the community speeches. Hearing from others out in the field about the trials and tribulations they’ve had with specific technology is where the real learning takes place. These contribute a shorter part of the agenda and it’s something I’d like to see more of in future events but I also appreciate that it’s hard to get speakers for such sessions. For me this year that’ll be my focus outside of the keynotes. There are a number of vendor based sessions as well throughout the day that delve into new technology .

There’s a lot of information and knowledge to be gleaned from this event. I’d also recommend working out your agenda before attending and have a ponder over what you’d like to get out of the event. The sessions I’m planning on attending are:

• Keynote – Adding A Business Skill to Your Tool Belt – Keith Townsend
• vBrownBag Tech Talk: What’s All This Flash Stuff About Anyway? – Craig Waters
• Mastering PowerShell to Call RESTful API Endpoints – Chris Wahl
• vBrownBag Tech Talk: Giving Your Career the 1-2 Punch – Keith Townsend & Scott Lowe
• VSAN: Technical What’s Latest, and “An Administrator’s Daily View” – Greg Mulholland & Ramon Valery
• Bring Visibility to Any Cloud, Any App, & Any Device – Paco Cañive, ExtraHop Networks 
• vBrownBag Tech Talk: How the Sausage Machine Works to Bring You IT News
• vSphere Troubleshooting Methodology and Best Practices – Donovan Durand
• VMware Keynote: The Future of Network virtualisation with VMware NSX – Scott Lowe

Unfortunately the community sessions clash in times but if they didn’t I’d attend the following. As I can only be in one place at one time I’ll be at the Chris Wahl session.

• The Power of the Community – Open Conversation about VMUG, VMware and the Digital Business Landscape – Brad Tompkins
• The Price is Wrong: Why Projects Run Late, and People Buy Cloud – Jusin Warren
• Picking Up New Skills – Tips and Tricks to Build Your Technical Tool Chest – Chris Wahl