My Top Session picks for VMworld 2016

The VMworld Schedule Builder (US) is now available so time to go build your schedules and try and cram as many sessions as possible into all too short a time frame. Before I give you my picks, just a reminder that all the VMworld 2015 sessions are now publicly available for viewing. So now onto this year, I did a post a few weeks back that detailed the session breakdown this year. The numbers have changed a bit since then as some additional sessions were added but the large majority of the sessions are still VMware only sessions with very few (10%) independent speaker sessions. Despite who is presenting at VMworld there are still loads of great sessions and I thought I would detail my top picks this year by category. First up sessions that cover VVols, I did a post already that detailed all the VVol sessions at VMworld this year but here are my top picks:

Disclaimer: I’m more biased towards storage sessions and not really that interested in VDI or Networking

VVols sessions:

Transitioning to VVols: Partner Panel [8619] (Panel of experts on VVols myself included)

  • Pete Flecha, Sr Technical Marketing Architect, VMware
  • Several TBD technology partners

Virtual Volumes Technical Deep Dive [7645] (Learn from two very knowledgeable experts on VVols)

  • Patrick Dirks, Sr Manager, VMware, Inc.
  • Pete Flecha, Sr Technical Marketing Architect, VMware

Snapshots Suck: How VSAN and VVol fix all your operational nightmares [8159] (Snapshots change for the better in VVols, learn why)

  • Pete Flecha, Sr Technical Marketing Architect, VMware
  • John Nicholson, Technical Marketing Manager, VMware

Achieving Agility, Flexibility , Scalability and Performance with VMware Software Defined Storage (SDS) and Virtual Volumes for Business critical databases [7549] (Tier 1 apps on VVols, interesting to hear the performance angle)

  • Sudhir Balasubramanian, Senior Solution Architect – Data Platforms, VMware
  • Mohan Potheri, Sr Solution Architect, VMware

VVol and Storage Policy-Based Management ? Is It Everything They Said It Would Be? [STO9054] (Customer perspective on VVols)

  • Ben Bolles, VP, Products, Pivot3
  • Jeremiah Francis, Director, Information technology, Financial Advocates
Other Storage sessions:

A Day in the Life of a VSAN I/O [STO7875] (I love geeky I/O deep dive sessions)

  • Duncan Epping, Chief Technologist, VMware
  • John Nicholson, Senior Technical Marketing Manager, VMware

An Industry Roadmap: From storage to data management [STO7903] (Good to hear insights from a VMware Fellow)

  • Christos Karamanolis, VMware Fellow – CTO of Storage and Availability, VMware

Storage for Virtual Environments – What’s new and What’s next for vSphere Storage [STO7755] (Sounds interesting)

  • Sudhanshu (Suds) Jain, Product Management, vSphere Network and Storage Interconnect and Virtual Platform, VMWare
  • SHASHANK RAJVANSHI, Product Line Manager, VMWare

Storage at Memory Speed and the Amazing Future of Virtual Non-Volatile Memory [INF9950] (Also sounds interesting)

  • Aaron Blasius, Group Product Manager, VMware Inc.
  • Rajesh Venkatasubramanian, Principal Engineer, VMware
Container Sessions:

(because I really need to learn more about containers, you do to)

vSphere Integrated Containers – Learn how you can run Docker Containers, in Production, Today! [CNA8717]

  • Karthik Narayan, Sr. Product Manager, VMware Inc.

From Zero to VMware Photon Platform [CNA7741]

  • Paul Gifford, Staff Systems Enginerer, National Specialist, VMware
  • Adam Osterholt, Staff Systems Engineer, SDE, VMware, Inc.

Containers for the vSphere Admin [CNA7522]

  • Ryan Kelly, Staff Systems Engineer, VMware

Introduction to Containers as a Service [CNA7454]

  • Gary Coburn, Staff Engineer – National Specialist, VMware
  • Paul Gifford, Staff Systems Enginerer, National Specialist, VMware
Other Sessions:

Evolving the vSphere API for the Modern Era [INF8255] (It’s William and Alan, nuff said)

  • William Lam, Senior SDDC Integration Architect, VMware
  • Alan Renouf, Product Line Manager, VMware

Tech Preview: Enhanced VM Availability Leveraging vCenter and Partner Hardware Integration [INF8020] (tech previews are always cool and this one sounds interesting)

  • Brian Graf, Senior Product Manager – DRS/HA, VMware
  • Maarten Wiggers, Staff-1 Engineer, VMware

vSphere Encryption Deep Dive: Technology Preview [INF8856] (Native encryption is finally coming to vSphere!)

  • Mike Foley, Sr. Technical Marketing Architect, VMware
  • Salil Suri, Group Product Manager, VMware

Extreme Performance Series: Monster VM Database Performance [VIRT7598] (always interesting to here about large scale db performance on vSphere)

  • David Morse, Performance Engineer, VMware Inc.
  • Todd Muirhead, Performance Engineer, VMware

Hot Topics in VMware Research [CTO9406] (bunch of smart guys talking about research, a geeks dream session)

  • Chris Ramming, Senior Director, Research & Innovation, VMware
  • David Tennenhouse, Chief Research Officer, VMware
  • Michael Wei, Post Doc Researcher, VMware

Extreme Performance Series: vSphere Compute and Memory [INF8089] (deep dive on compute and memory resources)

  • Seong Beom Kim, Performance Engineer, vmware

vSphere High Availability Best Practices and Tech Preview [INF8045] (another tech preview, what’s coming soon)

  • Manoj Krishnan, vSphere HA Tech Lead, vmware
  • Matthew Meyer, Technical Marketing, VMware, Inc.

Debunking the Myths about Virtualizing High Performance Computing [CTO8120] (HPC on vSphere is challenging and interesting)

  • Josh Simons, Office of the CTO, VMware, Inc.
  • Na Zhang, Office of the CTO, VMware

vSphere Client Roadmap: Host Client, HTML5 Client, and Web Client [INF8172] (everyone’s favorite topic, sure it will turn into a gripe session)

  • Dennis Lu, Product Manager, VMware
  • Radostin Tsanev, Senior R&D Manager, VMware

Zero Downtime, 20K+ VMware vSphere 6 Upgrade [INF8374] (vSphere at large scale, interesting insights from the trenches)

  • Brad Calvert, Consulting Systems Engineer, HCA, Inc.
  • Lee Cooper, Consulting Platform Engineer, HCA
  • Jeff Guillote, Technical Account Manager, VMware, Inc.
  • Joshua Surre, AVP of Infrastructure and Operations, HCA, Inc.
Sponsors of vSphere-land sessions:

Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 Deep Dive [SDDC9461-SPO] (Anton & Doug, must-see tv)

  • Anton Gostev, VP, Product Management, Veeam Software
  • Doug Hazelman, VP Product Strategy, Veeam Software

1,000,000 IOPS, 0 headaches [STP9439] (learn about cool new VAIO technology)

  • Sheryl Koenigsberg, Senior Director of Marketing, Infinio

Evolve Your BC/DR Technology [STP9438] (cause BC/DR is always a challenge)

  • Zerto
Finally a shameless plug for my session:

Containers & VVols – a technical deep dive on new technologies that revolutionize storage for vSphere [STO9617-SPO]

  • Eric Siebert, Solutions Manager, HP
  • Charles Tierney, Manager, VMware Alliance, HPE
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