One of the best parts of VMworld is checking out the Solutions Exchange which is your one stop shop for just about any product or solution for your virtual environment. Vendors bring their best and brightest people to these events so its a fantastic opportunity to learn more about the many great products available for vSphere. I’d thought I’d highlight a few of these vendors in a series of posts that you will not want to miss seeing at VMworld, next up: Zerto

Zerto provides enterprise-class business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) solutions for virtualized infrastructure and cloud. Zerto won Best of Show at VMworld 2011, as well as 2011 Product of the Year Gold Award. Zerto has a lot going on at VMworld, they will be at Booth #2231 in the Solutions Exchange but just look for the sea of red and you will find them. They also know how to throw an awesome party and will feature an all-female AC/DC cover band at their party on Monday so don’t miss out. Here’s what you can expect from Zerto at VMworld:

• DEMO Derby: If you thought you were in love with the Zerto Virtual Replication (ZVR) product before, wait until you kick the tires on some brand NEW features! If you really love it, you can sign up for Beta right on site. All of this will be available for your pleasure in booth #2231. Think Genius Bar on steroids ;-).
• Zerto Theater Session: Join Technical Evangelist Josh Stenhouse as he discusses the ever-changing world of IT in his session, “Evolving your BC/DR Technology” in Theater A, Tuesday at 3:20pm.
• Get ThunDRstruck: The Zerto team is known for throwing quite a mean party and we won’t let you down this year either! We have booked an all-female AC/DC cover band, AC/DShe. We will be partying it up right at the super convenient House of Blues in Mandalay Bay on Monday night at 8pm -11pm. It is first come, first serve, so sign up for it here: http://bit.ly/ThunDRstruck
• #RedWed: We do it every year and it just keeps on getting better! Step 1) stop by our booth to pick up one of our kick-@$$ Tshirts. Step 2) wear the kick-@$$ Tshirt on Wednesday (that’s right – one less thing to pack) and you could win some awesome prizes. We are doing a drawing at the Zerto booth 2231 at 3pm on Wednesday for our main giveaway: Oculus Rift BUT if you tweet or get spotted on the show floor we have over $2,000 in prizes just burning a hole in our pockets

– See more at: http://www.zerto.com/blog/vmworld/zerto-vmworld-2016-expect/

One of the best parts of VMworld is checking out the Solutions Exchange which is your one stop shop for just about any product or solution for your virtual environment. Vendors bring their best and brightest people to these events so its a fantastic opportunity to learn more about the many great products available for vSphere. I’d thought I’d highlight a few of these vendors in a series of posts that you will not want to miss seeing at VMworld, next up: Turbonomic (formerly VMTurbo)

Turbonomic has been around since 2010 and offers a great virtualization management and monitoring tool with a twist. It analyzes your virtualization environment and instead of just reporting issues to you so you can intervene and resolve them, it attempts to resolve them for you. Turbonomic’s Autonomic Platform enables heterogeneous environments to self-manage to assure the performance of any application in any cloud. Turbonomic’s patented decision engine dynamically analyzes application demand and allocates shared resources in real time to maintain a continuous state of application health.

You can visit Turbonomic at VMworld in the Solutions Exchange at Booth #1139 were you can complete missions to earn points to win some pretty cool top dollar swag such as  a TurboStack Home Lab, Oculus Rifts, Amazon Taps, Raspberry Pi’s and more! Read all about it and sign-up here.

One of the best parts of VMworld is checking out the Solutions Exchange which is your one stop shop for just about any product or solution for your virtual environment. Vendors bring their best and brightest people to these events so its a fantastic opportunity to learn more about the many great products available for vSphere. I’d thought I’d highlight a few of these vendors in a series of posts that you will not want to miss seeing at VMworld, next up: Veeam

Veeam started as a small privately owned company that was founded in 2006 by Ratmir Timashev back when virtualization was still a relatively new technology. Back in those days Veeam was a very small company that had only 10 employees in 2008. As the virtualization market started heating up and adoption in the data center started growing, a few companies recognized this opportunity and developed products to support VMware’s ESX/ESXi hypervisor. One area in particular that virtualization had a big impact on was backup & recovery as virtualization really changed the way backups needed to be done to be more efficient. It also opened up many new opportunities for doing backup & recovery differently and better.

Today Veeam has more than 1200 employees and with 17 international offices worldwide, including regional headquarters for EMEA in Paris, France, the Americas in Columbus, Ohio, and Asia-Pacific in Sydney, Australia. They are recognized as a visionary in the Gartner Magic Quadrant and have won many industry awards.Veeam has always had a big presence at VMworld and they host one of the best vendor parties at VMworld. Veeam parties are legendary and always crowded but definitely worth attending. Veeam has a lot going on at VMworld this year including:

• Stop by the Veeam booth #1731 at VMworld 2016 and see what great things they have going on! Meet with Veeam engineers that would love to discuss the challenges your company is facing, while providing a great solution. Be sure to also pick up your Veeam T-shirt and enter the raffle for a chance to win one of two Norwegian Cruise Experiences.
• Attend the Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 Deep Dive breakout session [SDDC9461-SPO] on Tuesday, Aug. 30 at 2:30 PM and hear from legendary Veeam veterans, Doug Hazelman and Anton Gostev.
• Attend the Data Protection as a service for your vCloud Director environment with Veeam [HBC9463-SPO] breakout session on Wednesday, Aug. 31 at 3:30 PM and hear from 2 more Veeam all-stars, Rick Vanover and Luca Dell’Oca.
• Join Veeam on Tuesday night at LIGHT Nightclub for Veeam’s annual VMworld party and enjoy a night of music, dancing, and entertainment in one of the hottest spots of Las Vegas.

Find out more information about Veeam at VMworld at their landing page.

One of the best parts of VMworld is checking out the Solutions Exchange which is your one stop shop for just about any product or solution for your virtual environment. Vendors bring their best and brightest people to these events so its a fantastic opportunity to learn more about the many great products available for vSphere. I’d thought I’d highlight a few of these vendors in a series of posts that you will not want to miss seeing at VMworld, first up: Infinio

Infinio launched in 2011 with a different approach to using content-based deduplication to solve real-world problems in virtual environments. Infinio’s unique architecture offers the efficiency of a global, content-based system, the flexibility of a content-addressable system with perfect distribution, and fills a gap in the market for an operationally non-disruptive, software-only solution to storage performance problems.

You can visit Infinio at VMworld in the Solutions Exchange at Booth #1167, in addition they will be doing a theater session on Monday entitled “1,000,000 IOPS, 0 headaches [STP9439]” at 11:20am in Theater B in the Solutions Exchange. Here are 3 reasons to stop by Infinio’s booth at VMworld:

1. See a Live Demonstration of Infinio Accelerator – Want to see a live demonstration of the software in action? Stop in at any time or set up a time to meet with an Infinio staff member!
2. Test Your Luck – Viva Las Vegas! You could be a big winner at VMworld. Infinio will be giving you a chance to win awesome prizes. Just stop by to play along!
3. See a Video of How Infinio Works – In the booth they will be showing a short video of how Infinio Accelerator works. After you take your shot at luck, stay for a quick overview of how Infinio can save you time and money.

Not going to VMworld? You can still find out all about Infinio at their website.

Those bloggers who made the Top 50 this year get a free commemorative coin courtesy of VMTurbo Turbonomic. If you made the top 10 you get a gold coin, 11-25 a silver coin and 26-50 a copper coin. Sign up to get it by filling out this form so I have your shipping info. If you are attending VMworld US indicate that on the form as I will hand out coins there, if that is the case you do not need to supply your shipping info on the form. Since international addresses can be challenging please include any special instructions that I might need to know for shipping. Please allow 2-4 weeks for shipping. In addition to the physical coin, any blogger that made the Top 100 can get your virtual coin right now to proudly display on your blog.

VMTurbo has re-branded itself by unveiling a new company name, Turbonomic, from what I’ve heard the name change was done to reflect their broader industry support for more than just VMware environments. The VM part of their old name is distinctly identifiable with VMware which apparently has caused some friction at VMware. According to this CRN article VMware pulled VMTurbo’s speaking session from the VMworld session line-up and refunded their money. This isn’t the first time VMware has policed it’s partners at events, a few years back there was an incident with Nutanix and Veeam at another event.

The name Turbonomic is a mashup of part of the original name and two key words that relate to their product: Economic and Autonomic. The word Economic relates to the economic principles that enable cloud and virtualized environments to self-organize and self-manage. And the word Autonomic relates to their Autonomic Platform that enables you to accelerate your next transformation and deliver the applications your users demand.

Despite the name change Turbonomic has the same mission and vision as before the name change which is managing any workload, on any infrastructure, anywhere, at anytime.

VMworld is a great time to soak in everything you can possibly learn about virtualization from all the many sessions, booths and experts attending the show. It can literally be information overload and at the end of a long day you probably feel a bit mentally exhausted from it all. So what better way to unwind then hit the many parties that are thrown each night during the event. I thought I would highlight a few from the full list which you can view here. I always believe the parties are a great way to network after the event in a more relaxed setting and I am always thankful to the vendors that pay a lot of money to put these parties on without getting much in return from them.

Sunday:

• 5:00-7:30pm – The official Welcome Reception – Don’t miss this one as it’s probably the best time to hit the Solutions Exchange, the vendors are all locked and loaded, fully staffed and ready to engage you. Of course having lots of free food and booze all around makes it even more attractive.
• 7:00-10:00pm – The legendary VMunderground party – Last year was probably the biggest and best year for this party which always tends to be crowded, the Metreon was a great venue for it. This year the venue sizes are much smaller in Vegas so it’s back at the Nine Fine Irishman bar in the New York, New York casino where it was a few years back. The event is no longer free for attendees as the sponsor pool shrunk this year, admission is $25 which is cheaper than buying food and drinks on your own dime in a Vegas bar.

Monday:

• 6:00-10:00pm – Cohesity at TopGolf – I’ve never been much of a golfer, I used to play around a bit many years ago but I went to TopGolf for the first time this year and had a great time. If you’re not familiar with TopGolf it’s not what you think and you don’t have to be skilled to participate, think of it more like bowling with a golf club.
• 8:00-11:00pm – ThunDRstruck Party – Zerto is joining with PernixData and Nutanix to throw a great DR-themed party featuring the all female AC/DC cover band, AC/DShe. This one sounds like a lot of fun, especially if you are a fan of 70s & 80s era rock.

Tuesday:

• 4:30-6:00pm – Hall Crawl – Come on back to the Solutions Exchange for round 2, during the Hall Crawl certain vendors will have beer and drinks at their booth.
• 7:00-10:00pm – vExpert Party at the Mob Museum – Invite only party for vExperts, always a fun time as Pat Gelsinger is usually in attendance along with other VMware top brass and experts.
• 8:00-12:00pm – Veeam’s annual VMworld party – Consistently one of the best parties at VMworld, Veeam is a company that constantly gives back to the community and they go all out on their VMworld party, this is one you don’t want to miss.

Wednesday:

• 7:30-10:30pm – The official VMworld party – This year’s party is so epic you have to sign a waiver just to attend, don’t miss out on a night of fun.

I recently did a post of the top sessions that I look forward to seeing at VMworld and I thought I would follow it up with the top people that I look forward to seeing there as a well. First off, this is no reflection on anyone not on the list, this is purely personal preference based on relationships that I have built up over the years. So if you are not on this list please don’t get offended, I look forwarding to meeting all old friends at VMworld and making new ones and I’m sure there are names I just plain forgot. VMworld serves as that one special time of the year were the virtual community gets physical which is one of the best parts of VMworld. So without further ado and really in no particular order:

• David Marshall – Close friend from I met back in the early days of Hyper9, always a pleasure to catch-up with David at VMworld.
• Eric Sloof – It’s Mr. Sloof, truly a great and interesting guy, an OG blogger and the face of VMworld TV.
• Duncan Epping – Who wouldn’t want to run into the #1 blogger and a very down to earth person.
• Cormac Hogan – The legendary Mr. Storage at VMware from across the pond.
• Jason Boche – An old dear friend back from the early VMTN and blogging days.
• Doug Hazelman – Another good friend from the early days of virtualization that has had an amazing career at Veeam.
• Rick Vanover – It’s the Rickatron, another Veeam legend and someone who I have worked with on various Veeam projects.
• John Troyer – The inventor of VMware social media, VMTN, vExperts, etc, a dear friend who I always look forward to catching up with.
• Scott Lowe – Another OG blogger, we live 30 min from each other in CO but only see each other at distant events.
• Chris Wahl – Up and coming all-star in the VMware community, Chris is an all around fun person to know and hang with.
• Mike Foley – I’ve known Mike for a long time and fondly remember hanging and drinking beer together at past VMworlds.
• Tony Dunn – One of the original VMware social guys, Tony was always behind the scenes but  is a big part of VMware’s social media success.
• Chris Wolf – I’ve known Chris back to his Gartner days and always enjoy the conversations we have at VMworld.
• Andy Banta – A new friend, we share a common passion for storage and VVols.
• Howard Marks – Hard to not love Howard, he’s like the big storage teddy bear of the VMware and storage community.
• Jane Rimmer – Long time community supporter and truly a wonderful and fun person.
• Marc Farley – Industry storage vet that I fondly remember him making me do a Cab Cam video with him back when I first started with HP.
• Simon Seagrave – Dear friend and one of the nicest person’s you would ever meet, fellow vChat podcast member.
• David Davis – Ditto with David, have known him from back in his TrainSignal days.
• Patrick Redknap – Patrick’s a party in a vBox and a lot of fun, I fondly remember drinking at the pool bar with him right before I had to go in and give a presentation to the vExperts at VMworld.
• Rawlinson Rivera – Captain VSAN and a huge ball of vEnergy, had fun hanging with him at smaller VMUG events and VMworld.
• Chad Sakac – Very approachable and nice guy, had a few late night bar convo’s with him and he was a teammate on the ESXi quiz show at VMworld.
• Todd Scalzott – My cigar smoking buddy and longtime community member.
• William Lam – Very humble and nice guy and a prolific blogger, always a pleasure to chat with him.
• Pat Gelsinger – It’s Pat, who wouldn’t want to meet him, Pat and I have a long history of meeting at VMworld and I can honestly say he is one of the most humble and down to earth CEO’s I have ever met.

Look forward to seeing you all at VMworld and here’s a few pics with some of the above mentioned people! (Calvin you’re not on the list as I see you all the time)