August is quickly drawing to a close and the last day of the month kicks off the first day of VMworld in San Francisco. The past week has been really busy as I prepare for my trip and try and bring my co-workers up-to-date with what is going on and things that might come up while I’m away.
I’m very excited to be attending VMworld again this year and I’m looking forward to soaking up just as much as possible from the conference. I plan on blogging about some of the sessions and topics I encounter. Last year’s conference in Las Vegas was great and I think my company greatly benefited from the information I was able to get and bring back. We had information months in advance about the then upcoming vSphere version and its capabilities. For anyone who is seriously invested in ESX, its well worth the money to attend.
One thing we’ve been seriously looking at is virtual host management software — something in addition to Virtual Center and something to alert us of what is going on inside of our ESX hosts. In a pipe dream, we’d love a product that is also cross platform, since we’ve added XenServer to our mix this year. We’re looking for software that can do some level of network monitoring and notification about traffic from ESX hosts, that allows us to alert on a wider variety of problems in the ESX environment, but also something to help us answer questions when the arise.
I hope to spend some time in the vendor expo area looking at what solutions are available. We have seen demos and installed evaluations from several companies, but I think we are down to two options – Hyper9 or vFoglight from Vizioncore. Those are two very different products, but each has its own strengths. Ideally, I think both would fit into our environment quite well and both would be useful, but I doubt we get to buy both. Neither fits that bill, but it sounds like both are moving in that direction in the future.
The week after VMworld, a rumored Apple event may happen. Unfortunately, the event is scheduled for 9/9/09, after I leave San Fran – darn it. AppleInsider is rumoring the event will be iPod related – including adding point-and-shoot camera capabilites to the iPod lines. iTunes 9 is also expected to be announced with some social networking tie-in’s. Years past, as AppleInsider reports, the event has been held at the Yerba Buena Center – and that is just a couple blocks from the hotel in the city – oh well…
So, its an exciting week for me coming up. I’m looking forward to the trip and to VMworld.
