Tuesday, August 30, 2011

VMworld Tuesday General Session Live Blog

This one is going to be "live".  No editing, no proofreading, nothing.  I'm sitting at the blogger's table for the Tuesday General Session and I'll be taking the notes the whole time and then I'm going to hit submit "as is".  Please excuse this if it turns out a little more "raw" than other posts.

Here's a couple of pics from prior to the start as the crowd is filing in:


  • Intro video is on the screen. Project Octopus is mentioned...  Links content to devices to people
  • Dr. Herrod (CTO) is on the stage
    • He is highlighting a few of the products
    • We need to move above managing device -> What does the user really need?
    • It's now about Universal Access from all devices at all times with high expectations

  • Video about how the way we work and collaborate is changing
    • it's not about provisioning machines, it's about user data and their access to the data
    • IT still has control of the platform!
    • users dictate the work style now with IT enabling this new style
  • Dr. Herrod is back 
    • How do put all the devices, users, and data all together?
    • Need to Simplify, extract from silos that exist today
    • Manage all this in a new way
    • Windows more manageable and secure View with ThinApp
    • Focus going forward will be an App Catalog Service as well as Data Service
    • He introduced the concept of a Unified Service Broker to connect all this together to provide Secure Universal Access
    • He is taking us through each area in turn from the perspective of both the administrator and the user
      • Talking about View 5 - showing automated pool creation with Link Clones.  Creates about 1000 desktops in about an hour.  More automation and provisioning in View
      • App Catalog Service - New Project -> ThinApp Factory, patches and automation for applications ties into Project Horizon
      • Project Horizon will be Windows apps as well as mobile apps
      • ThinApp Factory allows you to create ThinApps easily and prepares them for insertion into the catalog -> It will fire up a virtual machine, install the app, and create the package, all automated
      • Assign apps to groups and users for access so app catalog will be specialized per user for what the catalog will display
      • Tracks user licenses upon application activation
      • Onto to Data Service -> Project Octopus
      • He mentions Dropbox - He many are using it and how many SHOULD be using it :)
      • Dropbox service for the enterprise
      • Policies based on users and groups depends on what you can share
      • Controls the sharing of sensitive data, the idea of sharing expiration and also group based security
      • Delivered via public and private cloud (no details given though)
    • Now a demonstration from the user perspective
      • Gives a demonstration of View 5 -> pulls up Windows 7 desktop
      • App Catalog is provided after desktop, new user can activate and install apps based on their role in the enterprise
      • User would have pre-populated user shares based on Project Octopus permissions
      • Activate a mobile device from the App Catalog and it will push the applications and file sharing to the new phone
      • App on the mobile phone will be a "VDI device" on the phone, apps appear on the phone in a new "enterprise area".  It's a phone within a phone and you can switch contexts back and forth with Horizon Mobile on the mobile device
      • More demonstrations about the Horizon Mobile
        • Showing Excel modification on iPad using AppBlast
        • Showing SocialCast on an iPad
        • WAN based TCP/IP call on iPad
      • AppBlast -> delivering applications over HTML5
        • This is a labs project right now
      • If you have a home phone, you can wipe the "work device" (the Horizon mobile device within a device) without wiping the personal device.
    • It's all about managing data, people, and applications in a post-PC era

 
    • Giving a demonstration of the upcoming rev to the iPad vSphere Client
      • vMotion now enabled
    • What does the back end to all of this look like?
      • vSphere 5 is now available
      • 200 new features
      • It should just work and work well, that is the goal
      • Talked VMware Go for a bit
        • VSA is mentioned since Go is designed for SMB (small/medium business market)
        • The VSA make it easy to deploy and manage shared storage using local servers instead of a SAN
      • Now talking AutoDeploy for larger enterprises
        • PXE boot stateless servers
      • Talking performance
        • Biggest virtual machine ever - over 1,000,000 iops!
      • Performance guarantees
        • How do we solve the noisy neighbor problem?
        • Storage Pooling
          • The concept of Tiered Storage and placement of vm's
          • This allows critical apps to be Tier 1, less critical Tier 2, etc.
          • Storage DRS, moving vm's around in pool
          • The combination of all of these features allows for SLA's to be generated
At this point I had to bail to prepare for a video interview.  I'm sorry but I won't be able to blog the last 30 minutes of the session.

No comments: