Top 10 VMworld 2018 sessions to look forward to
VMworld is right around the corner and the 2018 conference promises an exciting mix of keynotes and breakout sessions that cover a variety of emerging and established technologies. Whether you’re looking to get a sneak peek at VMware’s multi-cloud plans, get updated on vSphere’s current capabilities or learn how security and DevOps go hand in hand, VMworld 2018 sessions have plenty to offer.
VMworld 2017 featured announcements about VMware Cloud on AWS and Pivotal Container Service (PKS), as well as strategic revelations about VMware NSX. Many VMworld 2018 sessions feature these products, and much of the conference will likely focus more on partnerships than announcements. VMware NSX is again a topic of speculation, with some experts hoping that VMware uses its position to extend micro-segmentation to hyper-segmentation.
Let us know in the comments which sessions you’re most anticipating.
- A Peek into the Future of VMware IT’s Multi-Cloud Strategy
VMware is finding its footing in the cloud market, with its future depending on a multi-cloud strategy that emphasizes workload mobility. VMware Cloud on AWS, a centerpiece of VMworld 2017 and a major player in VMworld 2018 sessions, offers the ability and capacity to meet varying levels of demand. This session will cover VMware’s overarching strategy, use cases for different cloud tactics and how VMware Cloud on AWS, as well as other VMware products, can meet current and future IT needs.
SPEAKERS
Velchamy Sankarlingam, VP Cloud Services Development & Operations, VMware - The Future of Networking and Security with VMware NSX
As CEO Pet Gelsinger said in 2017, NSX is the “secret sauce” to VMware’s future endeavors. Many current NSX adopters are previous VMware vSphere users, but further success of the service depends on adoption outside its core base, as well as agreement among a variety of IT departments including networking, compute and security staff. This session predicts the growth of a more heterogeneous data center based on the growth of containers and the increasing presence of workloads in public clouds. VMware is hoping NSX can ride these trends and offer extensive networking and security services that complement these evolving environments. Attend this session to get a deep dive into NSX’s architecture and evaluate how NSX can address changing data center needs.
SPEAKERS
Bruce Davie, CTO, APJ, VMware - What’s New with PKS and Emerging Use Cases
February 2018 marked the general availability of PKS and this session offers attendees the chance to get a comprehensive look at what PKS offers. New features make it easier to deploy Kubernetes to manage Docker containers at scale. PKS offers a self-service portal to tame the reputed difficulty of Kubernetes, as well as the ability to schedule health checks and updates. This session will focus on the isolation, security and high availability aspects offered in Kubernetes clusters. Attendees will be able to examine some use cases that are currently emerging among VMware users and determine if PKS adoption is in their future.
SPEAKERS
Cornelia Davis, Sr. Director of Technology, Pivotal - What’s New with vSphere
A tour of VMworld’s 2018 sessions wouldn’t be complete without a return to “What’s New with vSphere”. This ever-popular staple offers a look at the capabilities of VMware vSphere through a high-level showcase of new and current features, as well as tech previews and information on its trajectory. This will likely be a good session to get up to speed on this robust and still evolving platform. Additionally, this session might also be useful for admins currently wrestling with vSphere 5.5’s recently announced end of life.
SPEAKERS
Michael Adams, Sr. Director, CPBU, VMware - NSX Cloud: Use Cases, Design, and Implementation
VMware’s network virtualization service, NSX, has been top of mind for many IT professionals in the past year, and VMworld 2018 sessions will likely boost excitement even more. This session should provide attendees with the ability see beyond the hype and critically examine some of the present use cases for NSX. Get a closer look at NSX’s native networking and security features, as well as how it integrates with hybrid clouds and Amazon Web Services (AWS) resources. VMware will also provide more details and guidance on implementation, as well as a demo.
SPEAKERS
Humair Ahmed, Senior Technical Product Manager, VMware - Examining the Best Practices for Executing Your Multi-Cloud Environment
The cloud market is evolving and so are best practices for management and execution. Hybrid cloud strategies offer methods for balancing workloads between the public cloud and on-premises data centers; increasingly, it’s up to admins to find that sweet spot. In this session, learn about workload placement, multi-cloud support and guidance on movement to AWS, Azure and other cloud platforms. Naturally, there will also be specific guidelines on deploying VMware Cloud on AWS. Execution will be everything in the maturing cloud market, so this session will likely have much to offer.
SPEAKERS
Erik Vogel, Vice President, Hybrid IT, HPE Pointnext - Tech Preview: The Road to a Declarative Compute Control Plane
Declarative control planes are growing in popularity. Declarative architecture is distributed and uses tools that set a desired state that a target device must interpret and match, whereas imperative architecture is centralized, so its tools must explicitly instruct the device. VMware vSphere currently offers declarative control planes for networking and storage, so this session will go over the path to a plane for compute. This tech preview will focus on capabilities available in the VMware Cloud software-defined data center and how those features open the way for a declarative compute control plane.
SPEAKERS
Maarten Wiggers, Staff 2 Engineer, VMware
Frank Denneman, Senior Staff Architect, VMware - Mind the Gap: Building a closer relationship between Security and DevOps
Two dominant IT trends often create tension when combined: DevOps, which demands agility and interdependence between different teams, and security, which demands thorough compliance and strict review. This session presents methods for uniting these needs by building security best practices into DevOps procedures. The evolving cloud market often focuses on speed and mobility, so security needs DevOps to keep up. This session will feature research on the ways hybrid cloud security is changing due to decentralization and automation. Hybrid cloud presents a potentially seismic shift for organizations willing to adopt it, but it also presents an opportunity to reorganize those shifting elements with security and agility in mind and in sync.
SPEAKERS
Bryan Webster, Principal Architect , Trend Micro
Doug Cahill, Senior Analyst , Enterprise Strategy Group - Architecting at the Tactical Edge with VMware vSAN and vRealize
A schedule of VMworld 2018 sessions isn’t complete without a session that goes beyond the abstract and shares concrete details from a particular team’s implementation. In this session, representatives from Rubrik and Nextech Solutions will share how one team addressed application extensibility in a challenging environment rife with military and disaster relief operations. Hyper-converged infrastructure, including VMware vSAN and VMware vRealize Automation, as well as Rubrik, all played key roles. A particular focus of this session will be using vSAN’s security capabilities at the edge and the core. For those considering security at the edge, this session is a must-see.
SPEAKERS
Chris Gurley, Advisory Systems Engineer, Rubrik
Jeremy Martin, Senior Sales Engineer, Nextech Solutions - Best Practices for Kubernetes on VMware vSphere
For attendees looking to get started with Kubernetes on vSphere, this is likely a session to prioritize. Kubernetes is an open source system for Linux container management across private, public and hybrid cloud environments. Kubernetes offers the ability to automate deployment, maintenance, scaling and scheduling of numerous application containers. This session will present best practices for using Kubernetes, as well as some lessons learned after implementing it in a virtual environment. It will also present other tools for creating service models and navigating different cloud structures, such as Kubernetes Anywhere, PKS and Kubeadm.
SPEAKERS
Jon Owings, Principal Systems Engineer, Cloud and NextGen Applications, Pure StorageCheck out the rest of the VMworld 2018 sessions in the VMworld content catalog.