North East VMUG Feb 2019 – ReCap
Last Thursday (7th Feb 2019) was our very first North East VMUG (NEVMUG) event of 2019 and what an event we had scheduled, we had keynote speakers from across the world arriving in Newcastle to dazzle our attendees with the latest trends in virtualization, we managed to secure and reunite “The original @vmware #TheWreckingCrew” Duncan Epping, Frank Denneman and Rawlinson Rivera along with Zerto’s top evangelist Gijsbert Janssen van Doorn in little old “Damp and drizzly” Newcastle.
So let’s look at the agenda and the discussion points we put together for the NEVMUG event.….. WOW all current HOT Topics !!!
Let’s kick off the Day with a opening brief from vMackem and the NEVMUG Leadership Team to a packed house with a record number of attendees, this time we had a stand in VMware liaison officer in the form of Chris Storrie from our neighboring Scottish VMUG as Michael Armstrong was away building a house in Mexico.
Our First Session of the day was was a VMware Keynote from Duncan Epping, Chief Technologist @VMware – @DuncanYB
Where Duncan gave us a glimpse into VMware future and where they are going tomorrow and how hyper-converged technologies help optimizing data center and operational efficiency.
Next we had a VMware Keynote fromFrank Denneman, Chief Technologist @VMware – @FrankDenneman
Where Frank presented a session on “Kubernetes 101 for the vSphere Admin” discussing how VMware have solved many challenges with Kubernetes.
After our 2nd network session we had our 1st Gold Sponsor Session by Rawlinson Rivera, Chief Technology Officer @Cohesity
With a session on “The Mass Data Fragmentation Challenges in Multi-Cloud Era”, where Rawlinson gave the attendees a demo of Cohesity Helios and explained how one software platform has multiple cloud use cases.
We then had another networking session to allow the attendees to visit the sponsor booths and also to allow Frank & Duncan to sign some of the Prize Giveaways.
Did someone say the Bar is open its must be “Noon in the Toon”
Next Up was our very first Community Session of the Day Jorge de la Cruz, Blogger and vExpert – @jorgedlcruz
In this session Jorge provided an insight into free tools and software to allow you to deploy your very own VMware monitoring tool, yes he said free tools. This session covered different ways to monitor your vSphere environments from scratch with free open source applications using InfluxDB, Telegraf, Grafana and making use of vSphere’s own SDK.
Lunch is served!!!
We like to provide our attendees with a full day of sessions therefor Lunch and beers are also provided to lighten the mood and allow the attendees time to mingle and discuss the sessions.
After lunch the next session was our 2nd community session of the Day and it was Christopher Lewis, Blogger and vExpert – @thecloudxpert. Chris took to the stage for his session on delivering VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager (vRSLCM) along with Tips and tricks that he has uncovered on his journey as a PSO consultant.
After another short network session we had our 2nd Gold sponsor of the Day Gijsbert Janssen van Doorn, Technology Evangelist @Zerto – @Gaizzie (Not an easy name to say)
In this session Gijsbert prepared to dazzle the crowd with a full session based on how to say his name in the Northern regions of the UK. (only Kidding). Gijsbert provided the attendees with an overview of Zerto and glimpse of how Zerto uses journaling technologies coupled with continuous replication to protect and recover files.
Another Network session to allow the attendees to mingle and talk with today’s sponsors, Cohesity, Zerto, SITS Group, QA Training
Then onto our final Community session by Gareth Edwards, Blogger and vExpertPro – @GarethEdwards86
In Gareth’s session he covered his journey with Terraform and how best to adopt this into your business, Gareth is also one of the two vExpertPro’s within the UK so please reach out to him if you are interested in the vExpert program.
This brings us up to our final Network session of the day, shortly followed by a session on Upgrading vSphere by Kev Johnson, Technical Marketing Engineer @ VMware.
In this session Kev discussed the reasons to upgrade to the latest releases of vSphere and how to achieve this with the available VMware toolsets and flings.
Finally we wrap up the day with none other than our prize draw, and what a prize draw we had lined up….. all the winners are below (all 22).
Its time to wrap up the day and the best way to do that is over vBeers in our local bar. where the attendees can mingle with the sponsors and speakers to discuss today’s sessions or any in-fight projects.
Thanks for everyone who attended the event, this event would not have been possible without the support of the below five top sponsors, special thanks go out to
For making this event possible and for supporting our local community.
The slides from today’s sessions can be found here if you have any questions or want to join us on our slack channel please let us know by dropping us a message @ ne_england@vmug.com