Scotland VMUG April 2017

2 minute read

On Thursday 20th April 2017 the first Scotland VMUG of the year happened. As usual, it was a great event.

I estimate over 100 people attended as there was a few that had never been to a VMUG before - welcome to the community! What was really great about this event was the amount of community sessions. I know I am not alone in thinking those are the best sessions to attend. The day started with the ever entertaining presenter Joe Baguely (@JoeBaguely) from VMware. He was talking about Digital Transformation and one point that stuck with me was it all starts with the User. As technologists we tend to buy or implement technology that WE like, not what helps the users.

Next up was Zerto doing a demo of their well regarded BC/DR solution. Seems like a great product.

I was looking forward to the AWS - top 5 AWS services that you want to integrate with the VMware Cloud on AWS. I was kind of disappointed. The presented knew his stuff but half was through diverged into services like picture recognition and voice analysis that did not seem relevant to the audience.

Next was a community round table I was hosting on Free vSphere Tools. I told people about vCheck and RV tools (which I assumed most people knew about but it didn’t seem so). We then started chatting about what other people used and diverged off into vROPS, API’s and what people bought and didn’t like. I was very lucky to have the rock star Alex Galbriath (@alexgalbraith) attending.

After lunch was a session from a very brave man Mark Brookfield, aka @VirtualHobbit, called VMware - Automate All The Things. Brave as he attempted a live demo to spin up a Puppet server & Linux VM and configure that using vRealize Automation. Unfortunately the demo didn’t work out but no taking away he is a very smart guy and has a ‘home lab’ that is better than most data centers.

Last session of the day was the one I was looking forward to the most. VMware Design Methodologies and VCAP design with Brian Gerrad (@vBeeGee) and VCDX 243 Rebecca Fitzhugh (@RebeccaFitzhugh). I feel it was a major coup of the organisers to get Rebecca to visit us. As VCIX is a stretch goal for me this year, and as a traditionally operations guy, design is not something I have ever focused on. It was a great session!

As usual there was the raffle at the end, where I actually won an Echo Dot and programming course from VMware. I have to come up with project on the Dot and report back at the next VMUG what I did. I have a couple of ideas so what this space. The only bad thing about the Dot is my daughter constantly asking Alexa to play Little Mix.

Now after every VMUG there are the vBeers event. I usually give them a miss as I am really crap at approaching new people at events and engaging with them. One of the VMUG leaders challenged everyone to speak to at least one new person that day so I went along. Man what a great time. I had some great conversations with a lot of new people. I think I learnt as much at the beers as during the VMUG. I will not be missing one again. Thanks to IGEL for sponsoring the beers. I appreciated it that night, not so much the next day.

I want to thank the VMUG leaders Sandy Bryce (@sandybryce), Chris Storrie (@chrisstorrie), James Cruickshank (@vCrooky) and Iain Balmer (@Balmeri) for organising a great day and evening. Also shout out to Ian Noble (@IanNoble), James Kilby (@jameskilbynet), Alex Galbriath and Brian Gerrard for the great conversations.

Next VMUG is November 2017 in Edinburgh. You will find details on the Scottish VMUG (@scottishvmug) Twitter and website nearer the time.

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