My VMworld 2021 Top 10 sessions

This post will list the top 10 sessions over at VMworld 2021 that personally interest me.

VMworld 2021 will be online again this year, which for me personally is great!

So let’s not waste any time and get right into it. Note that these are not in order of my favorites.

Build and Publish a PowerShell Module to the PowerShell Gallery [CODE2756]

Speaker: David Stamen

“Have you ever created a PowerShell module and needed to share it and didn’t know how? The PowerShell gallery is a great place to do this! Join this session and learn how to build and publish a PowerShell module to the PowerShell gallery and allow your contribution to be shared with the VMware Community!”

Myself I am getting into Powershell and using PowerCLI to automate the repetitive tasks I need to do in my lab. The session interests me as I’d like to learn how to create a powershell module and share this to the gallery so others will be able to use it too.

A Practical Approach for End-to-End Zero Trust [SEC2733]

Speakers: Shawn Bass, Pere Monclus and Scott Lundgren

“Digital transformations around app modernization, multi-cloud infrastructure, and remote users has accelerated the need to move away from perimeter-only security to a more distributed security with tighter access controls to resources. Zero trust approach aims to address the security challenges but can seem complex – from where to start and what’s in scope. In this session, we will discuss specific capabilities that will enable you to achieve a zero trust architecture that’s aligned to the NIST guidance and covers secure access for users as well secure access to workloads. “

I’ve been meaning to learn more about how security is done in practice, and this seems like a good session for me to learn and see how proper end-to-end security is done in practice.

Extend SD-WAN Visibility and Analytics with vRealize Network Insight [EDG1345]

Speakers: Matt Just and Amarnath Pallampati

“VMware vRealize Network Insight helps SD-WAN customers build an optimized, highly available and secure network infrastructure across multi-cloud environments. The pre-SD-WAN assessment tool also gives customers planning information for what is needed to migrate to a VMware SD-WAN deployment. vRealize Network Insight integrates with VMware SD-WAN to extend network visibility, capacity planning and SLA assurance capabilities to the WAN. In this session, we’ll discuss how vRealize Network Insight correctly maps application IDs to flows in the SD-WAN, creating end-to-end visibility. vRealize Network Insight also visualizes SD-WAN insights per business policies, application flow, path tunnel support, network topology, data usage per client and more.”

Tinkering around with vRealize Network Insight and VMware SD-WAN myself, this seems like an useful session to see how well the two can integrate and what can be done with the power of SD-WAN and vRealize Network Insight.

Attach GPU Anywhere with vSphere Bitfusion Extension [VMTN2801]

Speaker: Tiejun Chen

“Here we’d like to review how we extend vSphere Bitfusion to enable attaching GPU anywhere 1. Any Arch – Attach GPU either from x86_64 based host to ARM64 based host, or from ARM64 based host to x86_64 host 2. Any Edge – Attach Cloud level GPU to any edge device, and even through WiFi/5G 3. Any Cloud – Assign GPU from SmartNIC to any hosts in the cluster towards VMware’s Hybrid and Multi-Cloud strategy with VMware VCF”

I’ve heard things about vSphere Bitfusion. I’d like to know more about it and what it can do, so this session seems like a great place to learn these things.

App Modernization Deep Dive with VMware Cloud on AWS and VMware Tanzu [MCL2290]

Speaker: William Lam

“Application modernization is top of mind for all enterprises that want to deliver value to their customers quickly. However, many organizations struggle to begin their application modernization journey due to a variety of reasons including legacy systems, lack of knowledge of the application, and application dependencies. In this session we will show how organizations can leverage VMware Tanzu and VMware Cloud on AWS to discover, analyze, and map dependencies, convert to containers and ultimately deploy a modernized application on an API driven infrastructure, while still realizing the TCO benefits that come with VMware Cloud on AWS.”

Of course a session about VMware Cloud on AWS, always trying to learn more and using VMware Tanzu on VMware Cloud on AWS can be very useful if you have sufficient workloads. This session for me will be about seeing how to best use Tanzu on VMC on AWS as well as gathering more information about it.

Automated Problem Resolution in Modern Networks [NET2160]

Speakers: Martijn Smit, Deepa Seshadri and Anand Srinivas

“Legacy network operations and management solutions have been primarily reactive. Once an issue is detected (such as packet drops, jitters, congestion), network operators are alerted to resolve them manually. As the infrastructure becomes more distributed and complex, we need to move to a proactive system of network management and operations that identifies a problem and takes action to remediate the problem, whether it is in the data center, cloud, or branch network. Join this demo-centric session where we will present several examples of scenarios where VMware’s self-healing network capabilities solve problems straight away using telemetry-driven and event-driven automation. Learn more about all VMware networking products, and hear from a special guest from Intel about how VMware tackles modern self-healing networks.”

Reading the description (see above) caught my interest as I’d like to learn more about VMware’s networking products and overall the description seems interesting to me.

Unleashing the Power of Event-Driven Automation [VI2622]

Speakers: William Lam and Michael Gasch

“When the VMware Event Broker Appliance was released at VMworld three years ago, the growth and interest from the community was beyond our wildest imagination. This session kicks off by reflecting on the key milestones achieved by our great community over the past years. The VMware Event Broker Appliance would not exist without you. We will explore real-world use cases and share how users have leveraged the VMware Event Broker Appliance, from automating simple day-to-day tasks to running complex event-driven workflows. We will also share the progress that has been made to easily embrace event-driven automation in your VMware infrastructure along with some of the learnings and feedback from the community that have directly influenced VMware’s product engineering. Come join us and be part of the event-driven revolution.”

I have been meaning to learn more about the VMware Event Broker Appliance but I haven’t had time yet. Seeing what it can do in the real-world will be very interesting and possibly I can apply some the things I will see in my own homelab.

Enterprise Multi-Cloud Security [SEC2445]

Speakers: Chris McCain

“With the expansion of VMware’s portfolio of security products, it is now time to learn how to bring all the security tools and technologies together into a cohesive multi-cloud enterprise design. This session will cover key design elements of enterprise design and how to resolve conflicts by establishing organizational priorities. With priorities on solid ground, the design discussion will go deeper into how the VMware NSX Service-defined Firewall provides flexibility and scale to an intrinsic security fabric. This session will showcase how cyberattacks occur, including a look into the most famous attack of all time. You will leave this session with a better understanding of how to design a policy-driven, defense-in-depth strategy for the modern enterprise.”

This is one of which reading the description caught my interest, I’d like to see the power of the VMware NSX firewall and see how organizations use it and/or how it can be used.

Why Edge Is the Next Evolution of Cloud [EDG2593]

Speakers: Muneyb Minhazuddin and Nathan Luxford

“It’s all happening at the edge: the explosion of data, the increase in speeds with 5G, the need for enterprises to deliver intelligent and immersive experiences to delight customers. Multi-cloud heterogeneity has enabled enterprises to build, run, manage, connect and protect applications across multiple clouds on consistent infrastructure with consistent operations. Learn how Tesco is seamlessly extending the same consistency of platform and services to their stores, meeting on-premises transaction processing and storage requirements while preparing for innovative edge-native applications. The VMware edge-native platform brings flexibility, security and portability of applications anywhere. Learn why edge will be as exciting an area of innovation and value creation in the next decade as the cloud was in the last.”

I read a lot about the edge, but I was never really sure what was meant with The “Edge” and how VMware services/products can be used with the edge. Reading the description this sounds like a great session to see what VMware has been up to in this area.

10 Things You Need to Know About Project Monterey [MCL1833]

Speakers: Sudhanshu Jain and Niels Hagoort

“Project Monterey was announced in the VMworld 2020 keynote. There has been tremendous work done since then. This session details how Project Monterey and SmartNICs will redefine the data center with decoupled control and data planes for management, networking, storage and security—for VMware ESXi hosts and for bare-metal systems. We will discuss 10 things you need to know about Project Monterey to help accelerate your business. Find out how it helps to increase performance, security and manageability for the entire spectrum of VMware vSphere and bare-metal infrastructure management. We will cover and demo the overall architecture and use cases.”

At VMworld 2020 I saw the announcement and since then I’ve read lots of things about SmartNICs. This session appears to be a great choice to see how far the project has come and what it is used for (or can be used for).

If you want to browser the catalog yourself, you can click here.

And if you haven’t seen the link at the top, the link to VMworld 2021’s page is right here.

I hope that you find my list interesting and that it’s useful to you with your decision on what sessions you’d like to watch.