Chicago VMUG meeting on July 13th 2011 come out and participate

Posted by Brian in Events, VMUG | 0 comments

It’s that time again fellow Chicago VMware people, the VMUG group will be having our next meeting on July 13th in the Addison, IL area. Stay tuned here or our Twitter account for the upcoming registration and location details.

The meeting will be focused on Virtual Desktops (VDI) and security both are hot topics.

9:30am – 10:00am – Registration
10:00am – 10:45am – Impact of VDI on traditional storage (Xiotech)

•             Impact of virtual desktops on traditional

•             Looking at storage in terms of IO Density (IOPS/GB) like a vehicle’s

•             SSD technology overview (benefits, pitfalls, etc)

•             Effective tiering of data storage

10:45am – 11:15am – vShield Technologies Overview (Elias Khnaser – Artemis)

•             Benefits of using vShield

•             How to justify vShield solution in existing environments

•             Customer references

11:15am – 11:45pm – vShield Technical Deep Dive (Keith Luck – VMware)
11:45pm – 12:15pm – Lunch
12:15pm – 1:00pm – Introduction to Virtual Security (Michael Davis – Savid/Hacking Exposed Author)
1:00pm – 1:50pm – VMware/vShield Security Q/A Panel (Xiotech, Michael Davis, Keith Luck, Eli Khanaser)
1:50pm – 2:00pm – Prizes & Giveaways

VMware Forum 2011 coming to Chicago June 15th

Posted by Brian in Events, VMware | 0 comments

The traveling one day conferences known as VMware Forum is coming to Chicago on June 15th. I personally have not had the opportunity to attend one of these yet and I am looking forward to it.

You might be asking what is a VMware Forum and who should attend. These are one day conferences that are focus on people starting on virtualization and people that are well seasoned in the virtual arts. The sessions and labs are designed for virtual administrators and management level. So if you working with VMware and Cloud and want to this is a great opportunity to learn more and network with your Chicago community.

Here is a copy of the schedule for the day. Looks like some great topics and the labs are worth your time alone.

You can register for the event at the VMware Forum Site.

Chicago VMUG March 2011 meeting recap

Posted by Brian in Photos, VMUG, VMware | 0 comments

Sorry for the delay in writing up the summary, things have been a bit crazy and these pictures have been sitting on my phone for a few weeks now. We had our last meeting on March 23rd at the Tech Nexus in Chicago. The turnout for the meeting was close to 100 people that showed up to learn more about vCloud Director.

We had Bill Call in from VMware to cover the plumbing of VMware vCloud Director. Bill is a local VMware employee that specializes in Cloud technology. During Bill’s session everyone got a detailed discussion about all of the different pieces that make up the vCloud offering and how things come together to make a very strong product that is 1.0 product offering. I snapped a couple of pictures during Bill’s talk and pasted them below.

The next session at the meeting was Chris Cicotte a vSpecialist from EMC. This session provided us with an idea of how vendors are positioning vCloud Director to their customers. Chris’s talk was more focused at a higher level that explained things in a manor that you could use in talks with your management when they come to ask about this new thing called Cloud.

After some tasty food that was brought in by out meeting sponsor BlueLock, they took the floor. The BlueLock session was focused on what they offer as being one of the official vCloud Director partners in the US that was selected by VMware. The session included a demo of their offerings and some open discussion.

The meeting wrapped up with a open discussion panel that was lead by our speakers. This always proves to be a popular session at the meetings. During this part of the meeting the attendees can ask any question related to virtualization and have it answered by the experts or someone from the audience. This is a great time to ask those questions that you have been thinking about in the early hours sitting in your cubicle.  It’s not very often that you get this much brain power in one room so we encourage everyone to bring their questions as they really help the meeting be a success.