Author Archive
September 1st, 2010 | 
Author: All,
Over the past few VMWorlds, I have sent out an email to my customers outlining some of my personal picks for the sessions I think would be the best to attend based on my direct experience with the speaker, either through personal relationship, or presenting with them at another event. I have taken a look at all of the speaker names, and chosen only the ones I know are “golden” in technical knowledge or presentation skills! Try not to miss the ones marked “Highly Recommended” as they are sessions that have an extraordinary speaker or topic.
Remember, the standard disclaimer applies: These are my own picks and your mileage may vary! Feedback on my picks would be appreciated, and I know they will be better than my Fantasy Football picks this year!! 
Link to recommendations doc… VMworld 2010 Speaker Recommendations – Tom’s Picks
So I am often asked the question “how does this work in ESXi?” from my customers, especially around HW or management agents equivalency. So I hope to make the answer a bit more clear for everyone…
It is public knowledge that ESX is evolving to a pure ESXi model in the future release cycles of the product, though exact timelines are still under NDA. Convergence to a “console-less” ESX provides a number of benefits to our customers, with which many of you are, by now, well acquainted . It reduces the overall footprint that requires patching (see below) as well as removes the dependency on the vestigial RHEL-based Console Operating System, and sets the stage for future enhancements and technologies yet to be introduced. (Those who are under NDA might know to what I am referring!)
Hello all,
My name is Tom MacKay. I am a Staff SE for VMware and colleague of Scott and Aaron and have worked closely with John B. (vTrooper!) for a few years now. In fact, John was my customer at one time (remember that John?), and Aaron was my “mentee” when he joined VMware. So I have been around at VMware for almost 5 years and seen a dramatic transformation from the days that there were only two of us SEs in the Ohio territory trying to explain to customers why virtualization was a good thing to do!
Aaron and I recently traveled to Santiago, Chile as part of an initial VMware “SE Exchange Program” to present at the VMware vForum there, and Aaron asked if I could add some of my impressions of the trip to the blog. So that no one is confused on this point, I am new to blogging and tweeting, and the other social media aspects of the current scene, so I generally don’t hit the blogs very often. I have a few friends and colleagues you all might know (Duncan, Mike D., etc.), in the blogosphere who do a fantastic job, so this is my attempt at adding my thoughts and input in such a way that might be helpful in some way to the readers.