London VMUG (November 2009)
I had the pleasure of attending my first VMUG yesterday. I've wanted to join in for quite some time but there always seemed to be a reason why I missed it. This time though I was forewarned of the date by several blogs that I read and booked the day off straight away. Obtaining an invitation took a few days to arrange but that wasn't unreasonable given that the group is managed by volunteers with other demands on their time.
It was interesting to meet some of the people whose names you know and blogs you read. I like being able to put names and faces together. Also present were quite a number of other users that I spent a while chatting with at various points.
The event was sponsored by Symantec (I worked for them once upon a time) who, in return, were given a slot in which to present to the group. Their chosen topic, Symantec Data Storage products, was delivered by two knowledgeable and very nice (I'm not just saying that because they bought beer afterwards) chaps called Ian and Andrew. I always like to use the best tool for the job and Symantec's work on their upcoming releases of Backup Exec 2010 and NetBackup 7, with their improved integration with vSphere will certainly make them worthy of consideration in future projects. (My current client have their eggs in another vendor's basket and won't consider changing for some time yet.)
Other presentations given during the day included Jonathan Medd‘s session on PowerShell, where I won a copy of Hal Rottenberg's book and learned a trick or two about PowerCLI.
Simon Gallagher‘s session on home labs was a treat too. He lugged two HP ML 115, a network switch and another desktop across London to give an effective demonstration of how a home lab can be setup and used to experiment with many of vSphere's features. My setup is going to receive a revamp in the near future based on this session and will be the subject of some future posts – I hope.
The other significant portion of the meeting that I will mention here was given / hosted by Mike Laverick and Guy Chapman on the subject of Clouds (for the most part). I'm not going to say too much more about clouds at the moment as it's a big subject.
As always (apparently, it was my first VMUG remember) the meeting was managed by Alaric Davies. A thoroughly nice chap that I spent a while speaking to in the pub afterwards before accidentally missing my train – oops. I shared my thoughts about my first VMUG with him and going forwards I have a few ideas about content that I'll be suggesting. Who knows, next time it could be me out in front with a deck of slides.
Presentations and supporting files from the meeting will hopefully appear here in the next day or so.