VMware is a huge company with many products, divisions, and solutions. It’s hard to keep track of everything VMware is involved in. VMworld is no different, and in some ways, there’s even more to keep up with because of the tech previews.
This VMworld recap post is for the vAdmin, the traditional VMUG member, someone who has been a vSphere user for some time. You are interested in emerging tech, but maybe your company isn’t quite there yet to upgrade. Or maybe you are struggling to understand the connection between spend time learning this new tech and how this could enhance your career.
VMware and Your Career
The first thing to realize is your experience with vSphere will continue to pay dividends, but there’s a catch: you have to embrace the additional features that allows you to continue the journey—you can’t rely on server virtualization only. vSphere is the base that can take you many new places such as security, networking, storage, Kubernetes, DevOps, and the platform engineer.
3 Tools From VMworld 2020
So, what “new” tech announced at VMworld do you need to add to your toolbox? Below are three tools that will allow you to expand your sphere and continue your journey in your IT career. Below each is a task to complete to enhance your career.
Security
Security was front and center. The acquisition of Carbon Black is making its way into the vSphere product. As VMUG President Steve Athanas has said, there is no company in better position to enforce security than VMware. The release of Carbon Black Cloud Workload is the first major release to put security at the hypervisor level.
- Task: Start to understand intrinsic security and how to protect your VM’s. Use a VMUG Advantage subscription and try this solution in your home lab with the free trial.
Multi-cloud
Multi-cloud is here to stay. VMware has partnered with all major Hyperscalers and 200+ VCPP’s. While your company may not be in the AppDev space, it’s important to have options. Start to move your on-prem environment to a multi-cloud compliant platform.
- Task: Inventory your environment and start making future purchases towards a compliant infrastructure. For many, this is vCF. A good place to start with multi-cloud is a DRaaS offering from a local VCPP.
Kubernetes
Kubernetes was well represented at VMworld and is the de facto standard for container orchestration. Why should this matter to you? Because containers and Kubernetes will be in your environment. It may not come next month or the next six, but eventually, you will need to consume containers and Kubernetes will be the way to do this.
- Task: Download vSphere 7U1 with your Advantage subscription and start learning the capabilities of Kube cluster management in vSphere.
Take this knowledge and help your company along their journey of digital transformation. Even if your company has not thought about these emerging technologies, start the conversation.
Tech Previews at VMworld
VMworld also brought a new tech preview, Project Monterey. Delivering ESXi to ARM-based SmartNIC will allow for hypervisor, security, and storage commands be done at the SmartNIC level, leaving the main CPU to focus on the application. There are also other benefits of this upgrade, including increased security and the ability to manage bare metal resources.
Finally, it was nice to see Telco have such a spotlight at VMworld. 3+ years ago, telco wasn’t mentioned at VMworld. In the past two years, it made it to a day two keynote mention. Now, it’s mentioned throughout the keynotes, sessions, and has a dedicated content track. What interests me the most about telco is 5G and how will this accelerate IoT. The edge is getting more and more compute and that data must get to the cloud to process. 5G will enable that. We have just begun to tap into how edge speed will transform our business and our decision making. VMUG has a specific community for Telco.
If you missed VMworld, you can still see the sessions on-demand.
Regardless of where you are in the journey, VMUG is here to help you along the way. Tap into the resources of the community today.
Brad
Twitter: @BradTompkins_
VMUG Office
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