CTO Advisor 57 - VMworld 2017 Preview vBrownBag Edition

Machine-generated from the episode audio and not hand-corrected, so names and technical terms may be imperfect. The audio is authoritative.

Alright, welcome to episode 57 of the CTO advisor podcast. You know what? This is a little bit. We're taking some time to look Internally a little bit to look at the inner workings of this community that me and mark are still really close to It's the VMware community and it's the week of or the week before VMware VM world 2017 and as such we have a special guest who's close to that community. But before that mark, how's he going? It's going pretty good.

You know, it's Sunday where we're recording. So Game of Thrones tonight excited about that that Heard that that's a pretty good show about dragons. I haven't really watched it myself. But yeah, hey if you like dragons, it's good It's pretty good So you're all set and ready for VM world 2017, you know, I still need to pack But other than that, I'm ready to go Yeah, I'm pretty excited that I Moved it day out. The big fight is Saturday night and I was I planned on coming in originally Saturday in the afternoon I decided to skip the madness and come in the next day after the madness.

So we'll see how that goes We say you're coming in for Sunday still right coming in for Sunday that that's important leading up to her guest is and what happens on Sunday that is a great lead-in our guest is the Famous Alistair cook the There's a running joke Alistair. Do you have is are we talking to evil Alistair or nice Alistair? Well, I haven't yet waxed my mustache today. It's Monday morning here and it's a slow start so you must be talking to the nice Alistair because the mustache is all Not all curly and and crazy So Alistair the for our, you know senior architect C-level audience who may not be versed in like the build a type of activities or V brown bag give us an overview of who you are and and and what you what your relationship is to the VMware and virtualization infrastructure community in general Well, that's like asking me what I do and and that leads to me looking kind of blankly around and saying how the heck do I explain what I do?

so I'm involved in the V brown bag podcast, which is a volunteer driven community group whose aim is to produce Free to consume educational content for people who work in data center infrastructure We started with VMware because we've been doing this for nearly 10 years Creating training content and it started around Cody Bunch wanting us an online study group to get his first VMware certification And over the years it's grown from Cody studying alone and wanting to sort of socialize around that that training To being somewhere around 25 different people who are involved in producing weekly podcasts for the brown bag that are all educational content for people working in that data center infrastructure And we work from the sort of operations team through project and up into the the architects and getting very much technology focused How do these things work?

How do they work in the real world? com And then in addition to that we've sort of branched out over the years being a voice of the community and the hands-on practitioner We've started doing things at VMworld about six years ago where we invited community members to come and present at VMworld and talk about something that they've learned or done or Experienced in their career and their hands-on work and we call these tech talks and they're nice and short Usually about 12 minutes of video presentation time and we do that at VMworld and a couple of other conferences around the world as well And then the specific thing you mentioned was the build-in.

It's something new that we've been doing this year Where we live stream the hands-on end-user experience of deploying a new product So we as the vbrownbag crew are an independent hands-on kind of people we bring a customer's vSphere environment with us in a travel case to a Startup or an established vendor and we live stream the process of deploying that vendor's product So last month we were at Pure Storage and Silicon Valley Bought a vSphere cluster with some underperforming storage and we deployed into it a Pure Storage all-flash array and went through some of the operational and lifecycle processes that you do with the product and did this live stream, which means that things will go wrong and you'll see a very raw experience and That's a really good way of showing the insides of the technology to the people who are actually going to have to build it or who are going to have to consider the processes around supporting it and working with it and that kind of education and Real-world education is what vbrownbag is all about.

I think that's really really awesome The watch us install it live That really lets somebody get a feel for what the product actually is rather than a demo or even a proof-of-concept Which you know, I personally don't find much value in anymore because it's so orchestrated that you're not getting an actual feel and And that's exactly the the piece that's that's important to us And that is we don't want to do the sort of speedrun that you see in a keynote or in a booth demo We want real-world So I bring a vSphere environment that the our The startup the vendor that we're working with has never used before it's like they're dealing with a real customer And and that that can be quite a challenge at times our first one There was a an issue in the lab environment where we lost a route between the management network and the storage network and so the customers or the vendors that was with HPE The deployment process for their software stopped in mid-flight a countdown that counts down from 90 seconds down to zero stopped at three seconds because this route was missing and The really cool thing was we then went through the support process with the vendor and said well if this happened for a real customer What would you be doing?

Let's go and look at that and we spent an hour going through various bits of troubleshooting and configuration to identify that there was a fault in the Existing environment that I brought on and the the feedback from people watching was this is exactly what happens when you do it the real world This is so cool And that's that's the thing I like the most about the concept is that we we do The things that you would do for a real deployment with a real customer that you often don't see from a vendor Now are you doing any of these at VMworld?

So that we're not doing the build days at VMworld. They they take at least a week to set up. So we do a dry run of the build process Before we do the live stream. We're doing one of those probably in October We're just getting that finalized out now but at VMworld we're doing the tech talks and the other thing that we're doing that you alluded to on the Sunday is That we the vbrownbag crew also collaborate with the organizers of the VM underground party Which is the community kickoff party to VMworld and we run a thing with them called opening acts where we do a series of panel Discussions through the day on on the Sunday.

So we'll be at the Quarter bit of make sure I get the right name of the place We will be at the beer house, I believe it's called yes the beer house at New York, New York It is a good name for a place and and you may find that you can actually get a beer and a burger and And yeah Listen to take part in the the conversations that are going on there and we'll have a series of Panel discussions four or five people from the community discussing things like the current state of the VMware ecosystem really interesting one in there is entitled how failing made me better and a discussion of how you learn from your mistakes and How career progression is sometimes helped by mistakes?

And then there's going to be some discussion around buzzwords, which that might get a little heated discussion around double-clicking on the premise of words in IT marketing Well, this is the guy who coordinates these you know panels are very much Damien's work to get together the panelists and the moderators and to To get them all lined up and Damien does a fabulous job of getting a good collection of people with diverse views And trying to get some balance in it as well that last one Jim Millard who's one of the the VM underground organizers is going to be the moderator and I think he's going to have some some fun challenges Controlling the the interesting people or at least moderating the interesting people we have on that panel so I Think if there's a question, I'm purposely going to say wrong words just insider, right?

So the events the the pre events so before you it's almost like an unconference Yeah, what's what's required to get into like the? Opening acts and then the VM underground party itself. m. So they'll be 1 o'clock until 4 o'clock and If this the crowds are too thick and you can't get in then there's probably going to be other interesting people standing around So if you can't get in because there's lots of people there Just grab somebody else who's standing around who also can't get in and go somewhere else and have a conversation about virtualization Don't don't feel you have to to listen in on this conversation But it's entirely possible that the couple of hundred people who have registered may not be able to make it I mean, you know Keith's flights have changed because he's trying to avoid the fight There may well be enough space for more people to turn up.

So that one is absolutely free to turn up and attend Then later on in the evening is the VM underground party and there's been some ticket sales for that the best thing to do is to find one of our sponsors because all of the sponsors of VM underground I have their own tickets to hand out and Little cheat if you're what if you're listening to this podcast Chances are you could probably search your work email address for VM underground and there's a vendor that has sent you to email Inviting you to the party that that is my hat, you know I know the VM underground people personally, but I don't try and you know backdoor the process I just search my work email address find a VM underground sponsoring vendor and Grab them for a ticket.

They have VIP tickets and it's the easiest way to get in and you head across to the the welcome Reception so between opening acts and the start of VM underground is the welcome reception and so that's the opportunity to go out and see the the sponsors to visit their booths and and pick up the wristband for VM underground and then the point for VM underground is really that's The origins were a bunch of people who knew one another who turned up early to VM world That that be in wherever VM world was the day before the conference started and they just want to do something because otherwise it's kind Of a quiet empty night and it originated with with three guys who just regularly sat down had a beer and it grew and grew and Last time VM world was in San Francisco.

We had 1,200 people turning up to the party It's scaled back quite a lot since then We really have focused back on the people who want to have conversations with other community members Rather than encouraging the people who are just coming because it was a free drink on Sunday night when there's nowhere else giving you a free drink So if you don't get one of those VIP tickets from our sponsors There is an event bright site and I believe there are still ticket sales available But the tickets are $40.

So that's it's good to get those VIP tickets from the sponsors. I Had a the the last VM underground I went to was actually the last one in San Francisco So the year before last and I was a bit overwhelmed by the number of people I'm like wait I've been a VM on the grounds before this is just This is gotten the last few years and the last couple of years in San Francisco had gotten to be a pretty big event I like the I like the more intimate controls of people who are there are kind of like, you know What we were really into the community and we want to talk to the community Yeah, I Will say you're right.

There was a lot of people but there were a lot of conversations that were happening that even at the last one I went and you know chose to be a part of and We're still a lot of good conversations and a lot of good people to meet. s And I've also done them on VM world On the stage a couple of times They've they've been kind of impromptu one has been impromptu at VM world. No, your first one was wasn't it? We just trained you out of the audience Like took me out of the audience and say hey Keith You have 12 minutes to talk about careers and as it relates to Batman that was actually pretty funny.

And then last year I Our good friend good friend of the podcast Rolison Stood me up. We were going to talk about SAP HANA vsan a very serious conversation and it ends up turning into a you know Helpful but comedy acts for me. So if you guys want to hear me do kind of a stand-up routine Well, that was funny. That was a Really fun. I did a impersonation of Rolison So Let's swing the conversation a little bit towards The wider view and of the industry I think V brown bag is a great example of where the industry has moved from a Technology perspective ten years ago V brown bag very much focused on VMware certification You know that the you know, you'd attend them at the VCP We are for those who don't know that's VMware certified professional the entry-level VMware Certification helping people study for those set of exams and it gradually morphed I think probably the the the time that made me stand up and notice is that you guys did a Open couch to open stack and I'm like wait, hold on the V brown bag guys are doing Open stack and it's one of those things that it happens slowly until it happens fast When did V brown bag start to shift its focus from you know Just vSphere and VMware to the larger changes in the industry.

I Think there's there's an element where the crew that run V brown bag Tend to be the early adopters and the couch to open stack stuff was Cody Bunch who had Obviously was the founder and I call him the pod father. He was the founder of V brown bag And his work had shifted from being developing Rackspace's vSphere based products to developing open stack hosting products for for Rackspace and so his interest was an open stack and that You recall that the great excitement of the early days of open stack of this is going to revolutionize the way IT is done by all kinds of enterprises and Yeah, Cody's a definitely a forward-thinking guy.

He's One of the great people to sit down with and have a chat about what's what's going on? What interesting things might be happening? and the the wider V brown bag crew tend to be that way the people who organize V brown bag are usually thinking about the future of their careers The future of a role of the IT professional particularly these days as things move more to the cloud And so progressively we've been going beyond just core VMware and when you're producing an hour of video training every week for years The the VMware content gets covered and then we start thinking well what else and sure we we started covering storage and networking as well we covered some of Cisco's qualifications and So naturally we were expanding beyond and as it became clear that cloud technologies were going to be important.

We had this sort of move towards open stack and The audience weren't quite ready for it. And that's what the open stack vendors have found is that organizations aren't particularly ready for open stack And More recently we've been doing quite a lot of AWS So we started by covering the AWS solution architect Associate exam last year and that was hugely popular customers that are definitely interested in that there are businesses who? Need to understand what AWS is what it can do and how it's different because it is very different And so we've been continuing to talk more about things like AWS and we've had a series Called commitments where we looked at it at Git and what Git is and how it works and two years ago we had a really Extreme series of commitments where there was a podcast almost every day for December on using and working with Git Because it's a skill set that is going to be important to the data center professional over the years So yeah, we've covered a whole heap of different new stuff I would be curious to see if there's any Correlatory between the number of the brown bag topics being covered or the topic in particular and How well that topic is doing in the industry?

Just I'm sure there is I yeah, I think there is there's definitely Looking backwards. You can see the correlation which means I don't I'm not sure that I can use it for prediction though That's what I was gonna say. I wonder if we can look at what's starting to be covered and make some predictions for next year Like the call for you know, the the brown bag has kind of a unofficial call for papers type of deal Hmm, where well there's on Twitter or whatever that you guys will ask for.

Hey, we need someone to present kubernetes or Yeah AWS I did, you know, there was a call to do AWS security and I had just done a AWS security pool site video So I was fresh off that content Why not or serverless and lambda and all of that goodness So mark, you know, I'm sitting here thinking man. I might go back and start mining the V out big Technical content for because these guys are normally ahead of you know, the what they're being X to do at work the organizers so It's too many of them to go down a line from Tom to Cody who's still involved To and we actually had on the podcast One of the early CTO advisor podcast we had a couple of V brown bag folks talking about the effort going into Doing a you know hosting V brown bag one or two hours of content a week So I'm thinking man, there's some value valuable information on there for CTOs senior Architects to see what's real if you don't have access to Gartner You have at least access to these 25 people who who are forward-thinking with their you know feasts on the ground and what they're actually doing Yeah, and and this there's quite a lot of planning goes in particularly Jonathan Frappier as the guy who does all of the planning Of what shows we're gonna have who's gonna host them He it'll be him that puts out the call and and says yeah, we need to fill out a series on kubernetes And and containers which is one of the things that we've been covering recently and Yeah, Jonathan definitely sees future of IT and the skills that that the practitioners are going to meet And that'll be driven by by what business is demanding from IT through through those CTOs Yeah, I need to go back and reference.

It was actually Jonathan that we had on the podcast I need to go back and put I'll make sure to put his podcast in the show noses I'm really impressed by the volunteer effort and They actually volunteer their time to come to some of the conferences to run V brown bag on the ground, right? Oh, yeah Yeah, I I have Three three volunteers coming and joining me in Las Vegas next week to to make up make those videos So Cody's going to come out and and make video with us as well as I'm blanking on who else Oh Jonathan's coming and Chris Williams, so we've got quite a lot of people coming from from the East Coast And I they really work quite hard.

Although it's it's great to to come out and hang out at VM world and it is a little bit of a reward But I also will be making them work hard and this this year particularly hard because the tech talks are going to be much busier Than they have been in the past We're Getting much have gotten much closer to the VM world conference this year So in these the schedule builder actually has all of our sessions in it So the the 77 tech talk sessions that are scheduled in in Las Vegas they're all listed in the schedule builder and most of them have full Registration, so we've had 50 people registered to attend most of these sessions which is fabulous because historically We've done far smaller number of sessions and had a small in-person audience there might have been five people watching the sessions Now because the sessions are much more visible in schedule builder.

We're getting Full sessions 50 people want to come in and see the tech talks, which of course we will live stream So for those who can't make it to to VM world if the the sessions look interesting they'll be live streamed through the the vbrownbag page and on the VMTN front page as well on the VMware's community Pages and all of the content will be available afterwards on YouTube So if there's a session that's completely full and you can't attend it in person Then you can certainly catch up with it afterwards and one of the special things that vbrownbag always does is We are high velocity for getting to YouTube So usually within an hour of a session being presented it's already on YouTube and available to be watched that's really useful for for people who are Unable to attend who have conflicts But equally for the presenters who are then able to start promoting the content that they've created almost immediately yeah, so Fudges to the VMware team.

I counted on this informal process that we've had over the years. I could just hang around the stage and Someone would cancel or there'd be the opening and then and Cody like hey Keith. Hey, here's your spot this year There's none of that. So, you know what? Shame on me for not submitting the actual topic I'm still going to hang around the stage and hope no one someone doesn't take advantage of their slot And I'm not gonna count it, but I'm gonna hang around this day Well to that end there it is a very fun environment is the stage gonna be in the same place Is it gonna be in the social village still or you move in somewhere else?

So this year we're continuing to be in the VMware communities area Which is in the VM village or what used to be the hang space? so we're not in the main conference area where the main sessions are will be out where the blogger tables and the podcast recording booths are and All of the other sort of the hangout areas where the games and those kinds of things are in that that large hall So we will be in the same Part of the conference as we've been for the last You just see a slightly larger crowd.

You mean the V boogers tables, right? Sure Inside joke The last question answer any any sessions that you're really looking forward to there You're like, oh, that's kind of different because topics have been all over the place For V brown bag any session that you're like, man, I'm really looking forward. Oh, you put me on the on the spot here Because you know, there's there's just so much content in there So, let's talk about range of top topics like give us some sample topics this the speakers will Not gonna all be VMware.

This is not gonna always all VMware is this vSphere is that it's going I think it's going to echo What what's happening in V brown bag? Absolutely. So we've got all kinds of things so What have I got? I've got Tom that I believe is he's one of the V brown bag crew that I think you've had on a show talking about the value of mentoring we have Good Scott driver who I think is presenting for us for the first time talking about life as a small to medium business and an enterprise world We've got somebody Frank Melissa, he's going to talk about five traits that make someone a badass engineer We've got some content around how the cloud killed secondary storage.

We've got Somebody talking about VMware validated designs. I think that's their hands-on experience of using them We've got blockchain hype or hope from a distinguished fellow with Dell Yeah, she was on the pot the Communities podcast. I'm looking forward to I'm actually looking forward to that one. Yeah. Yeah, there's there's a whole heap of different content in there We also have on this the same stage will be some VMware code content. So on the Tuesday, there's a whole heap of content around Kubernetes and then on Thursday we've got some content with Cody DeAckland DeAckland who did some some V brown bag Episodes earlier on he's going to look at Revisiting Amazon echo and VMware integration.

So there's a whole heap of stuff of very diverse things An interesting the last one that's currently in the schedule is Nick court doing a session titled if vsan powered the matrix That's going to be an interesting thing That is a just interesting title, so let's talk about last question we'll go around the table Alistair we obviously know where we're going to be able to find you your be you know I'm gonna be the the tall mustachioed nervous-looking guy who was hanging around the V brown backstage the whole time But do come say hi One of the things I really like about going to VMworld is Meeting new people who share the passion for enterprise IT and and this plumbing and infrastructure that we do And will there be any V brown bag stickers, which is the important so I have new stickers this year I still have quite a lot of Leftover ones with the ones that are about four inches long and I have some new ones which are about About two inches so much smaller and these ones should be much more robust than the large ones that I got Created a very short notice last year and then for people who are presenting the V brown bag tech talks I still have a very limited number of the V brown bag presenter stickers that I will allocate to people who who are presenting these tech talks and Mark what will people be able to find you where are you gonna hang around the stage?

Are you gonna be are you gonna be mainly going to sessions? What's your plan for navigating VMworld the madness? That's VMworld this year. You know I think you'll mostly find me in the social village You know, we've got some podcasts scheduled and around the V brown bag stage and had a few parties, of course So what the what time do you know the time that we currently have? The CTO advisor scheduled to present. Did we nail in a time yet?

I Don't think we'd have so we'll nail in a time. I'll put it on the Twitter. So follow the Twitter X CTO advisor or As since the storage will tweet out when you can come kind of heckle the CTO Advisor podcast we are officially podcasting. I'll be at the cube Tuesday and Wednesday, so you can most definitely come and see me in a suit I'll be wearing a suit both days, unfortunately, but for the rest of the time I plan on spending splitting time between the VM village the Cube set and the VMware special sub-conference the future of FutureNet which is all focused on the future of networking that's being held in Delano If you haven't gotten tickets for a future net and you're a senior architect CTO Allah you're this audience and you want to You're at VMworld anyway, and you want to get into this sub conference.

It's a free Conference you go to the future net VMworld. I'm so I think it's VMware for future net Request a ticket. I hear a super secret that there's a couple of people on Twitter What that will not names name comms ninja that you can tweet at and she may be able to he or she may be able to Shortcut the line for you. So we'll see if that if that's the case So what that's that any closing comments any last thing that you guys want to get out in this Extended version of the CTO advisor.

I think for me just Come out have a good time Say hi to people if you met someone in the community you've seen online you enjoy their work Say hi talk to him strike up a conversation Everyone is very friendly Yes, don't don't Take this the wrong way. Don't waste your time at the sessions the VMworld The best value is is with the community though. They'll be pretty of technical sessions at the inside of the hang space or slash VM village with The brown bag crew and that Format you can drink of that content and believe me you is just like drinking from the fire holes of the rest of the set Of the rest of the conference and you get to meet really cool people some of the best connections I've ever made in my career have been made in VM village.

So that's my advice for you for VMworld 2017 That's it for this episode of the CTO advisor Follow us on the web the CTO advisor comm subscribe to the podcast in iTunes rate us Hopefully all fives and if you don't rate us all fives, that's fine Give the podcast to your dog and let your dog rate us all fives just long. We get five star ratings It's Jeff like over Thanks. We'll talk to you guys next episode of the CTO advisor