Just like in 2010, the Dutch VMUG event was held once again at NBC in Nieuwegein. More than 700 VMware enthusiasts gathered this day to attend the sessions and the workshops. The agenda was full of good sessions so it was hard to choose a session to attend. Luckily, some sessions were repeated. Here is a small recap of the sessions and the workshop that I attended.

The opening session was (as always) presented by Victor van den Berg and this years general keynote session was presented by Willem van Enter and Jeremy van Doorn from VMware. Good general info about working in the cloud and the products that VMware offers to accompany your journey to the cloud. Almost forgot, the Monster VM appeared on the stage, this was kind of weird because he was “sleeping with the fishes” after an encounter with the @Dutch_vMaffia at VMworld 2011 in Copenhagen… 😉

Sessions

• Een dag uit het leven van een cloud consument: presented by Stefan Willems and Marcel Steenman (VMUG/Platani). This was really hilarious presentation! A comparison between a cloud infrastructure and a family. Really funny but, with no disrespect to the presenters, not very informative. Although I appreciate your enthusiasm.
• Mythbusters go virtual: presented by Eric Sloof (VMUG/NTPro.nl) and Mattias Sundling (VMUG/Quest). I really enjoyed this session at VMworld 2011 in Copenhagen and I heard on twitter that there were some new myths so I decided to check it out! Great session guys!

Workshop

After the lunch I attended the vSphere Auto Deploy workshop that was organized by XTG. Marcel van Oss was leading the workshop and explained the Auto Deploy feature in a big picture. After the instruction, hands-on time! The instructions were clear and in no time I had deployed my first stateless ESXi host. I really love this feature in vSphere 5. Great workshop! Thanks XTG.

Sessions

• vSphere Heathcheck: presented by Gabrie van Zanten (VMUG/gabesvirtualworld.com/OpenLine). A lot of info about tools and best practices that Gabrie uses when he is performing a health check on a vSphere environment. Good presentations, helpful tips, too bad Gabrie run out of time.
• vCenter Operations: presented by Andre van der Werff (VMware). General info about the product and good explanation about the features. I really liked the demo that Andre presented; it gives you a bit more “feel” how vCO works.

So, to recap, the Dutch VMUG 2011 event was great once again. Good sessions and speakers made this event a success. I would like to thank the Dutch VMUG and the staff for organizing this great event once again. Special thanks to @Veeam for sponsoring the VMware vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive book for all Dutch VMUG attendees!

Cheers!

– Marek.Z