5 Must-Attend Sessions at VMworld 2014

More than 600 sessions await VMworld 2014 attendees. How’s your conference schedule shaping up?

Just a few weeks remain before the premiere conference for virtualization and cloud computing kicks off in San Francisco. It's time to start charting a plan of attack. In addition to attending the keynotes, most attendees will be spending the bulk of their time at VMworld hearing from experts in the more than 600 planned sessions to be presented by hundreds of industry leaders.

The VMworld online session guide lets attendees dive into the details of each session and start planning their conference experience accordingly.

These sessions are part of what excites Jay Marshall most about attending VMworld. In a video on YouTube, Marshall, a senior technical solutions architect with vCloud Hybrid Service, says these sessions feature "real technical subject experts getting real about today's IT problems."

Here are five select sessions from the master list at this year’s conference that we think look exciting. Have a few on your list worth mentioning? Give them a shout-out in the comments section.

EUC3319-S – End-User Computing for the Mobile-Cloud Era

One of the major focuses of this year's VMworld is the rise to prominence of the mobile cloud. In this session, three industry experts will outline the steps to comprehensively manage multiple devices and apps while creating a unified experience, that keeps the end user in mind. This is quickly becoming a hot topic for businesses that struggle to manage a growing number of devices.

End-user computing executives Sumit Dhawan, John Marshall and Kit Colbert will share their vision and strategy for the market, highlighting key investments in the Horizon desktop and AirWatch by VMware mobile portfolio.

SDDC1176 – Ask the Expert vBloggers

Looking to lighten the mood from dry tech talk? Ask the Expert vBloggers will return for its seventh year at VMworld 2014. The gregarious session gathers six VMware experts to answer industry questions from the crowd in a casual setting.

In this session there are no PowerPoints, no sales pitches and no rules! Experts in the industry are here to answer YOUR questions while having some fun in the process. Bring your topic, anything from Software-Defined Data Center, to End-User Computing to 3rd Platform Applications... Storage, Networking, Security. No question is off limits.

HBC1533 – How to Build a Hybrid Cloud

Building on the cloud talk is a session from leaders at vCloud Hybrid Service (vCHS), who will walk attendees through the steps of bridging the gap between physical and cloud-based storage.

Generally speaking, customers find it easier to view the vCloud Hybrid Service cloud as just another datacenter. However instead of being physical it is all software defined and available on demand. We will leverage examples and use cases from current customers, as well as, review a specific setup the vCHS Technical Marketing team has built in a “Customer” Lab. We will also explore the networking specifics, considerations, and other options to truly build a hybrid cloud.

HBC2371 – Stick a Knife in IT!

Dig deep into the DevOps movement with VMware’s Jay Marshall and Chef’s Matt Ray, who will show how create and deploy enterprise applications on premises or in the cloud.

VMware’s Jay Marshall and Chef’s Matt Ray share the stage to illustrate how to architect a multi-node application using Chef, and then deploy that application to vCloud Hybrid Service to simulate a test/dev sandbox in the cloud. That exact same Chef Cookbook will then be used to deploy the application into Production in an on-premises vSphere environment to drive home the “Hybrid DevOps” message and the power of "Infrastructure as Code."

STO3008-SPO – Decoupled Storage

Learn how to strike a balance between performance and capacity from two big names in virtualization: Satyam Vaghani and Frank Denneman.

By putting storage intelligence into server flash and RAM, it decouples storage performance from capacity for faster VM performance, IOPS that scale-out with compute, and significantly lower storage costs.

In this session, industry experts Satyam Vaghani (CTO and co-founder of PernixData) and Frank Denneman (virtualization evangelist) will discuss how this shift has impacted storage in today’s virtual data center.

Browse Past Sessions Online

Feeling nostalgic, or just can’t wait to dive into sessions? The breakout sessions from VMworlds dating back to 2004 are available for review at VMworld Online Sessions.

Conference App Released

The free VMworld 2014 app was released this month, offering several ways to connect with conference content through your smartphone or tablet. Attendees can plan out their schedule and browse details on sessions, information on brands at the show and bios on industry experts leading discussions at this year's conference.

The app can be downloaded for iOS on the iTunes App Store or for Android devices through Google Play.