VMworld Europe 2nd day keynote

Maurizio Carli, VMware’s Don Corleone, started out today by welcoming people back on the last day of the keynotes, then giving the word to VMware CTO Dr. Stephen Herrod.

Stephen went through some performance numbers telling the world what it already knows, VMware virtual machines rocks performance wise.

Going over some of the numbers that VMware has achieved on virtualizing Exchange and webservers, the overall message of breaking large servers down into more, but smaller, virtual machines will give you a significant better virtualization experience.

Going further on to quickly explaining the concept of vStorage and vNetwork. Opening the storage API for the vendors to be able to use stuff like the thin provisioning of the storage vendor when provisioning virtual machines, instead of the built-in VMware thin provisioning.

Of course going over the vNetwork he went….bla bla bla…Cisco Nexus v1000.

Apparently the notion of going back to a “virtual mainframe” is something that has taken hold of the VMware management. Does it make them feel young again?

Quickly touching down on the new Fault Tolerance feature, Stephen went further on to go over security with VMsafe ending with the new vShield.

VShield Zones is a firewall going in between the VM and its surroundings. You can do different zones having multiple VMs that are firewalled from other VM’s. Should be a nice thing for making DMZ…if we can get the network guys to eat it!

A quick demo of the vCenter Linked mode, showing a environment with 4 linked vCenters and the a new search function.

Going on the the next demo on host profiles, showing how easy it is to add a new host to your environment and getting it in compliance with you standard configuration. Having worked on a large installations of 60 ESXi hosts and the “wonders” that it gives, I just love this function.

Taking up where Paul Mauritz left yesterday we came to the inevitable….vCloud. Finally we got more than talk and slides about the cloud. A vCloud add-on for the vCenter client. This was really cool! The demo showed how to easily connecting to an external cloud for adding more power to your system.

More sweetness came up next when we went to the vClient initiative. We got another demo of what is coming for WAN and LAN support PcoIP using the Terradici protocol. An awsome demo using google earth fluently through VMware View, going over to a CAD like programme showing a full 3D drawing of the Eiffeltower, again fluently work experience. I guess i’ll be going to the Terradici stand having a closer look on that. This demo also gave us a new way of pronouncing the words LAAAAN and WAAAAN.

Thank to my fellow bloggers for a good laugh on that one!

Jerry Chan gave us a quick demo of the coming virtual mobile platform, installing a Windows CE and a Android virtual instance on a Nokia n800. Quite cool but can i actually make a phone call?

All in all a good, and SAP free, keynote!