Brisbane VMUG – New Year VMUG Beers

Now that holiday season is over, Brisbane VMUG would like to say thank you to its Community and Sponsors, who supported them as they got back in to in-person meetings last year. They’ve secured The Terrace at QUT from 2pm until 5pm on Friday 17th February, and would like to invite you to join them for some drinks, nibbles and networking.

There will be some prize giveaways and an opportunity to chill out and mingle with like-minded people from the vCommunity.

Please register here!

Brisbane VMUG – November 2022

The November 2022 edition of the Brisbane VMUG meeting will be held on Thursday 24th November at the Cube (QUT) from 5pm – 7pm. It’s sponsored by Pure Storage and promises to be a great afternoon. Register here.

Raise Your Kubernetes Infrastructure Status From Zero to Hero

If your developers or platform architects are asking you for storage features commonly found in your vSphere infrastructure but targeted towards Kubernetes, you are not alone – let Portworx help you go from “I don’t know” to “No problem”!

Locking yourself into a storage solution that is dependent on specific infrastructure is a sure way to reduce efficiency and flexibility for your developers and where their applications can run – Portworx elevates you to “Hero” status by:

  • Providing your team a consistent, cloud native storage layer you can utilise on ANY Kubernetes platform – whether on-premises or in the public cloud
  • Giving you the capability to provide Kubernetes native DR and business continuity not only for your persistent storage, but all of the Kubernetes objects associated with your applications (think SRM and vMSC for Kubernetes!)
  • Enabling you to provide Kubernetes-aware data protection, including ransomware protection and 3-2-1 backup compliance with RBAC roles that can fit the existing policies within your organisation
  • Delighting your developers that need access to modern databases such as Kafka, PostgreSQL, Cassandra, and more by delivering self-service deployments with best practices “built-in”, which accelerate development cycles without a dinosaur DBA or learning complex Kubernetes operators

Come join us to see how we can create your “Better Together” story with Tanzu and give you the tools and knowledge to bring agility for your developers to your underlying infrastructure for modern applications running on Kubernetes!

Mike Carpendale

Mike joined Pure Storage in April 2021 as the APJ Regions Platform Architect. He has 20+ years experience in the industry, ranging from his expert level hands-on experience of designing and managing large scale on-prem as-a-service offerings underpinned by VMware, to his more recent work in the public cloud. 

 

PIZZA AND NETWORKING BREAK!

 

This will be followed by:

VMware Session

Peter Hauck – Senior Solutions Engineer

VMware

 

And we will be finishing off with:

 

Preparing for VMware Certifications

With the increase of position requirements in the last few years, certifications help you demonstrate your skills and move you a step forward on getting better jobs. In this Community Ssession we will help you understand how to prepare for a VMware certification exam and some useful tips you can use during the exam.

We will talk about:

Different types of exams

  • How to schedule an exam
  • Where to get material to study
  • Lessons learned from the field per type of exam

Francisco Fernandez Cardarelli – Senior Consultant (4 x VCIX)

 

Soft drinks and vBeers will be available throughout the evening! We look forward to seeing you there! Doors open at 5pm. Please make your way to The Cube.

Brisbane VMUG – October 2022

The October 2022 edition of the Brisbane VMUG meeting will be held on Wednesday 12th October at the Cube (QUT) from 5pm – 7pm. It’s sponsored by NetApp and promises to be a great afternoon.

Two’s Company, Three’s a Cloud – NetApp, VMware and AWS

NetApp has had a strategic relationship with VMware for over 20 years, and with AWS for over 10 years. Recently at VMware Explore we made a significant announcement about VMC support for NFS Datastores provided by the AWS FSx for NetApp ONTAP service.

Come and learn about this exciting announcement and more on the benefits of NetApp with VMware Cloud. We will discuss architecture concepts, use cases and cover topics such as migration, data protection and disaster recovery as well as Hybrid Cloud configurations.

There will be a lucky door prize as well as a prize for best question on the night. Looking forward to see you there!

Wade Juppenlatz – Specialist Systems Engineer – QLD/NT

Chris (Gonzo) Gondek – Partner Technical Lead QLD/NT

 

PIZZA AND NETWORKING BREAK!

This will be followed by:

All the News from VMware Explore – (without the jet lag)

We will cover a variety of cloudy announcements from VMware Explore, including:

  • vSphere 8
  • vSAN 8
  • VMware Cloud on AWS
  • VMware Cloud Flex Storage
  • GCVE, OCVS, AVS
  • Cloud Universal
  • VMware Ransomware Recovery for Cloud DR

Dan Frith – Staff Solutions Architect – VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware

 

And we will be finishing off with:

Preparing for VMware Certifications

With the increase of position requirements in the last few years, certifications help you demonstrate your skills and move you a step forward on getting better jobs. In this Community Ssession we will help you understand how to prepare for a VMware certification exam and some useful tips you can use during the exam.

 

We will talk about:

  • Different types of exams
  • How to schedule an exam
  • Where to get material to study
  • Lessons learned from the field per type of exam

Francisco Fernandez Cardarelli – Senior Consultant (4 x VCIX)

 

Soft drinks and vBeers will be available throughout the evening! We look forward to seeing you there!

Doors open at 5pm. Please make your way to The Atrium, on Level 6.

You can find out more information and register for the event here. I hope to see you there. Also, if you’re interested in sponsoring one of these events, please get in touch with me and I can help make it happen.

Brisbane VMUG – August 2022

The August 2022 edition of the Brisbane VMUG meeting will be held on Wednesday 31st August at the QUT, Science and Engineering – P block from 5pm – 7pm. It’s sponsored by Dell Technologies and promises to be a great afternoon.

Here’s the agenda:

Transitioning from a Cloud-first to a Data-first Strategy to Drive Business Value

With the major trends in industry – the unpresented growth in data; increased distribution of data with the rise of Edge computing; greater diversity of data types based on industry specific use cases; increased security threats – the need for Data Management in a multi-cloud & distributed world are more important than ever. In the last few years we’ve seen the pace of digitization increase as business needs to be conducted in a virtual and digital way. Being able to manage and extract value from data is more critical than ever. In this session we will discuss how a move to a data-first strategy can drive business value, and look at an example of how an F1 racing team has put this into practice.

Presented by Ryan Tassotti – Principal Systems Engineer, Dell Technologies

This will be followed by a pizza and networking break.

Accelerate Cloud Transformation with VMware: Fuel Growth and Innovation

Help your organisation modernise existing data centre infrastructure, operating model and apps. Aging infrastructure in data centres doesn’t scale, is inefficient, lacks resiliency/agility and is not secure. Organisations do not have time, enough talent or capital to maintain the rigid data centre. Optimise capital by running and managing in a cloud model.

During this presentation, we will discuss the following use cases:

  • Take the fastest path and lowest costs to cloud-based infrastructure
  • Optimise service delivery, costs, and performance with consistent operations
  • Adopt a comprehensive platform to run modern applications

Presented by Sean Kopelke – Senior Director, Solution Engineering, VMware

And we will be finishing off with the Community Session (speaker and topic TBA)

Dell Technologies has gone to great lengths to make sure this will be a fun and informative session. You can find out more information and register for the event here. I hope to see you there. Also, if you’re interested in sponsoring one of these events, please get in touch with me and I can help make it happen.

Brisbane VMUG – July 2022

The July edition of the Brisbane VMUG meeting will be held on Wednesday 20th July at the Atrium (Level 6), QUT Science & Engineering Centre (P Block) from 5pm – 7:30pm. It’s sponsored by VMware and promises to be a great evening. Agenda as follows.

 

What is Azure VMware Solution and Why Would You Choose it?

Azure VMware Solution allows you to run VMware workloads on a private cloud in Azure. Not only is it the fastest way to migrate to workload, but it is also the most sensible in many cases.

In the session we will help you understand what AVS is, how it delivers a VMware environment that allows customers to take advantage of Azure, and also how it’s different to other VMware hyperscaler offerings. We’ll cover the platform and deployment, how can be AVS is networked to on-prem and the Internet, and how AVS is managed through a familiar VMware toolset.

We’ll show how VMware HCX can dramatically simplify migration or workloads from an existing on-prem VMware environment to AVS, minimising technical risk and significantly lowering migration costs. And we’ll also explain the benefits of Azure Hybrid use Benefit and Extended Security Update savings that are unique to AVS.

Finally, we’ll present a typical TCO as an illustration of the typical savings in moving to AVS versus on-prem or public cloud alternatives.

Delivered by:

  • Anthony Higgins – Cloud Solution Architect (VMware)
  • Greg Cetinich – Senior Sales Manager (VMware)
  • David Wymer – Global Black Belt (Microsoft)

 

Pizza and Networking Break

This will be followed by:

 

Ensure Clear Skies with Inbuilt Cloud Security

Cloud projects in 2022 are less about adoption, but more about optimisation, migration and security as “cloud-first” has become “cloud-default”. In this session we will discuss how systems, applications and hosts are migrating, optimising, transforming and securing their cloud workloads with little to no added effort. How VMware customers and net-new environments can leverage next-gen platforms to gain added functionality and extend their visibility, control and protection platforms to all locations.

Agenda:

  • Cybersecurity 2022 Recap
  • Cloud Adoption and Optimisation Priorities
  • Workload Security – Integrated awareness & protection for cloud workloads
  • Container Security – Pre & Post Deployment security
  • Demo
  • Q&A

Delivered by:

  • Sean Scott – Endpoint & Workload Security Practice Lead (VMware, QLD)
  • Vikram Kumar – Senior Solutions Engineer (VMware)

 

Other Notes

Soft drinks and vBeers will be available throughout the evening! We look forward to seeing you there! Doors open at 5pm. Please make your way to The Atrium, on Level 6. VMware has gone to great lengths to make sure this will be a fun and informative session. You can find out more information and register for the event here. I hope to see you there. Also, if you’re interested in sponsoring one of these events, please get in touch with me and I can help make it happen.

Brisbane VMUG – June 2022

The June (re-scheduled from May) edition of the Brisbane VMUG meeting will be held on Wednesday 8th June at The Atrium from 5pm. It’s sponsored by Oracle and promises to be a great afternoon.

Agenda

Discover the Benefits of Oracle Cloud VMware Solution

Alicia Thompson, Principal Cloud Architect, Oracle Cloud will cover how Oracle VMware Solution (OCVS) helps customers accelerate and simplify their cloud journey by seamlessly extending or migrating their existing on-premises VMware applications to Oracle with complete control without refactoring, re-tooling, and access to Oracle’s entire portfolio of cloud services. Demonstrating Oracle VMware Solution in Action!

VMware and Doing More with OCVS

Peter Hauck, Senior Solutions Engineer, VMware will provide an update on the available validated components that support OCVS from VMware including:

  • vRealize Cloud Management
  • Site Recovery Management
  • Horizon
  • Tanzu
  • Diving deeper into a Tanzu use case for OCVS leveraging the power of Oracle Cloud.
  • Overview of how to implement manage and scale Tanzu in OCVS.

Lessons We Learned After Building a Multi-Region, Multi AZ Cloud Platform based on VMware Products

Amin Naserpour – Solutions Architect, Digital Sense will talk about how Digital Sense designed and built a multi-region, multi availability zone cloud platform based on VMware products. In this session, he will share some of the key challenges that Digital Sense faced and how to address them as well as some of the constraints and hard limits that you must be aware of.

Soft drinks and vBeers will be available throughout the evening. Doors open at 5pm. Please make your way to The Atrium, on level 6. Register for the event here. Check out the Meetup link here. Also, if you’re interested in sponsoring one of these events, please get in touch with me and I can help make it happen.

Brisbane VMUG – April 2022

The April 2022 edition of the Brisbane VMUG meeting will be held on Thursday 28th April. It’s powered by VMware, Google Cloud, and Queensland University of Technology and promises to be a great event. It’s also an opportunity to welcome the new leaders to the Brisbane VMUG team: Claire O’Dwyer and Antony West.

Agenda

Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) – Tech Overview and Key Use Cases

In this session we will cover the GCVE platform in depth, as well as GCVE’s technical advantages when compared to other “VMware on X” solutions. As well as diving into the GCVE solution, we will cover some key technical use cases for the platform (e.g. Backup/DR options from an on-premises DC to GCVE).

Delivered by Clay Quinn, Customer Engineer, Google Cloud.

This will be followed by:

Automating Deployments and Configuration Management with Salt

Salt is an open-source configuration management tool with some interesting and useful features. In this session we will cover some of the key capabilities and concepts of Salt and demonstrate how we can use Salt to deploy configure and manage environments.

Delivered by Mark Foley, Senior Solutions Engineer, VMware

PIZZA AND NETWORKING BREAK! (Exciting!)

And we will be finishing off with:

Migrating from NSX-V to NSX-T

Delivered by Tony Williamson, Senior Consultant, VMware PSO.

Soft drinks and vBeers will be available throughout the evening. We look forward to seeing you there! Doors open at 5pm.

You can find out more information and register for the event here. Note that the March 2022 meeting had to be rescheduled due to ‘Rona issues – I’ll update the blog when I have new dates for that one.

Brisbane VMUG – March 2022

 

The first Brisbane VMUG meeting of 2022 will be a lunch and learn event and will be held on Wednesday 23rd March from 12pm – 1pm. It’s powered by VMware and Queensland University of Technology and promises to be a great event. It’s also an opportunity to welcome the new leaders to the Brisbane VMUG team: Claire O’Dwyer and Antony West.

 

Become a Cyber Warrior with VMware

Sean Scott is a Cybersecurity advocate, technologist and digital transformation specialist with over 25 years of IT experience. With an extensive history working with IT, Infrastructure, Cloud, and Cyber teams, he uses the past experience as a member of IT, internal and external consulting, representing system integrators and global IT vendors. Sean leverages different perspectives and experiences to drive a customer outcome-focused mindset. Please join us for our first Lunch and Learn where Sean will deliver the following:

Agenda:

  • The State of Cybersecurity
  • Everyone’s role in the ASD Essential 8 controls
  • The role of VMware in Security
  • Workload Security – Embedded security in vSphere
  • Demo
  • Q&A

Refreshments will be served and due to capacity limits numbers are restricted. Doors open at 12pm on March 23rd at The Cube, QUT – 2 George Street, Brisbane. The session will start at 12.15pm promptly, with a 40 minute presentation planned.

Primary Venue

The Cube – Science & Engineering Centre (P Block) QUT Gardens Point

George Street 2, 4000 Brisbane, QLD, AU

VMware has gone to great lengths to make sure this will be a fun and informative session and I’m really looking forward to hearing Sean talk all things security. You can find out more information and register for the event here. I hope to see you there. Also, if you’re interested in sponsoring one of these events, please get in touch with me and I can help make it happen.

VMUG Madness – May 2021

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It’s all happening with VMUG this May. Firstly, the SDDC Roadshow with Frank, Cormac and Duncan has been re-scheduled for 27th May. Details below, and you can register here.

Providing a platform for modern IT services with a VMware SDDC    

Abstract: Today’s business requirements are driving the evolution of IT at an extremely rapid pace. Never before have IT administrators introduced so many new services and solutions to their customers. Although ensuring availability, performance, and recoverability of these solutions is key, it cannot come at the cost of business or developer agility. In this three-part roadshow Frank, Cormac, and Duncan will discuss how VMware (and products like vSphere, vSAN, Tanzu, etc) can help to transform your infrastructure to facilitate this new wave of applications.

Agenda

  • Opening by VMUG Leaders
  • Frank Denneman:  Creating a developer self-service platform with vSphere 7 while maintaining governance
  • Q&A and Break
  • Cormac Hogan:  vSphere 7.0 U1 and the Kubernetes Admin
  • Q&A and Break
  • Duncan Epping: vSAN 7.0 U1 and the vSphere Admin
  • Q&A and wrap up by VMUG leaders

 

Secondly, the inaugural Fiji VMUG meeting is happening on the 13th May. If you’re close to their timezone, log in and give them some support.

Sydney VMUG – April 2021

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*Update* This one’s been postponed for a few weeks. I’ll provide an update as soon as I get the new date.

The next Sydney VMUG meeting is coming up in a few weeks, and it should be great. Details below, and you can register here.

Providing a platform for modern IT services with a VMware SDDC    

Abstract: Today’s business requirements are driving the evolution of IT at an extremely rapid pace. Never before have IT administrators introduced so many new services and solutions to their customers. Although ensuring availability, performance, and recoverability of these solutions is key, it cannot come at the cost of business or developer agility. In this three-part roadshow Frank, Cormac, and Duncan will discuss how VMware (and products like vSphere, vSAN, Tanzu, etc) can help to transform your infrastructure to facilitate this new wave of applications.

Agenda

  • Opening by VMUG Leaders
  • Frank Denneman:  Creating a developer self-service platform with vSphere 7 while maintaining governance
  • Q&A and Break
  • Cormac Hogan:  vSphere 7.0 U1 and the Kubernetes Admin
  • Q&A and Break
  • Duncan Epping: vSAN 7.0 U1 and the vSphere Admin
  • Q&A and wrap up by VMUG leaders