Today I spent all day at the mothership VMware offices in Palo Alto, where the Partner Exchange (PEX) boot camps are being held, my friend @g_mulholland was also presenting the VSAN deep dive so It was great to get the chance to say hi and have a quick chat with him before he started the deep dive session.

I was also fortunate enough to catch up with @ericni25 who was kind enough to give me a quick tour of the video studio used for VMTN Community Roundtable Podcast. As you can see from the pictures this is a serious studio used for most of the marketing videos recorded at VMware.

It was really interesting to hear from Eric about the history of the campus and how it’s evolved over the last 3 years. I was really taken aback by the sheer size of the campus.

I attended the VMware Technical Solutions Professional – Desktop Virtualisation (VTSP-DV) boot camp where we were provided insight into all things end-user computing at VMware.

The following topics were reviewed:

• Horizon View 6.1 changes
• vGPU
• Identity Manager (formally Workspaces)
• App Volumes
• User Environment Manager
• VVOLs
• VSAN
• Mirage
• FLEX
• Horizon Air
• Identity Manager
• vRealize Operations for Horizon (with XenApp plug-in).

After PEX the pre #VMworld celebrations began starting with the NSX Boot Camp cocktail party where I caught up with some Melbourne VMUG friends including @daunce_, @LuisConcistre and @cpjones44.

I then went onto #vGravity hosted by the legend @cakeis_not_alie, who’d invited a great selection of the community along, what a great idea and a great bunch of people to hang out with before the start of VMworld!

I finished off with a late arrival at #vBeers, even though it was late I couldn’t attend VMworld without dropping in at the Chieftain on a Saturday night, as luck would have it I meet up with my good friend @kylemurley and had a great discussion with @arielsanchezmor about the whole VCDX submission process.  Then phoned home to talk to the Wife and Kids before passing out, all in all a great start to the #VMworld weekend 🙂