Take Five With Tom Fenton
Take 5 with Tom Fenton: My Five Must-See VMware Explore 2024 Sessions
For as long as I can remember, I have combed the VMworld/Explore catalog and created a must-see sessions list for it. This list includes sessions that interest me and are my top priority at the conference. This year is looking to be just as exciting as previous years. I'm particularly drawn to new technology, which I'm eager to explore this year. Here are the top five sessions I plan to attend at Explore this year.
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I was pleasantly surprised and overwhelmed to see that Explore 2024, which will be held at The Venetian in Las Vegas Aug. 26-29, will have over 400 different sessions this year. Thankfully the catalog can be filtered by different categories so you can focus in on the topics that are of most interest to you.
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Take 1: Private AI
It was tough to narrow my list down to five sessions as there were so many excellent sessions to choose from, but here they are.
Recently, I have become enamored with private AI, so I was delighted to see that there was a breakout session labeled "Private AI On A Small Budget: How US Senate Federal Credit Union Made It [INVB1907LV]." I look forward to attending it.
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Take 2: Supplemental Storage For VCF
I have always enjoyed Tristan Todd's presentations, and I am sure that his Community talk "Success With Supplemental Storage For VMware Cloud Foundation [CMTY2307LV]" will be great as a field solution architect at pure storage he will have many practical examples to share with his audience.
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Take 3: DPUs On VMware VSphere
Data Processing Units (DPU) and Neural Processing Units (NPU) will be the next big thing in the data center, and I am excited to see what questions will be asked at Dave Morera's "DPUs On VMware VSphere [VCFM1507LV]" meet-the-expert session.
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Take 4: VGPU Resource Scheduler
GPUs are an expensive resource, and fully utilizing them is a must. In his session "Empowering Virtual Environments: The VGPU Resource Scheduler Plug-In [CMTY2241LV]" Tony Foster will share the details of his open-source vSphere plug-in that allows you to use them for VDI in the day and AI at night.
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Take 5: 10 Amazing vSphere Foundation Benefits to Optimize Your IT Infrastructure
Lastly, I plan to attend Mark Chuang and Himanshu Singh's "10 Amazing vSphere Foundation Benefits to Optimize Your IT Infrastructure [VCFB1649LV]" breakout session. Although this is classified as a Business 100-level session, I am sure I will gain some interesting information from it.
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It's the Eccentricity
Looking over this list, I see that it seems slightly eccentric, but that is one of the things I like about Explore: It has a wide variety of technologies to investigate and learn about.
Vegas is more than gambling and the strip, so if you have a few extra days to spend in Vegas, check the post I wrote last year, "Five (Other) Things to Do in Vegas at VMware Explore 2023!"
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More information about Explore 2024 can be found here.
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The Explore 2024 catalog can be found here.
See you in Vegas, baby Las Vegas!
About the Author
Tom Fenton has a wealth of hands-on IT experience gained over the past 30 years in a variety of technologies, with the past 20 years focusing on virtualization and storage. He previously worked as a Technical Marketing Manager for ControlUp. He also previously worked at VMware in Staff and Senior level positions. He has also worked as a Senior Validation Engineer with The Taneja Group, where he headed the Validation Service Lab and was instrumental in starting up its vSphere Virtual Volumes practice. He's on X @vDoppler.