The Virtualization Technology Users Group Fall Forward 2013

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Another wonderful event, thank you Chris Harney @csharney! See also Virtualization Technology User Group Summer Slam 2013. Met a lot of new folks, learned a lot in the breakout sessions, and enjoyed some beautiful autumn weather on the drive over. A pleasant day, and a very worthwhile trip for me. The stack of business cards I came home with is invaluable, as were some new friendships I formed.

Started the day with Dan Stolts @ITProGuru of Microsoft, giving his timely presentation ‘Inside Windows Server 2012 R2–Launch Day!’ Dan is the master of Dual Boot to Native VHD and much much more, see Dan's popular blog, ITProGuru.com, and my guest post, Windows Task Manager auto-started as an effective CPU monitor in your system tray. Interested in downloading Windows Server 2012 R2/Hyper-V Server 2012 R2? Then why not have Microsoft give $2 to the American Cancer Society for every download from here?

I attended numerous exciting breakout sessions on flash, with Virident (just acquired by Western Digital) demonstrating the benefits of FlashMAX, Clearpath Solutions Group diving into VMware vSphere Flash Read Cache, and finally the Mosaic Technology/PernixData presentation about the Flash Virtualization Platform.

Later on, Chris Harney and I caught up, having a nice conversation about the roughly 500 folks in attendance, and the founding and future of VTUG.

Mark Gabryjelski @MarkGabbs of wei gave me some great information about what's exciting him lately, including Nutanix - The Virtual Computing Platform.

Also met the District Director of Information Technology, who happens to live the next town over from me, even though we were both about hours from our homes. Having helped to start a Technology Club at my own local high school, there was plenty to talk about.

Over at Toby Keith's I Love This Bar and Grill, got to enjoy dinner and some pretty amazing conversation with Brian Ducharme @worthlessplanet of LiquidwareLabs and vmblog.com. See also VMworld 2013 coverage. Yes, we both got started with peek and poke commands, on Commodore VIC-20. Unlike me, he's quite adept at all things Linux, and quite the artist.

Then was surprised to also find Jonathan Frappier @jfrappier of jonathanfrappier.wordpress.com sitting right next to me, a virtualization blogger. See also Jonathan's My favorite part of user group meet ups, and our tweet dialogue over here. I didn't manage to get any photos of the after-party, but that is Jonathan pictured at right.

If I'm able to get any presentation materials, I'll go ahead post them here. Meanwhile, enjoy some pics below, and look back at my brief, recent video interview with VTUG founder Chris Harney.

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