My first Providence VMUG, Nov 19 2015

I live half way between Boston and New York, about 2 hours to either, in central Connecticut, near Hartford. Been to VMUGs in all 3 cities, but somehow, never to the VMUG near Providence RI, only 1.5 hours of rural driving away. Had the day off from work, did some morning errands, then off I went. Only 3 faces were familiar, the rest complete strangers. That's a good thing. Stepping out of my comfort zone, I just remind myself that nearly everybody else in the room likely feels the same way.

An opportunity to kick-back, hear tech, and actually think about what I'm hearing, without the usual interruptions of work. As the day wound down, that's when the real conversations began. A great chance to learn from other people equally enthusiastic about their careers in IT, and their real lives. Eventually, they became strangers no more, as we found out what's going on in the industry from each other in a private, powerful way that just doesn't happen online.

• Providence RI VMUG, Nov. 19 2015

I'll be darned if I can remember the name of the guy I paired up with to watch on as he did the the VSAN hands on lab, but I certainly remember how fun it was to talk about EVALExperience licenses, and his job in IT. Also got to chat with Ken Horn for a bit, about SolarWinds VM Monitor, and some of his other great tips. Another guy and I talked Oculus Rift, StarCraft II, and Flight Sims. That was just fun.

Special thanks to the volunteer VMUG leaders who do all the work, including Mike Marseglia @mmars, who I had met somewhere else and invited me to come by, and actually remembered me. Then there was emcee Jim Peluso @JimPeluso, who really kicked things off nicely, and was eager to get audience feedback on the labs versus presentations ratio, etc.

Thanks to VMware's Guy Bowers and Peter Keilty talking VSAN, up at the podium, and to me for a bit afterword. And of course, thanks to the sponsors who had booths, did some presentations, and made it all possible, including:

• PernixData @PernixData "Storage and VM Acceleration"
• reduxio @ReduxioSystems "it's about time"
• rubrik @rubrikInc "Data Protection. Simplified. Don't Backup. Go Forward."

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VMUG Member Presentations

I'm pleased to have obtained permission to publish some of the content that's normally tucked away behind a VMUG login, ready for your viewing and reading enjoyment.

• Ken Horn's Presentation On Free Tools

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Peter Keilty - If you want the full benefits of VSAN’s ability to self-heal, then the way to architect would be at least 2 storage disks per disk group, 2 disk groups per host, and 4 hosts per cluster. But, you can still get self healing if you don’t have the 4th host, or 2 disk groups per host. As long as you have more than 2 storage disk then you will get self-healing with the host.

See also Peter's @keiltypeter detailed post, with many great illustrations:

• Virtual SAN Software Defined Self Healing

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Tom Queen @linetracer of PernixData.

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See also at TinkerTry

• Many more User Group posts!

• Free SolarWinds VM Monitor works nicely on Windows 10 to monitor your VMware ESX 3.5 right through ESXi 6.0 Update 1a

• New TinkerTry'd Supermicro SuperServer Bundle 2 and Bundle 3 - lower cost of entry for your VERY upgradable virtualization home lab, now shipping from US and EU!

• Supermicro SuperServer 5028D-TN4T VSAN dream is alive! Home lab video overview features Intel SSDs and Samsung M.2 SSDs

• Try OPS1E on iOS, a fast and powerful way to manage your vSphere 4.x, 5.x, and 6.x environments

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See also

• VMTN reincarnated! EVALExperience is to VMware Professionals what MSDN/TechNet is to Microsoft Professionals.

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Social

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Thx @mmars for #pvdvmug invite, so glad I went! https://t.co/HQA6AzzuYP @keiltypeter @linetracer @PernixData @reduxio @rubrikInc @ChrisWahl

— Paul Braren (@paulbraren) November 21, 2015