Once again, the KC virtualization community is invited to gather for a casual, un-sponsored get-together for another vBeers.

Location: The Well Bar & Grill

Address:
7421 Broadway
Kansas City, MO
Google Maps

Date: Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Time: 6:30pm - ??

No registration needed: just show up!

VMUG members holding Advantage subscriptions will receive a $100 discount on top of selected other discounts (eg, Alumni).

Most of the leadership for the KC VMUG will be attending the show, so you can expect the October meeting to be full of information and stories if you aren’t able to attend.

Thursday, April 26, 2012
2pm — 4pm
Muehlbach Suite, Boulevard Brewing Company
2501 Southwest Boulevard, KCMO
Free Parking! 

See the registration pages for more information.

The VMUG needs YOU!

Are you tired of going to meetings that seem more like just a vendor sales pitch rather than being a good technical presentation?

YOU CAN FIX THAT!

All it takes is some brave members who are willing to get up in front of his/her peers and present. If we could get more members that were willing to present at meetings, there would be less time consumed by the vendors. After all, it’s our meeting.

Any VMware-related topic is fair game:

• Server consolidation success/horror story
• vSphere feature demo
• P2V or V2V success story
• VDI implementation case study
• Backup product demonstration
• Management demonstration
• Scripting tricks and automation jewels
• Upgrade/patch demos
• Something cool that no one else has seen…

Not sure if you’re up to it?

Consider this: it doesn’t have to be hard or complicated. In fact, the simpler, the better. You don’t have to take up 60 minutes; even a short, 5-minute demo could be useful to another member of the group, making the trip to the meeting worthwhile.

The group leaders want to make your meetings a valuable use of your time; member presentations are a great way to make that happen.

Interested? Shoot an email to ben.clayton@kcvmug.com and let him know.

Don’t forget: public speaking is a great bullet point for your resume!

Brooksider Bar & Grill, 6330 Brookside Plaza, KCMO

Who: Anyone interested in technology, virtualization in particular
What: A byob happy-hour social gathering
Why: Why not?!?
Where: Brooksider Bar & Grill, 63rd & Brookside Plaza
When: Wednesday, February 29, 2012, 6:30pm
How: Bring yourself, your friends, your co-workers for an unstructured social hour devoted to all things virtual

For more information about the #vBeers movement, check out the official home.

Disclaimer: This is not an official VMware/VMUG event, but because it’s aimed at the virtualization community, we thought you might want to know!

Join Eagle Software as they present Nimble Storage at a lunch-and-learn hosted at our favorite meeting place, Boulevard Brewing Company.

The event is Thursday, March 15, 2012 from 1:30—4:30pm

Jump to Registration

Disclaimer: This is not an official VMware/VMUG event; Registration is via Nimble Storage’s site, and the VMUG has no control over your contact information after registration.

The registration page for the first meeting—February 9, sponsored by Tintri—is available, and as usual, we’re meeting at the Boulevard Brewing Company’s Muehlbach meeting room. Hit the link for agenda and additional details.

In addition to the first meeting, we’ve got meetings planned for “even months” through the year, with tentative plans to repeat the big one in December.

• April 26 — Fusion-IO
• June 21 — 2X software
• August 16 — Dell/Compellent
• October 18 — (tba)

Packed room for Veeam’s breakout session

According to Arrowhead event coordinator Ashley Netzer, the VMUG event was the largest non-NFL event to be held at the stadium since the $375 million renovation was completed in time for the 2010-2011 NFL season. It was those renovations that made it possible for indoor events at the scale of the VMUG conference to be possible. Although the stadium originally included indoor facilities that would support events such as wedding receptions and the like, nothing pre-renovation would have supported the number of attendees and booth space of the exposition area. In addition to stellar support from the Arrowhead event staff, the catering staff did a superb job of feeding the crowd with hot buffet meals for breakfast and lunch, as well as snacks and soft-drinks in-between.

Attendees in the expo area

The conference boasted an exposition area with booths for 40 sponsoring organizations, including VMware and Platinum Sponsors HP, Hitachi Data Systems and Riverbed. In addition to the conference-opening general sessions featuring VMware veteran Irish Spring and EMC’s Chad Sakac, 22 breakout sessions were presented across 5 tracks of interest: VMware, Backup, Network, Storage & Cloud.

Gold Sponsor EMC also provided 6 stations for cloud-based hands-on labs, hosted using VMware’s premier cloud computing services from the sponsor’s Durham, NC datacenter: proof that cloud computing’s promise can be fulfilled.

vBeers with the vStorage ExpertsVMUG events are all about “serious fun,” and nothing showcased it better than the final 90 minutes of the event. Thanks to Platinum Sponsor Riverbed, a panel session titled “vBeers with the vStorage Experts” concluded the educational portion of the day with an “open mike” format where storage questions and various beers were served to attendees and panelists Eric Siebert (HP), Nick Rieker (Dell Compellent), David Robertson (EMC), Theron Conrey (Nexenta), Scott Baker (NetApp) and Pieter Teeling (Dell Equallogic). Irish Spring’s deft moderation of the session kept the mood light, and attendees that were willing to stand up and ask questions for the panel found themselves with the additional reward of random goodies from ThinkGeek that the VMUG team had on hand.

Additional goodies in the form of ThinkGeek items, copies of Scott Lowe’s Mastering vSphere 5 and Mike Laverick’s Administering VMware SRM5 books, and various high-desire electronic devices like Apple iPads were raffled off to the ~100 remaining, dedicated attendees from both sponsors and VMUG prize bags.

Special thanks from the local VMUG leadership team to Ashley Netzler and the Arrowhead event & catering staff, the Chicago-based Global VMUG support staff (Amy, Frances, Victor, Bret, Dave), and of course, the Platinum, Gold and Silver sponsors, without which we couldn’t have made it happen.

Whether you missed the keynote or not, Chad shared his slide deck with us for general distribution.