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VMworld Hackathon 2017 Highlights

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This was our second year running the Hackathon at VMworld and Alan and I could not have been more pleased with all the positive and supportive feedback that we have received. The Hackathon was definitely a highlight for us as it was for many other VMworld attendees. Having said that, the Hackathon did come in a very close #2 for us in VMworld Europe as our very own Alan Renouf took center stage with our CEO Pat Gelsinger for the Day 1 Keynote which you can watch here.

There were so many great highlights at both the US and Europe VMworld Hackathon, it was hard to just mention a few. I thought I would be nice to pull together all this content and share it back with the community, especially for those who missed out on the Hackathon this year and have now regretted not joining 😉 Do not worry, you can make up for it next year! It was also very cool to see the VMworld Hackathon influence the VMUG Community with the Pittsburg VMUG running their own "mini" Hackathon which they dubbed #PGHlittlehacks, you can read more about it here.

I also wanted to give a huge thanks to the VMware Code team, if it was not for them and their support, the Hackathon would have not been possible. Not only did we double the size of the teams by 2x for both US (7 to 15 teams) and Europe (5 to 10 teams), but we also recieved a larger budget this year for better hardware, giveaways and more activities like the Hackathon Trainings. If you are not part of VMware Code, be sure to sign up here and also be sure to give them feedback on things you like at the Hackathon as well as things we could improve on. You can reach them on Twitter @vmwarecode or Slack them https://vmwarecode.slack.com. I also wanted thank our esteemed judges here and here for taking time out of their busy VMworld schedule and spending several hours with us, we know you could have been anywhere, but you decided to hang out with us! Lastly, thanks to the VMworld TV folks for stopping by and having a chat with us.

Alan and I really appreciate all the kind words that we have received in the last few weeks and we hope to see you in next years VMworld Hackathon!

FYI - In the coming week, I will be posting more information about the Hackathon hardware BOM as well as the slick vSphere Web Client UI customization, so stay tuned.

Blogs:

Twitter Comments:

Videos:

VMworld TV Interview:

Time-Lapse Video by Lars Troen:

Hackathon Team Presentations by Lars Troen:

Pictures:


             US Pictures - https://github.com/lamw/vmworld-hackathon/tree/master/2017-USA-Pictures


             Europe Pictures - https://github.com/lamw/vmworld-hackathon/tree/master/2017-BCN-Pictures

US Hackathon Training:

US/EU Hackathon Github Repos:

Hackathon Hardware/Software BOM:

ATTO's ESXi Thunderbolt Driver is now officially on VMware HCL

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Last week I had received some great news from our friends over at ATTO Technology that their ESXi Thunderbolt to Fibre Channel Driver has passed the VMware Certification process and is now officially listed on VMware's HCL. I had known the team was planning to certify their driver but was not aware of their timelines and whether it would actually get accepted given the fact that this was for a Thunderbolt-based device, which is the first of its kind for the VMware HCL.

Funny enough, it was roughly around this time last year that ATTO released a Beta of their ESXi Thunderbolt to Fibre Channel Driver which I had shared with my readers here. I was not surprised by the demand given the fact that no official solutions exists for customers who would like to take advantage of their existing SAN-based storage infrastructure when virtualizing Apple macOS (iOS development, etc) on vSphere. ATTO has certified two of their ThunderLink devices, customers have the option of using either the TLFC2082 which provides 20Gb/s Thunderbolt 2 (2-port) to 8Gb/s FC (2-Port) Device or the TLFC2182 which provides 20Gb/s Thunderbolt 2 (2-port) to 16Gb/s FC (2-Port) Device which is supported from ESXi 5.5u3 all the way up to latest 6.5u1 release.


Click here for the direct link to VMware HCL.

Huge congrats to the ATTO team for getting this on the VMware HCL and partnering up with VMware to provide a solution for our customers who virtualize Apple macOS using vSphere!

Lastly, if you are going to be at VMworld and you are interested in learning more about this solution, be sure to drop by the ATTO booth.

Thank you for voting! (Top vBlog 2017)

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I had been in meetings all day today and I had noticed my Twitter notifications was going nuts. It was only until my last meeting of the day, which was with Emad, did I learn what was going on. I had no idea the Top vBlog 2017 results were being announced today and when Emad broke the news that I had gotten #1 this year, I was left speechless. I want to thank everyone who voted for me, this recognition truly means a lot coming from the community, so thank you! I also want to congratulate all my fellow bloggers who were also recognized in this years Top vBlog including the special category winners.


Lastly, a huge shoutout to Eric Siebert for running the Top vBlog program and spending countless hours putting everything together, we know its not easy each year and the community really appreciates it. Of course, I could not leave out Eric Wright and Turbonomic who were the sponsors again for this years Top vBlog. Thanks for guys!

If you missed the live-stream earlier (like me), you can watch the full results below. I believe Eric will also be publishing the complete Top vBlog results on his blog soon, so stay tuned for that!