This event has been postponed.  We have tentatively rescheduled for September 2012 (post VMworld).  Stay tuned to this site and http://dcvmug.com for more info and future events.

Potomac Regional VMUG is Coming to Washington D.C. – May 9th, 2012!

Join your fellow VMware users at this free, full-day event for in-depth technical sessions, demonstrations, exhibits, and networking opportunities. Come to the Nationals Stadium to meet with your peers and industry experts to discuss virtualization trends, best practices, and the latest technology!

Visit the Potomac Regional VMUG User Conference event page to reserve your place at this event now.

Take advantage of these educational and networking opportunities:

• 8 VMware educational sessions
• 12 partner education tracks
• Exhibitor area with VMware partners
• Complimentary breakfast and lunch
• Registration is complimentary, so register today!

Wednesday, May 9, 2012 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Location Nationals Park 1500 South Capitol Street Southeast Washington, DC 20003

Please note: You will need to log into the VMUG website to register for this meeting. If you have not already obtained your VMUG login credentials, please visit the Username and/or Password Help page to request your username and password.

Questions? Contact memberservices@vmug.com

This is a re-post from http://dcvmug.com/dc-vmug-january-17th-2011/.  Please follow the DC VMUG site for updates!

The Washington DC VMUG invites you to the first meeting of the DC VMUG in 2012. The event will be held on Tuesday, January 17th, 2011 at Nationals Park.

Our sponsors, Tintri and Veeam, will have some great give-aways for attendees. We’ll have a tour of the new Nationals Park at the end of the VMUG meeting.

Register Now!

Agenda

7:30am – 8:00am: Registration & Breakfast
8:00am – 8:45: Tintri Presentation
8:45 – 9:00am: Break
9:00 – 9:45am: Apps in the Enterprise : Horizon App Manager vs. Citrix Xenapp; Michael Letschin, vExpert, Convergence Technology Consulting
9:45 – 10:00am: Break
10:00 – 10:45am: Veeam Presentation
10:45 – 11:15am: Ask the Experts and Closing Remarks
11:30am: Nationals Park Tour

Location

Washington Nationals Park

1500 South Capitol St., SE
Washington, DC 20003

Free Parking in Lot C, or Metro to Navy Yard (Green Line) and walk 0.3 mi SW to Nationals Park

Proceed to Red Porch Restaurant

Did you miss VMworld this year, but want a chance to get a peek at the exciting new technologies on display at the show?  The VMworld 2011 Snapshot Series is your chance to catch the excitement of VMworld in a city near you.

Please join VMware for this complimentary half-day event to get a taste of VMworld 2011 and learn how VMware and our partners are enabling organizations like yours to understand the true value of cloud computing and business agility. Cloud computing is an organizations strategic weapon-not just for IT, but to enable full business transformation, and will eventually change how the business operates. Attend, participate and learn from our Subject Matter Experts on how to modernize your IT operations. Improve, simplify and save with VMware. Topics to be discussed:

• VMware Keynote Review / General Session Highlights
• Build and Own Your Cloud: vSphere 5.0, vCloud Director 1.5 vCenter SRM 5 and vShield 5
• Desktop and End User Computing Strategies

This is a unique opportunity to learn and understand more about infrastructure, applications and end user transformation that is happening today making organizations more automated, competitive and agile. Hear from our subject matter experts, see live demos as well as network with your peers. This is your VMworld Snapshot. This is your Cloud. Own it.

For the folks here in Washington, DC with me, the VMworld 2011 Snapshot will be on October 18th.

The Washington DC VMUG Invites You to a Joint Event with VMware on vCenter™ Management Solutions.
Join us in the morning and learn from VMware subject matter experts how VMware vCenter™ Operations are fundamentally simplifying how IT is managed:

• Automate operations with intelligence and visibility
• Interpret workload, health and capacity metrics
• Identify and resolve workload stress and population problems
• Correlate change events and performance patterns

Stick around for the VMUG lunch and meeting:

• Networking Lunch
• VMware Updates and What’s New with VMUG
• VMworld 2011 Preview
• Community Scripts and Free Tools to Manage and Monitor Your VMware Environment. *Attendees are invited to bring your favorite scripts for monitoring, managing, and reporting on your VMware environments to share with the group.*

This is a unique opportunity to learn from best practices, see a demo and to speak with vCenter™ Operation experts directly.

Space is limited, so register today!
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
9:00 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.

Location
JW Marriott Washington DC
1331 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20004
Driving directions

Agenda
8:30 a.m. – Breakfast & Registration
9:00 a.m. - VMware Presentation: Master Your Virtualized Infrastructure
10:15 a.m. - Partner Presentation
11:00 a.m. – VMware Product Demo
11:30 a.m. – Morning Wrap up
12:15 p.m. - VMUG Lunch, Updates, and Announcements
01:00 p.m. - VMware Security and Compliance, Rob Babb, VMware

01:30 p.m. - Community Scripts & Free Tools to Manage & Monitor Your VMware Environment

Sponsored by

We’ll kick off a normal VMUG meeting after the VMware event. Please make special note – *Attendees are invited to bring your favorite scripts for monitoring, managing, and reporting on your VMware environments to share with the group.* Prizes for the best scripts shared!

This one is for all you in the DC area (I”m looking at you, DC VMUG members) looking to network with fellow VMware folks….

For all the guys out there that have talked for weeks and months about our choice of beer and bourbon, the time has come.  We will be having a vBeers Happy Hour at one of the newest and hottest places in DC, Jack Rose Dining Salon.

For those of you who don’t know it was featured in the Washingtonian Magazine this month and is just opening with one of the largest Scotch selection ever assembled from a private collector in DC.  They also should have 20+ beers on tap.

Heres the details, hope you all can make it and if we find the date I picked is really bad… don’t fret this will not be the only time we do this..

Location: Jack Rose Dining Saloon
Address: 2007 18th Street Northwest, Washington D.C., District of Columbia 20009
Date: July 13, 2011
Time: 6PM – 9PM ish

Get yourself to the vBeers website to register:  Direct link to the event here: http://www.vbeers.org/2011/06/08/vbeers-and-vbourbon-dcnovamd-weds-13th-july-2011/

VMware has been investing in the VMware User Group (VMUG) program over the past year, adding new benefits and opportunities to an already great program.  In addition to local meetings where you can interact with fellow VMware professionals, the VMUG program offers other great benefits – the latest is the VMUG Advantage program. The VMUG Advantage program offers the following benefits:

• $100 Discount to VMworld
• 20% Discount on VMware Instructor Led Training
• 20% Discount on VMware Certification
• 1-Year Free Subscription: All Access eLearning Courses ($750 Value)
• 30% Discount on Workstation and Fusion Software html Licenses

The VMUG Advantage program has an introductory price of $170 for individuals (with corporate/multi-user discounts available) until May 21.  Not a bad deal if you plan to attend VMworld in Las Vegas (Aug 29 – Sept 1), complete a certification (VCP, VCAP, VCDX, VCA-DT), or take some instructor led training through VMware.  Heck – the eLearning subscription alone more than pays for program subscription cost!

As a VMUG member be sure to login to the new www.myvmug.org and update your profile or add an picture or avatar. Over the next month you’ll see exciting new benefits added to the website, including VMUG Community Pages, Event Listings, and Education Resources.

If you’re not already a VMUG member, go ahead and sign up at www.myvmug.org to learn about local/regional events and to get access to the other great benefits like the VMUG Advantage.

Time:
9:30am – 2:30pm

Location:
Fair Lakes Hyatt
12777 Fair Lakes Circle
Ballroom
Fairfax, VA 22033

Directions

It was great seeing so many VMware User Group (VMUG) members at this week’s Virtualization Forum in Washington, DC.  There are several more Virtualization Forum‘s scheduled for North America, Europe, and Asia – these events are a great chance to see live demo’s, connect with experts, and catch a peek of some exciting technologies in the virtualization space.  I hope to see everyone I met at the VMware booth at the next Washington, DC VMUG.

Our next event will be on Thursday, April 29th at the Sheraton Crystal City Hotel in Arlington, VA where we will be discussing best practices when Virtualizing Tier 1 Applications.

Here is the agenda for the meeting:

11:30 a.m.    Registration
11:50 a.m.    Opening Remarks
12:00 p.m.    Riverbed Presentation by Jim Borda
12:45 p.m.    Lunch
01:30 p.m.    What’s New by VMUG Leader Jason Langone
01:45 p.m.    Double-Take Presentation: “The Secret to Disaster Recovery for Any Application, Anywhere” by James Senecal
02:30 p.m.    Beverage Break
02:45 p.m.    Virtualization of Tier 1 Apps
03:30 p.m.    Wrap-up

This is a great opportunity to meet with your peers to discuss virtualization trends, best practices and the latest technology.  Register today to join us for this free informative event. Space is limited, so respond as soon as possible to reserve your seat.

The official registration form can be found here: http://campaign.vmware.com/usergroup/invites/WashingtonDC_4-29-10.html.

Please join us for the upcoming Washington DC VMware^® User Group meeting on Tuesday, March 10th, 10:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

This is a great opportunity to meet with your peers to discuss virtualization trends, best practices and the latest technology.

Agenda
10:30 a.m. Check-In
10:50 a.m. Opening Remarks
11:00 a.m. Compellent Presentation
11:45 a.m. Lunch
12:30 p.m. VMware ThinApp Presentation by Jason Langone
01:30 p.m. Beverage Break
01:45 p.m. Veeam Presentation
02:30 p.m. Wrap-up session

Register today to join us for this free informative event. Space is limited, so respond as soon as possible to reserve your seat.

Location:
Westin City Center
National Ballroom A
1400 M Street NW
Washington, DC 20005
Map Here

Sponsored by:

As I am one of the leaders of the Washington, DC VMware User Group, please feel free to reach out to me with questions, comments, volunteering to present at an upcoming meeting, or just to introduce yourself.

You can stay in touch with the group by visiting http://dcvmug.com (redirect to http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmug/forums/us_northeast/dc) or our LinkedIn Group.

Today marks the one year anniversary of my first post on VMtoday.com, and an exciting year it has been in many ways.  First, some stats:

• VMtoday.com has been visited more than 10,000 times in the past year.  While the number of site visits is far below some of my fellow virtualization bloggers, it is still exciting for me to see that I am making an impact on the community (despite my meager post count).  There are some of you who read my posts through Planet V12n and RSS, which is cool by me.
• Yesterday was the busiest day for the site.  No coincidence that it comes after adding some new content….  I’ll try to be more faithful in publishing regular, relevant content!
• My most popular post to date has been: IBM DS3300 iSCSI Write Performance Solved. I’m glad this has been useful for so many, but I hope that you don’t just apply the workarounds I wrote about. I would rather have you build a “bet the business” iSCSI environment by adding that second controller to your MD3000i or DS3300.
• My least popular post to date has been: VMworld Here I Come. I will try not to be so boring in the future.
• The first link back to my site was from Scott Lowe’s blog.  Thanks for the link, Scott.  Scott wrote a darn fine book: Mastering VMware vSphere 4.  Buy it.
• The site theme, like my Twitter page, is very blue.  I am working on a new theme in all of the spare time that a busy professional and father of two boys can muster.

Along with this site, I have made a concerted effort engage the virtualization community in several ways:

• Twitter keeps me plugged in to the latest news and discussions, and has been a source of help to me (and I would like to think that I have helped some of you as well).  Follow me at http://twitter.com/joshuatownsend.
• I have stepped up into a leadership role with the Washington DC VMware User Group (VMUG).  It has been awesome to meet with and learn from my local colleagues.  I will continue to work with the DC VMUG leadership team to deliver exciting and relevant content and activities (and also some more seating space).  I welcome your feedback and ideas for ways to improve the VMUG.
• VMworld 2009 was a great way to meet many of you while learning some of the hottest new technology on the planet.  My wife came along and enjoyed spending time with some of the other vSpouses (or vWidows?).
• I took a new job early in the year with a VMware Partner in the DC area.  This new job has been both challenging and rewarding, affording me opportunities to more effectively engage customers and spend more time working on virtualization-specific solutions.

I look forward to contributing to the virtualization community as a blogger, VMUG leader, and practitioner.  If you want to learn a bit more about me, check out the About page on this site.  I welcome your feedback and appreciate your reading my work!

- Josh