The VMware Explore 2024 Barcelona edition concluded some days ago, marking the end of the second major VMware event of the year.
Compared to previous editions, VMware Explore 2024 Barcelona was quieter, with fewer vendor booths. I deem the uncertainty surrounding VMware's future following its acquisition by Broadcom is leaving many companies feeling perplexed.
Announcement
There were no sensational announcements at this edition, but there were many insights to help understand the direction Broadcom has set for VMware's future.
VMware Cloud Foundation 9
The major announcement was the upcoming availability of VMware Cloud Foundation 9, where the integration with VMware vSphere, vSAN, NSX, and vRealize is more seamless and manageable. Since all the components are deployed as a single unit, compatibility issues will be avoided during deployment.
The Advanced Memory Tiering with NVMe is the cool feature available in VCF 9 where Memory Tiering leverages less expensive devices to act as memory. Memory tiering over NVMe enhances performance by allocating VM memory to either NVMe devices or the faster dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) within the host.
In addition to local installations, the new platform will be also available on Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and Google Cloud Platform.
Direct upgrade from VCF version 5.2 to version 9 will be supported.
VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA
Announced already during VMware Explore 2023, new capabilities have been announced by VMware for this solution.
Additional info can be found in this blog post.
vSAN enhancement
With VCF version 9, vSAN will feature significant enhancements aimed at improving both performance and user experience, focusing on ESA technology, which appears to be the standard that VMware will adopt.
Announced features:
- vSAN Site Maintenance - if you need to do site maintenance for a stretched cluster, currently you need to place each host in maintenance mode. Although is not a complex operation there is the risk of having an inconsistent set of data in a site. With vSAN Site Maintenance, the system will place a full site into maintenance mode avoiding the risk of data inconsistency.
- vSAN Site Takeover - if 2 out of 3 sites fail simultaneously, there is typically no way to promote a site for recovery. The vSAN Site Takeover feature allows to recover and access the impacted VMs even when the quorum is lost.
Breakout sessions
The breakout sessions available in the event's catalog were quite extensive, and perhaps due to the smaller number of attendees, most sessions consistently had some free seats, allowing for last-minute attendance.
I had the chance to attend the "Architecting Your Microsoft SQL Server Workload on VCF" session and I was positively astonished by how the topic was presented. It was extremely clear, well-explained in detail, and the speaker had the skill to maintain high engagement throughout the entire session.
VMware Explore 2024 sessions were recorded and can be watched here.
The party
Due to a limited number of attendees, the VMware Explore 2024 party wasn’t as crowded as previous events, but the rock band that took the stage was absolutely fantastic and managed to engage the entire audience. This year’s party was one of my all-time favorites.
The 2025 US event has already been officially announced and will take place in:
Las Vegas, Nevada | The Venetian
August 25–28, 2025
See you at the next VMware Explore 2025 Barcelona?
