Twice a year VMware hosts the Customer Technical Advisory Board (CTAB). There they ask significant customers to share their experiences with their VMware products and how they can improve. On top of that, product managers from all the different Business Units in VMware present their new products and features. With this, they want to get feedback if they’re going in the right direction. Although not a customer but a partner, RedLogic gets asked to attend and participate. For the second time I had the privilege of joining my colleague Martijn to this exclusive event just before VMworld Europe 2019.

New feature, who dis

Of course, many of the things discussed at the CTAB are under heavy NDA. But luckily VMworld is happening at this moment, which contains a lot of the same stuff. Just presented on a much, much larger scale.

My focus at this moment is VMware Cloud Foundation, so obviously I chose to follow the Hyperconverged Infrastructure track of the CTAB. Much to my surprise the day started with presentations about what VCF actually is. Turns out, it’s not yet as commonplace as working at RedLogic has lead me to believe. Later the focus shifted towards the new and improved 3.9 version (and a little about versions after, but I can’t talk about that yet).

During the day attendees were asked to give insight on what features should be worked on in future releases. Apart from the often requested scaling increases we also heard a few requests for regulatory compliance. Especially this last one is something that is being worked on, and I’m seriously hoping they’ll extend it to also include a desired state feature.

Personally I requested a rolling restart button, which is something I’ve sorely missed when deploying VCF. The SDDC Manager does this when updating the environment, but I’d love to have it just as a button. Migrate a host empty, put it in maintenance, reboot, move on to the next. Sure, I could script it, but wouldn’t it be nice to let everyone have it?

Face to face

The best thing about the CTAB for me is the fact that you can get up close and personal with some of the best people VMware has to offer. The enthusiasm the presenters have for their products is palpable and contagious. But being able to talk one-on-one about features you’re missing or issues you’re running into is worth the trip alone.

A big thank you to the CTAB team for organizing and inviting us! I’m looking forward to the next session!