It was a blast. The city, the venue, the people—everything came together to create a fantastic experience that sparked motivation and fresh ideas.

Sunday, November 3

Upon arriving in Barcelona, the team settled in for a day, explored the city, enjoyed Spanish tapas and met up with old colelagues and friends to discuss the upcoming sessions at the conference. Arriving a day early gave us time to absorb the Spanish culture, and fuel excitment for the week ahead.

Monday, November 4

This was the first official day of the conference. Our team kicked off the morning with a group breakfast, where we compared our schedules and discussed our goals for the day. From my previous visits to VMware Explore, I have learned that the first day is ideal for attending “What’s New” and “What’s Coming” sessions. It sets the stage for the deeper, more technical sessions later in the week.

From this day, I particularly enjoyed learning about:

• vSphere 8 Updates: Exploring the latest features and improvements. I'm excited to test out live patching, as patching currently consumes a significant amount of our operations' time—and this new feature could drastically streamline our workflow.

• Kubernetes 101: A straightforward introduction to pods, services, deployments, and persistent storage.

• VCF 9 Demo Showcase: The live demo highlighted a streamlined deployment process and unified management of compute, networking, and storage resources. This reinforced how much VMware is focusing on lifecycle management—something we spend a lot of time on in our daily operations.

We wrapped up the day with a wonderful dinner in the city center, which was a great way to discuss the day’s insights and plan for what was coming next.

Tuesday, November 5

The Main Stage Opening was the highlight we'd all been eagerly waiting for. There's nothing quite like the excitement of seeing thousands of VMware enthusiasts gathered in the same room. The organizers truly delivered an unforgettable kickoff, energizing the entire event and setting an inspiring tone for what's ahead. Here are some of the standout moments from the general session:

• The Future is Private
  VMware by Broadcom, laid out a strong vision for private cloud and private AI. The message was clear: owning your data means faster, smarter decisions with stronger privacy. It’s all about building innovation on your own terms.

• Sovereignty, Control & On-Prem
  The session emphasized that the future for enterprises lies in on-premises solutions, data sovereignty, and the ability to operate completely disconnected, if needed. Public cloud isn't a one-size-fits-all anymore.

• The “Three C’s” of Public Cloud
  Broadcom’s CEO repeatedly brought up Cost, Complexity, and Compliance—three challenges many face with public cloud. VMware aims to solve these by bringing the best of cloud to your own environment.

• VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Takes the Lead
  VCF continues to shine by combining public cloud agility with private cloud reliability and security. It simplifies IT operations and helps teams do more with less hassle.

• VCF 9 Announced
  The upcoming VCF 9 release was teased, packed with exciting new features. Launch is expected early next year, and it's shaping up to be a big leap forward for cloud infrastructure.

• Massive Win for the VMware Community
  Broadcom leadership made it clear: the community matters. vMUG, vExpert, and the broader VMware ecosystem were recognized as key pillars moving forward. There are over 1,600 vExperts and 150,000 VMware User Group (VMUG) members, making it one of the largest and most influential tech communities in the world.

• New vMUG Licensing & Certification Deal
  A huge announcement for home lab enthusiasts: For VMUG Advantage subscribers specifically, they get a 50% discount on both VCP and VCAP exams, and passing the exam earns a free 3‑year VCF personal license.

Don't miss out! You can relive all the excitement and insights of the general session right here: Watch the General Session

After the generall session we attended som great sessions, my favorite was on migrating existing workloads to VMware Cloud Foundation. With our team regularly assisting customers through similar challenges, hearing expert advice on minimizing downtime and optimizing migration strategies provided invaluable insights. Engaging directly with industry leaders and exchanging practical solutions is precisely why attending in person proves so rewarding.

Wednesday, November 6

I spent most of this day at the Expo, which is the exhibition area where vendors, partners, and solution providers showcase their latest products and innovations. It’s always enlightening to walk around, talk to different vendors, and see how their solutions can fit into or enhance our VMware environments.

Within the Expo, I also visited the Community Zone—an energetic space where smaller sessions and meetups take place. I caught a great talk by Eric Nielsen, who humorously showed how ChatGPT can write code, and another by Christian Mohn about “ghost VMs”—virtual machines that can run on ESXi hosts without appearing in vCenter. Both sessions offered practical takeaways for day-to-day operations, like the importance of carefully managing SSH access on ESXi hosts.
You can watch Christian Mohn presentation here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1tivby5VoE

To cap off the day, the team attended the VMware Explore party, which featured a concert, delicious food and refreshing drinks. It was the perfect way to unwind and celebrate another educational and inspiring day at the conference.

Final thoughts

VMware Explore 2024 was an incredible experience. Gathering so many tech entusiasts in one place, all sharing knowledge and discussing how to solve real-word problems was inspiring. Conversations over lunch or between sessions often sparked as many ideas as the formal presentations did—especially around automation and how it can streamline daily operations. One of the highlights of the event is the Hands-on Labs—getting to test out products with experts available to guide you and answer questions. It's an awesome experience to explore the technology while learning directly from the pros.

Seeing VMware’s roadmap and understanding where the technology is headed is invaluable for preparing our environments accordingly.

Finally, spending a week in Barcelona with the team strengthened our bonds and gave us a shared sense of purpose. The combination of learning, networking, and teambuilding made for an unforgettable week that will undoubtedly shape our strategies and solutions in the coming years. Cant wait for the next event!

My Experience at VMware Explore 2024 in Barcelona

Posted 23.03 2025