After attending my first PEX show, I can't wait to attend the next. The atmosphere at PEX is a lot different than what you see at VMworld. PEX was by far one of the most professional conferences I've attended. When I wasn't running around on con-calls, I was part of the booth staff for VCE and it amazed me that when the show floor first opened, there was never a mad dash for SWAG (stuff we all get). Everyone was more interested in actually hearing about the products that could benefit them as a partner and what they could take back to their customers. It was great to talk Vblock with people that want to become VCE partners and educate people on a lot of the technology and value Vblock brings to the table.
Enough business stuff. The keynote at PEX was disappointing to say the least. There was a great vibe in the atmosphere and the event staff did a great job of making the cameras and screen look cool, but VMware didn't follow up with anything interesting. The whole keynote was 95% dollar signs and 5% technology. VMware had an amazing year in 2010 and 2011 is already looking up for them, but is that really what people wanted to see? Dr. Herrod came out and demoed the same stuff they did at VMworld. First up was vCenter Operations, what was formerly called Integrien and pieces of Ionix. Even though it was a new product, it wasn't earth shattering. After that, Herrod demoed vCloud Director and Project Horizon once again. The keynote also announced a new certification track for the View product line. There are 3 levels of certification, VMware Certified Associate - Desktop, VMware Certified Professional - Desktop, VMware Certified Advanced Professional - Desktop.
The VCA4-DT beta was available at PEX at a discounted price of $75 so I took the exam. I have to admit, it was a lot harder than I would have imagined 
for an associate level degree. In my opinion, VMware View is actually very easy and simple to install and administer. Yet, the questions on the exam were very much professional level questions and many of the questions basically want you to memorize the UI which I don't like at all. I don't see the point in knowing exactly where to click a mouse to complete a task, or if a provisioned desktop status says "Provisioned" or "Ready". I wish the exam was more high level stuff about concepts of floating pools, linked clones, and some basic architecture. I would memorize the View 4.5 Administrator Guide and pay attention to the troubleshooting section.
I was able to break away from booth duty for a while and attended the vSphere Roadmap breakout session. There were many new features and enhancements coming down the pipeline that I'm not at liberty to say because the session was under NDA. I sat next to Colin Steele who feverishly took notes and wrote up this article VMware previews vSphere 5 at Partner Exchange. There are probably 20 other new things they talked about in that session, so get ready for some cool stuff.
Mission accomplished once again on the party scene. I never planned on staying up till 1:30am every single night, but it tends to happen when you are around good company. There are way to many twitter handles to list of everyone I shared a drink with, but it was fantastic to see everyone once again and I'm looking forward to VMworld so we can make it all happen again.