Since VMworld 2011 is now less than a month away, I thought I’d point out a few standout sessions I’m planning on attending during the conference.

BCO2479: Understanding vSphere Stretched Clusters, Disaster Recovery, and Planned Workload Mobility

With the announcement of VMware Site Recovery Manager 5.0, along with vSphere 5.0, a big step forward was made in the world of BC/DR with vSphere. This session will outline new features in SRM 5, as well as enhancements around disaster recovery, disaster avoidance, and workload mobility. I’m especially excited about planned migrations and automated failback, neither of which were available under SRM 4. Plus, this session is being presented by Chad Sakac (@sakacc), who always puts on a good show.

CIM2158: Six Aggressive Performance Management Practices to Achieve 80% Virtualization

Now, I’m not familiar with the presenter of this session or his company, but I couldn’t resist this session. As businesses reach maturity with their virtualization journeys, it becomes harder and harder to increase percentage of workloads virtualized. You’ve already gone through all the low hanging fruit, and you’re on to the big hitters, such as high-end database servers, the virtualization of which are much harder to plan, execute, and maintain. This session promises to deliver on all three of those points.

VSP1682: vSphere Clustering Q&A

So much has changed with vSphere clustering (HA, DRS, and Storage DRS) between versions 4.1 and 5.0, this is a must-see. The operational and design implications around these changes are absolutely crucial to get your head around, and who better to present them than Duncan Epping (@duncanyb) and Frank Denneman (@frankdenneman), both of whom co-authored the new book VMware vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive.

Anything Roadmap Related

I know this is non-specific, but I always love to get out in front of things coming down the pike so I know what to expect. No better way of doing this than to attend any of the several roadmap presentations scheduled this year.

Don’t forget to have fun out there!