Having spent the last 3.5 years as a VMUG leader of two different VMUGs and spent time talking to over a dozen other leaders, one issue persists in the VMUG community: lack of customer participation. VMUG recognized this and implemented the Feed4ward program to, “encourage every interested member to share their knowledge at a VMUG local group meeting or User Conference”. Knowledge sharing is what everyone’s there for but most of the time people are nervous about public speaking, don’t think they know enough to discuss topics with others, or they think what they do isn’t that different or interesting. That can all changes now! 

With the release of vSphere 6 on March 12, everything is new to everyone. Not many people have downloaded it in their test/dev/lab environment and (hopefully) no one has deployed it in production yet! There are 11 vSphere ecosystem products that got updated and probably thousands of new features or enhancements to discuss. If you think just an “upgrading to ESXi 6” presentation will be boring, look at upgrading or starting to use one of the other supporting vSphere products such as vRealize Automation or Operations Manager. Maybe you’re a SMB and using or looking to use vSphere Data Protection or vSphere Replication. What was the upgrade or setup process like? How do you manage it? Did you ever have to recover from a backup or replica? Any gotchas? There’s plenty of opportunity now to get started giving back to your local VMUG community. If you want mentoring, look into the VMUG Feed4ward program!

The vSphere 6 documentation can be found at: https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-6-pubs.html.

Take this time to get out in front and start getting familiar with the new features and the associated documentation. Many organizations will look to upgrade once update 1 rolls around (I was in this crowd) which will probably be released in 6 months. Take the lead, become the expert, and be a staple in your local community.

The local VMUG leaders will probably already have a “What’s new in vSphere 6” slot carved out at the next meeting but if there’s a product feature or enhancement you like, love, or have always wanted to see, speak with them about adding a deep dive into that topic. It’s highly unlikely they’ll say no!