VMworld is the center of the virtualization community in San Francisco. Today was a busy day for me with a mix of a morning keynote, sessions, and vendor booths. The day started with a keynote speech from VMware CEO Paul Maritz and VMware partners providing demonstrations. Toward the end of the keynote, interesting demonstrations of VMware’s recent acquisition of SpringSource and announcements of VMware’s new vCloud Express offering were of the most interest. Figure A shows the keynote moments before it started:

Figure A

This year’s VMworld attendance is estimated at 12,488 attendees, which is slightly less than last year’s 14,000+ attendees in Las Vegas. There were some hiccups in some of the self-paced labs yesterday, but VMware has worked to correct the issues and repeat some of the labs for individuals who may have missed their opportunity. VMworld has its own datacenter, and it is on display for the show. Figure B shows the VMworld datacenter:

Figure B

Here is a little piece of fun information about VMware. Fellow TechRepublic contributor David Davis and I were in casual discussion about virtualization in general, and a simple question came up. What does ESX stand for? David and I both had long used the popular type-1 hypervisor, but we had not known the history behind the letters. Turns out, at some point in the past, a name was proposed of “Elastic Sky” for what is now known as ESX. Around the same time, GSX became the acronym for Ground Storm X. While at the time, the names were less than enthusiastically received, it is now ironic that elasticity is a key driver in the data centers of today and the future cloud-based technologies.

VMworld is an overstimulating ordeal and packed with events for the virtualization community as a whole. I will have another post tomorrow with more information on Wednesday’s events. Are you at VMworld 2009 in San Francisco? If so, share your comments below.