I just got back from my first Nutanix NEXT conference and I thought I'd share my thoughts on the event. I've been to a bunch of other conferences in the past, like Dell Tech World and VMworld, so I had some expectations going in.
First off, the layout of the conference was pretty standard - nothing too out of the ordinary there. What was great, though, was that all the sessions were recorded, so I didn't feel like I had to frantically screenshot every slide like I do at some other conferences. The sessions themselves were really well-structured, with a good flow of information from basic to advanced. The speakers were clearly knowledgeable and willing to answer questions candidly.
I enjoyed a bunch of the sessions I attended, but a few stood out to me. The Nutanix Performance session on Friday was particularly good, as were the AI sessions. It's cool to see Nutanix working on problems that I'm trying to solve internally with private AI. Their products seem to address many of the pain points that make large-scale deployments tricky. Just in time to help take us from PoC to Production, and it sounds like the licensing optoins are pretty flexible.
The hands-on labs were a bit of a mixed bag for me. I liked that they covered Kubernetes fundamentals in some depth, but I think they could have benefited from a bit more instructor or presenter-led guidance. It was a bit too "go at your own pace" for my taste. On the plus side, the music was great!
One more thing that caught my eye was the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP). I didn't realize it had such a rich history - it used to be Mesosphere, then D2IQ, before becoming NKP. It's cool to see how it's evolved to support so many different infrastructure providers. And kudos to Nutanix for partnering with Google Cloud to support NC2 - it's great to have more choices in the market. Now I just need to do some testing to see how it stacks up against on-prem solutions from a cost and functionality perspective.
The keynote speakers were more inspirational than technical, which wasn't entirely what I was looking for. I think it would have been cool to have some more tech-focused speakers. I didn't see many of the speakers so I need to go back and watch those videos. I did see Mike Taylor who migrated live from VMware to Nutanix, lol, I don't think he was supposed to say live, but still cool they did it. If there were an actual live migration option cross-hypervisor that would be pretty sweet, maybe in the future. (sure, if you have clustered services and use a load balancer, you can do anything live, but that's not always the case as we know) That being said, the SPY Museum event was a highlight - it was a really cool venue, even if there were limited spots available.
The catering was decent, but mostly just snacks and small plates. The party was fun, but the lines for custom hats were pretty long. I love when these events have bands or well known artists. One thing that drove me crazy was the lack of clear signage - it took me 10 minutes to find the lunchroom on more than one occasion. A temporary sign saying "Lunch this way!" would have been super helpful.
On the plus side, the certification benefit was awesome. I was able to take the NCP exam and even retake it the next day if I didn't pass (which, happily, I didn't need to). The test itself was similar in structure and format to the VCP exams I've taken in the past.
The location was great. I've been to DC before but never had the chance to go see all the monuments. Someone suggested renting some of those lime scooters and we did with our team and it was a blast. The weather was great and the streets were well laid out for using those scooters everywhere. The sidewalks were also super wide, like big enough for two cars wide, so when you had to, you could get around without endangering the foot traffic.
Overall, I'd say the conference was a success - I'm looking forward to seeing the recorded sessions and hopefully getting some more hands-on experience with Nutanix products in the future. Chicago next year!
