First things first: some logistics. I picked a less than desirable hotel to save some money. The hotel… okay, let’s call it what it is. The MOTEL in question is on Harrison Street in SoMa. It’s an area where a 1 bedroom loft still sells for $885,000 (I looked one up), but every other parking meter has automotive glass shards all around it. This was the cheapest accommodation within walking distance of the venue where I wouldn’t have to share a bathroom with strangers, but it’s still more than twice what I paid in Las Vegas last year.

I got up at about 6:00 this morning. This was not by choice; it was a couple of gunshots a few blocks away that woke me, and I wasn’t going back to sleep. That was after the people in the room next door chased away a guy who was trying to burgle a truck in the parking lot, not once, but twice. There was also a shouted discussion at around 5:00am between two men about their upbringing and manliness. Needless to say, I didn’t get involved, and I don’t know if the gunshots an hour later were related.

So I packed up my belongings and took a Lyft to the Intercontinental, which is next door to the venue and has reverted back to regular non-gouging pricing for my last night in San Francisco.

There’s a different vibe at VMworld today. The halls have thinned out substantially, and goodbyes are being exchanged. While there are some familiar faces among the die-hards remaining, it’s very clear that VMworld is winding down. That doesn’t stop me from making the most of my time though. I have two back-to-back sessions to attend late in the morning.

The first session was presented by William Lam and Michael Gasch. The VMware team has collaborated on an event engine called VEBA, an appliance that brokers events from vCenter to OpenFAAS to allow event-driven functions. They demonstrated using VEBA and functions to trigger actions from events, such as posting a message in Slack when a critical VM is powered off.

The second session dove into automating vSphere through the PowerShell CLI. This demo was put on by Kyle Ruddy, who focuses heavily on using code to automate VMware.

I then made my way back to the VMware community booth, where I could comfortably catch up on my various feeds, plug in to charge, and type. I actually fly out in the morning since trying to leave for the airport at 4:00pm on a Thursday to fly out tonight is the perfect way to end up stuck overnight at an airport. Besides, I need the sleep.