I Went to VMUG Connect 2025
This year, I attended the first-ever VMUG Connect. VMUG Connect is a multiday VMUG (VMware User Group) conference in Saint Louis, Missouri, USA, from April 23rd to April 25th.
If you haven’t heard of VMUG. VMUG is a community of IT people who want to talk and nerd out about VMware products and features. There are around 150,000 VMUG members in 73 countries, and I am one of them.
VMUG hosts an extensive array of events. The events range from local meetups to virtual ones and webcasts. In Calgary, we have a local chapter called VMUG Calgary, which hosts all the local Calgary VMUG meetups.
VMUG also hosts larger, local, full-day events called UserCons. VMUG Connect is like a VMUG UserCon but bigger and longer. It’s almost like a smaller version of VMware Explore.
In this post, I will recap my experience at VMUG Connect 2025.
Traveling Day
The first day of my VMUG Connect adventure was a full day dedicated to travel. I had to take two flights to get to Saint Louis, Missouri, USA, from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The first flight was from Calgary to Dallas, Texas, USA and then to Saint Louis.
Once I made it to the hotel, I checked in and decided to find food. I’ve heard of a fast food place called White Castle but have never tried it. Google Maps told me it would be a 10-minute walk from the hotel, so I decided to venture into Saint Louis to find a White Castle.
The adventure to White Castle was uneventful, and White Castle was pretty good. It’s basically a whole fast-food chain dedicated to sliders.
Day 1
The first day of VMUG Connect began with registering and collecting my badge.
After getting registered, I attended the two sessions that were part of PreConnect, a couple of sessions before VMUG Connect fully started. The sessions were about Private AI and VCF in general. Both sessions were very informative.
After the PreConnect sessions, it was time for the welcome reception.
While at the welcome reception, I ran into a few friends who are also Omnissa Tech Insiders.
The welcome reception was lots of fun and a great opportunity to talk and network with many new and old friends.
Day 2
The second day of VMUG Connect was the first full day. The day started with a complimentary breakfast.
Next was the keynote session, which focused on running Private AI on VCF. After the keynote, there were breakout sessions. At VMUG Connect, they had four different breakout tracks which were Tech Use Cases, Thriving in Tech, Hands-on Labs, and Deploying VCF.
The first breakout session I attended was part of the Thriving in Tech track and was the Certification Prep Course: VCP-VCF session, hosted by Matt Heldstab, Dave Simpson, and Maarten Van Driessen.
The session was all about getting ready to take the VCF admin exam. They shared their experiences with the exam and had a game called Kahoot, where the whole audience could participate and try to answer questions similar to the exam and answer as fast as possible. I ended up getting third place.
The next session I attended was What’s Up in the World of EUC. Stephen Wagner and Patrick Coble hosted it. The session was about the changes that are happening in the EUC space. It was very informative.
Next was a complimentary lunch. After lunch, I decided to take the VCF admin exam.
I passed the VCP-VCF Admin exam with a score of 364, and I needed 300 to pass. I am now a VMware Certified Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation Administrator.
After the exam, I attended another session, The Art of Public Speaking, hosted by Chris McCain. The session gave some very good tips about public speaking and how to make it less scary.
Next, there was a general session all about VCF 9. With VCF 9, it seems they’ve renamed everything that had Aria in the name to VCF. For example, Aria Operations is now VCF Operations.
At the end of day two, I went to the hotel bar and hung out with fellow VMUG members. It was a lot of fun. We chatted about everything. It was awesome just to hang out.
Day 3
The third day of VMUG Connect was shorter. I started the day off by attending the session Deploying Minimal VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Lab hosted by William Lam.
It was very cool to see some hacks you can do to deploy VCF onto a single host and how you use nested ESXi to do everything. I plan to give this a try in my home lab.
The next session was How to Be an Influencer, hosted by Corey Romero. The session was beneficial for new ways that I can market myself. Corey is in charge of the vExpert program, and the session covered a lot about it.
The next session I attended was From Chaos to Control: Deploying NSX Firewall in a Live Production Environment, hosted by Gaël Aberlenc. This session was fascinating as it showed new ways to use the NSX firewall to make life simpler. It got me very excited to start playing with the NSX firewall.
After those sessions, there was a general session that included a Fireside Chat with Hock Tan and Chris McCain. It was very interesting to hear their perspectives on VMware and VCF as a whole and the future.
The next part of the general session was a panel called VCF Journey’s Unfiltered: Real Stories from Real Users, which was all about what they’ve seen and done with VCF.
That marked the official end of VMUG Connect. However, many of us were still around as our flights wouldn’t leave until the next day. A bunch of us ended up going to a Baseball game.
I had never been to a baseball game before. The game we went to was the St. Louis Cardinals versus the Milwaukee Brewers.
I got the obligatory baseball hot dog.
The St. Louis Cardinals ended up winning. The whole baseball experience was a lot of fun.
Summary
All in VMUG Connect was a really fun experience. It was great to reconnect with old friends and make new friends, all while learning more about VMware Cloud Foundation and other VMware technologies. I still can’t get over the fact that I decided to take an exam at the conference and passed. I hope that there will be future VMUG Connects.
If you want to learn more about VMUG Calgary, here is the link for the Calgary VMUG vmug.com/calgary (you will need a VMUG account before you can join or view details).
If you want to find your local VMUG chapter, here is the VMUG communities directory.
Daniel Goes Outside Vlog
If you want to watch the video version of this post, my YouTube Vlog about VMUG Connect 2025 is below.
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