Day 1 – Monday: The Journey Begins
The week started early on Monday with a full morning of work before our departure. We kicked things off with a Scrum/Agile training session — a surprisingly energetic start to what would become an intense but unforgettable week.
After lunch, around 13:00, we left Odijk and began our drive toward Frankfurt. I travelled together with Erwin and Floris, with whom I manage the Atos Private Cloud for the Dutch National Police. The first part of the drive went smoothly, but at some point we hit a major traffic jam caused by a serious accident. Luckily, the police were redirecting cars off the motorway, allowing us to take an alternate secondary route. The people in front of us, who weren’t diverted in time, were stuck there for hours — so we were fortunate.
Eventually, we arrived in Frankfurt and checked into our hotel. Instead of staying at the Sheraton, we chose a Best Western nearby — about a 20-minute walk from the venue. It was significantly cheaper, and to be honest, the Sheraton looked a bit dated. Our hotel turned out to be perfectly fine and comfortable. After a good dinner and some rest, we were ready for the real start of VMware Explore the next morning.
Tuesday marked the official start of VMware Explore Frankfurt, and we decided to walk from our hotel to the Sheraton — a pleasant 20-minute stroll to wake up and build excitement for the day.
One of the most memorable moments happened right at the start of the keynote.
Earlier this summer, I recorded a short video for VMware, and it had already premiered during VMware Explore Las Vegas — but this was the first time I saw it live on the big screen at an event I was physically attending.
It was still a great feeling to see myself featured in the keynote, and several people recognized me immediately. It even led to a fun moment where I shook hands with Joe Baguley, who mentioned he had seen me appear in multiple Explore videos over the past months.
The keynote also highlighted several new developments, but the announcement that grabbed the most attention was the expanded partnership with Cisco. It was positioned as one of the major strategic directions moving forward — definitely something to keep an eye on.
Originally, our exams were scheduled for late in the afternoon, but when we arrived at the testing area, the staff asked if we wanted to start earlier because several seats had opened up.
To be honest, we were already a bit nervous — so starting early actually felt like a good idea.
Together with Erwin and Floris, we sat down for the exam late in the morning. The setup was different from what I’m used to: the exam hall was much larger, filled with candidates, and the atmosphere was noticeably intense. The exam consisted of 60 questions, and with a reported success rate of around 50%, the pressure was definitely on.
As I took my seat and looked around, I suddenly recognized one of the proctors: Linda Smith. Seeing her unexpectedly in the exam room instantly made the whole situation feel less stressful. It was a pleasant surprise to see a familiar face from the community.
For readers who don't know her: Linda Smith is one of the most respected figures in the VMware and Broadcom ecosystem. I first worked with her more than fifteen years ago at Global Knowledge, where she was leading major training and vendor-alliance initiatives.
After seven years at VMware in senior EMEA Partner Enablement roles—culminating as Global Director for Partner Role Readiness & Competencies—Linda transitioned to Broadcom as Partner Activation Lead for the VCF Division (EMEA). Her strategic insight and dedication to the community have made her an invaluable resource for partners navigating the post-acquisition landscape.
When I walked out of the exam area, still buzzing from the result, I bumped into Shaun-Leigh Mackolisky, the person who manages the global VCI program. We had a great conversation about his new role, upcoming changes in the training landscape, and the developments around VMware and Broadcom Education. It was a perfect follow-up to an already uplifting moment.
With my certification achieved, old friends reconnected, and the stress behind me, I headed back into the buzz of the main conference floor — ready for the rest of the Explore experience.
Later in the day, I had another great moment: I was interviewed by Johan van Amersfoort from ITQ. During our conversation, he said something that really struck me — that I was essentially the OG of video interviews at events like these. He remembered how, many years ago, I walked around with a small camera at one of the very early VMUG events, long before it became “normal,” recording short, spontaneous interviews with community members.
That eventually led to Jeremy van Doorn inviting me to join the VMworld TV team, something I went on to do for more than a decade with an incredible amount of joy and passion. Because of that history, it felt extra special to be on the other side of the camera this time.The conversation with Johan was relaxed, enthusiastic, and genuinely fun — a beautiful throwback to where this whole journey began for me.
While boarding the bus for the evening program, I ran into Brad Tompkins, Executive Director of VMUG. I told him about the first-ever VMUG meeting, which took place in Gouda in the Netherlands at the small training company XTG — organised by Bouke Groeneschij. We had around 45 attendees, and Erwin was there with me as well. Brad loved the story and shared something exciting in return:
The Global VMUG Connect 2026 event will take place in Amsterdam, at the RAI, from March 17–19 — a full three-day international VMUG summit in our home country.
Evening Event at Eintracht Frankfurt StadiumThe bus ride to the stadium started with, unsurprisingly, another traffic jam — but eventually we arrived at the Eintracht Frankfurt Arena, where we were welcomed in one of the Skyboxes with drinks and appetisers. We received a full behind-the-scenes stadium tour:
After the tour, we returned to the Skybox for a great dinner and a glass of wine.
During the evening, I ran into Duncan Epping, had a nice chat with Jan-Willem Lammers, met former students from Deltares in Delft, and spoke with several participants from my recent VCF 9 training — many of whom proudly told me they had all passed their exam.
I also bumped into Daniel Krieger, who also had appeared in the keynote video earlier that day. Daniel is a well-known figure in the VMware community — a Cloud Architect at evoila, Broadcom Knight for NSX/vSphere, long-time vExpert, homelabber, and someone with a seriously impressive technical résumé.
We had a great conversation. He told me he actually had to look twice when he recognised me, and later wrote a kind LinkedIn post about our meeting. It was fun talking to him in person after having seen him online so often, and a great example of the spontaneous connections that make Explore so special.
Back to the hotel
With great food, good conversations, and countless familiar faces, the second day of VMware Explore ended on a high note — full of energy, community, and excitement for what Wednesday would bring.
As the evening eventually came to an end, we boarded the bus back to the Sheraton Hotel. Inside the lobby we ran into several Broadcom colleagues, we shared stories from the past and laughed about old memories. It was one of those spontaneous late-evening moments that perfectly captures the spirit of Explore — reconnecting, reminiscing, and enjoying the community beyond the sessions and keynotes.
After saying goodbye, we made the short walk back to our own hotel, while Frankfurt was still buzzing with conference energy all around us. Not long after that, we finally called it a night — ready to recharge and gather enough energy for an exciting Wednesday.
Wednesday was filled with deep-dive technical content, and we moved from session to session, each offering a different angle on the evolution of VMware Cloud Foundation. We started with “New to VMware Cloud Foundation Networking with VMware NSX?”, a clear and accessible walkthrough of how NSX decouples networking from physical infrastructure. It demonstrated how the software-defined approach simplifies operations, increases flexibility and enables the level of automation that modern datacenters demand. It was a strong reminder of why NSX continues to be such a fundamental pillar of VCF.
From there, we joined “Choosing Your Path to VMware Cloud Foundation: A Technical Guide for Migration,” which focused on the various proven, non-disruptive ways organisations can transition from traditional vSphere environments to full VCF deployments. The speakers highlighted practical migration paths, how to minimise downtime, and how to use the right tools to accelerate time-to-value — very relevant for real-world projects.
Next, we attended “What Is New in VMware vSphere 9,” a forward-looking exploration of the latest updates to the compute engine behind VCF. The session covered new technologies, lifecycle improvements, automation enhancements and architectural changes practitioners should be aware of. It provided a clear picture of how vSphere is continuing to evolve.
One of the highlights of the afternoon was Duncan Epping’s session, “Three Times the Performance, Half the Latency: vSAN Express Storage Architecture Deep Dive for VMware Geeks.” Duncan delivered his signature style of clear, detailed and passionate explanation, breaking down how ESA now performs compression and global deduplication fully in-line and across the cluster — achieving significant space savings without adding performance overhead. It was both inspiring and technically rich.
We rounded off the afternoon with “A Deep Dive into Memory Tiering with NVMe,” a fascinating look at one of the most exciting new developments in both vSphere and VCF. The session explained how memory tiering combines DRAM with NVMe-based memory to create a more cost-efficient and scalable architecture. The presenters walked through how it works, configuration details, advanced tuning options and the TCO benefits this new approach introduces. It’s clear that memory architecture is evolving just as rapidly as compute, storage and networking.
By the end of this series of sessions, it was obvious how VMware is innovating across every layer of the VCF stack — and Wednesday’s deep dives perfectly captured that momentum.
After the final sessions on Wednesday, we drove back home — this time without hitting any traffic at all. The drive was smooth, relaxed, and a good moment to decompress after three intense days. At some point I grabbed a can of Monster for an extra energy boost, which, combined with all the excitement and adrenaline of the week, turned out to be a questionable decision: I barely slept that night.
Part of that restlessness came from knowing that I had a presentation the next day at the Atos headquarters in Amstelveen, where I would be teaching a mini-masterclass on network virtualisation. The focus was primarily on NSX, but I also had to cover networking concepts in AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure — and those three aren’t exactly my strongest specialisations. So when I woke up early on Thursday morning, I spent the first hours polishing slides, refining examples, and making sure the content flowed well.
The session started at 13:00 and the room filled up quickly — about 16 colleagues from different Atos business units, including several participants from India. Because of the international audience, the entire presentation had to be delivered in English, which added an extra layer of challenge after a long week.
Despite the lack of sleep and the tight preparation window, the session went extremely well. It ran for more than two hours, and the audience was highly engaged throughout. I received a lot of thoughtful questions — especially on cloud-native networking, segmentation models and cross-cloud routing — which made the session lively and interactive.
By the end of the afternoon, I drove home with a genuinely satisfied feeling. Everyone told me they found the session insightful and valuable, and it was a great way to close off an already unforgettable week.
Day 5 – Friday: Back to Business, Back to Reality
By Friday morning, it was time to switch back into “normal work mode” — or at least as normal as things ever get in a week filled with upgrades, designs, travel and presentations. After the excitement of VMware Explore and the Atos session the day before, Friday became a day of focus and hands-on engineering.
The main task of the morning was assisting with an NSX Manager cluster upgrade along with the upgrade of several Edge nodes. It was one of those changes that requires precision and close coordination, but everything went smoothly. Once that was under control, I spent part of the afternoon working on a low-level design for an FTP server that will be used as the backup target for NSX configuration files — something that will help strengthen operational resilience in the environments we manage.
It felt good to get my hands back into the technical details again after a week full of keynotes, community sessions and travel.
A Well-Deserved Evening Break
After wrapping up work, I switched gears completely. Friday evening, I went to Pathé De Kuip with my son to watch The Running Man. It was the perfect way to decompress: big screen, good popcorn, and some father-son time after a packed week.
And because sitting all day is never ideal — especially after a long road trip and multiple conference days — I also squeezed in a quick workout at Basic-Fit, just to keep the body moving and reset for the weekend.
By the time I got home, the week had officially come to an end — a week full of learning, community, reconnecting, catching up with old friends, travel, teaching, upgrades, movies, and just enough chaos to make it all truly memorable.
