With the announcement from VMware todayit seems clear that VMworld 2008 is going to be about the vision VMware has for its future. This announcement centers around what they are calling a Virtual Data Center OS or VDC-OS. After reading through the press release it seems to be an extension of the things they have been doing in VMware Virtual Infrastucture. Taking virtual center and making it a management hub for more than just VMs. Increasing the intelligence of DRS with SLAs. Improving HA with additional options and features. I think that more details will be revealedin the keynote tomorrow, but it looks like they want to take the concept of cloud computing and allow it to be built on top of their x86 virtualization layer.
At a lower level I think that lots of people are going to be much more interested in running things like Exchange and SQL Server in VMs now that Microsoft and VMWare have worked together through the SVVP to get ESX supported for Microsoft applications. Part of running these mission critical apps can make performance and availability bigger concerns that weren't an issue when VMware was just hosting intranet web sites. I'm attending sessions on Exchange and SQL at VMworld as well as some on disaster recovery.
Todd