VCF AI Assistants, Gated Lab Licenses and a New Vegas Venue: My Highlights of VMware Explore 2026 — Virtualization Review

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VCF AI Assistants, Gated Lab Licenses and a New Vegas Venue: My Highlights of VMware Explore 2026

I kicked off VMware Explore at the VMUG WuPaaS Community Meetup at the Yahoo! Sportsbook at the Venetian the night before the conference officially began. It was good to wind down and relax after the flight to Vegas.

BTW, for the uninitiated, WuPaaS stands for Warm-Up Party as a Service. It is an unofficial opening community pre-party held the night before the official start of VMworld/Explore. It is a laid-back gathering designed to let participants catch up before the conference begins.

It was very well attended, and a shout-out goes to Evolia, Vali Cyber, and The Redesign Group for sponsoring the event and, more importantly, for showing their support for the VMUG community.

Explore 2026
Explore officially kicked off Monday morning, August 31. It was weird not to have the event kick off the morning of the first day with a keynote, as Broadcom retimed its keynotes to the afternoon of the first day.

But the afternoon keynote allowed me to attend a few sessions and interview a few vendors beforehand. I will discuss some of the sessions that I attended after I recap the…