Virtual Geek

EMC World and EMC TC Conference… key info….

It is NUTS at EMC right now in the run up to a huge event…  Ok – first, on Twitter, key hashtags are #EMCWorld and …  (wait for it) … #CloudFreaky.   Then….

1) EMC World attendees and TC conference attendees - make sure you download the EMC World Mobile App:

2) EMC World attendees and TC conference attendees - make sure you download the EMC World Mobile App:

 

3) TC Conference Attendees – make sure you have the TC Conference agenda!   YOUR agenda was emailed to you.  If you didn’t get it, email presalesevents@emc.com.   This is the agenda for partners (exact same content, same sessions – we’ve simply balanced the presales team into 3 groups, intermixed the partners – and used that to rotate through breakouts).   Download by clicking on the below.

See you all there!

Have you seen this?

Check out www.emc.com this morning (bit of the theme starting to peek out )….

It. Is. Going. To. Be. Epic!

EMC World: TC Conference–last update!!!!

I talked about the EMC TC Conference, and the APJ TC Conference Roadshow (THE annual events where EMC customer-facing technical folks and our partners SEs connect and learn) here.

We are less than 2 weeks away and the plan is awesome!

TC Conference registration is now closed. We are pleased to report there will be 2400+ TC's in Vegas from EMC and our partner community!  If you’re a TC, you also got an email with a Facts to Know document.

Get ready to have fun and learn at the same time!   We have some things that will blow your minds, and laugh your patooties off :-)   Trust me… It will have Twitter all aflutter on Monday May 21st :-)

Since my last update we have been busy adding more exciting things to the agenda:

• MONDAY:
• Pick up your welcome kit at the Venetian in the Sands 402 Room. It’s adjacent to Hall G in Sands Expo Center, which is the EMC World Dining area.  There will be several “spirit items” for each person in the welcome kit to be used in the afternoon sessions!  Don’t miss out – you will regret it!
• The TC Conference will start at 2:30pm sharp in the Hall A at the Venetian (Same room as Joe & Pat's Keynote). We have a packed agenda including Billy Scannell, Howard Elias, Jeremy Burton and Pat Gelsinger.  Pat's directs will also host an open mike Q&A session so get your questions ready!
• TUESDAY:
• Joe Tucci will kick-start us at 10:30am – how awesome is that!
• Next we will have a Partner Ecosystem Discussion featuring Brocade, Intel, Cisco and VMware.  We are thrilled to have this on the agenda and to have this discussion with the TC’s.   I place high value on our strategic partnerships and think it’s critical for EMC TC’s and our Partner SEs to hear from the leaders of these organizations and how they lead their own Teams.
• SPEED & USPEED folks (these are our elite super-ninjas on VMAX and VNX performance and black arts) should have received an invitation to the Tuesday afternoon sessions. These are invitation only. If you are SPEED and/or USPEED certified and did not receive an invitation, please contact SPEED & USPEED directly.
• Tuesday evening is the EMC Proven Professional Knowledge Sharing Awards.  Don’t miss out on this great event. TC's will be recognized for their Herculean efforts last year.  It’s a must attend on my agenda!
• Wednesday:
• Starting at the Mirage for breakfast (07:00am), we will run hard all day with breakout sessions until 6:30 pm.  This is a big day for TC’s, full of great technical content built just for YOU, and selected BY YOU.
• There are 4 sessions that are for EVERYONE – focusing on VMAX, VNX, Isilon, Prosphere critical updates – along with the latest on the arts and sciences of Presales at EMC.
• There are then 20-odd other sessions from EMC – voted on by YOU.  These are first-come, first-served – but the rooms are pretty big (like 200-500 seats), so there’s a lot of capacity.
• We have added some great partner lead sessions!  You can expect our Partners will have great things to entice you into their sessions - The standouts for me in alphabetical order:
• Brocade’s focusing both broadly on what they are doing broadly and diving into some of the really exciting things they have going on around, Ethernet Fabrics, as well as the 16Gb transition – but in particular – we have some great solutions for customers looking to stretch their storage networks:
• Leading IT Transformation: Brocade Networking solutions for VPLEX Metro and the Clou
• Cisco focus:
• CETA & Mission Critical Workload Mobility,
• Go deep with the Doctor!  Dr. J Michel Metz to be specific,
• S.U.C.C.E.S.S Selling, Understanding, Competing; Cisco/EMC Solution Showcase
• Intel’s focus:
• How Intelligent Processors Enable Intelligent Data Center Solutions (hint, hint – if want to see how closely EMC and Intel work together you HAVE to watch this)
• VMware will expand on a few EMC sessions and raise the bar with:
• Post PC ERA II - The Rest of the Story
• vFabric, and how we combine our joint Big Data and Fast Data solutions to make a holistic solution.
• Spaghetti Junction - Helping to answer the all important question... How do I Manage all this?

Beyond all that - get ready for some AWESOME VSPEX updates!

Finally, we have added a “X-treme Certification Challenge” to our list of fun.  EMC World creates a convenient opportunity to take exams and achieve EMC Proven certifications right on site. Don’t miss out! This year, we will also offer VCP exams at the EMC Proven Center.  For EMCers looking to get (or refresh) their VCP cert – you can take the lab content online – which is unique and makes your life a lot easier! 

Beyond bragging rights - any contest needs to have some great prizes!

• Super Achievers: Top 5 highest scorer TCs will win an Iomega StoreCenter ix-2
• Grand Prize: TC who passes the most certification exams @ EMC World will win an Iomega StoreCenter px-4.
• TOP SECRET PRIZE: All winners above will join me on a secret outing in Vegas!  Just you and me baby! IT’S A SECRET and it is going to be ridiculous! You just get ready to be a VIP Wednesday evening later in the evening.

The winners will be announced at Tuesday night's EMC Proven Professional Knowledge Sharing Awards. The TOP SECRET PRIZE event details will be given to YOU when YOU win!  Your Iomega gear will be waiting for you in your Division or Specialty breakout on Thursday.

For more details on the “X-treme Certification Challenge” and for information on how to preregister for exams @EMC World check out the following post:http://one.emc.com/clearspace/docs/DOC-51581.   If you’re a Partner SE – just ask your Partner TC to grab this for you…

YOU WILL NOT WIN (there just won’t be enough time to win otherwise) unless you  book your tests (in advance), study (in advance) and pass as many exams as you can while at EMC World. 

Remember - what happens in Vegas, well, could get you some really cool prizes ;) I look forward to seeing YOU soon!

More Jobs, Jobs, Specialty Jobs!

If you’re looking for your next awesome gig, WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU.  While our openings often have strong internal candidates – but I’m a big believer in opening roles, finding the best candidates and also cross-pollinating across the company. We’re going to be filling these roles over the coming weeks, and I want the candidate pool to be broad, open, and strong.

• I did a post back here with several leadership presales (think “SE”) leadership roles in EMC – we’ll be closing on these soon, so if you want to lead a crack squad of technical folks – this is the opportunity of a lifetime!
• If you are interested in a presales individual contributor role focused on the entirety of the solutions EMC can offer (this role, called an “ATC” in EMC, is critical) – we have a ton of openings too.   If you follow that link, just type “Presales”.

Beyond these, we also have what we call “Specialty” roles.   Think of these folks as “special forces” – extremely focused on specific technologies, markets (like our partners), or customers (global accounts and service providers).

The first grouping are what we call “Mid-Tier Specialists”.  These are technical folks that specialize in VNX and Isilon.  They LOVE NAS. They LOVE to roll up their sleeves.  They LOVE VMware, VDI, Oracle, SAP, Sharepoint and more.   They love to compete!  The openings are global – and there are 50 positions open. 

If you’re at NetApp looking at EMC’s growth and activities with interest, or a startup that maybe isn’t going the way you expect, or a reseller who is NOT an EMC partner – APPLY (and/or reach out to me personally!) Read on past the break for the Brassring numbers and links to apply.

The second grouping are what we call “Service Provider Cloud Architects”. These are technical folks that specialize in a set of technologies (VMware – not only vSphere, but also orchestration/management, EMC’s full portfolio), but more importantly – are defined by the fact that they live at (and are exclusively focused on) the specific service providers who are investing heavily in VMware and EMC’s vision of the Hybrid Cloud.  This means they are PART of the Service Provider’s team – and not only make sure our solutions work, but also help define solutions with the Service Provider and act as their voice into our EMC product teams to make our capabilities better.

As you can see – things are HOT in EMC in general, and amongst our customer-facing technical folks in particular…

Read on for the details and how to apply!

Jobs, jobs, and more jobs!

I know this isn’t the usual “Virtual Geek” content – but our EMC Presales transformation continues on it’s merry way, which represents a ton of opportunity for all!

EMC Presales is the right place for people who are passionate about technology, about customers, and about learning – who wake up each day positive and excited.

It’s a whacky place to be sure – but for the right (equally whacky) people – it’s home.

To give you an idea of “flavor” of company and presales culture - as we run up to the TC conference we are running a video contest – you can see some of them here (and read on past the break for embedded ones I really dig).   

The TC conference is huge - we are bringing together more than 2000 of our customer-facing nerds from around the globe – and all descending on Las Vegas with our customers at the same time as EMC World for 4 days of fun, learning, roadmap, and connecting.  It’s open to our EMC Partner SEs too (read more here)

So, in Q1, we’ve established what I call the “EMC Presales Cabinet” (the theatre-wide leader roles), have stood up clear and distinct EMC Presales organization and identity – several thousand strong.   But- there is more

So – where are there the next round of openings?

We have a lot – and more opening every day.   These all have strong internal candidates – but I’m a big believer in opening roles, finding the best candidates and also cross-pollinating across the company.   We’re going to be filling these roles over the coming weeks, and I want the candidate pool to be broad, open, and strong.  

We don’t recruit from our EMC partners (we strive to make sure there is no air gap between being a partner and being and EMC employee), but if you’re from the outside, from a competitor (perhaps freaked out by this) – we would love to hear from you!

The next round of technical presales leader roles that are open:

• NE/Canada Presales Lead - 89166BR
• Mid-Atlantic Presales Lead- 89163BR
• West Presales Lead- 89161BR
• Central Presales Lead - 89159BR
• Mid-Market West Presales Lead- 89151BR
• Mid-Market Central Presales Lead- 89150BR
• Europe North Presales Lead -Req 89558
• Europe East Presales Lead - Req 89557

What do do if you think you’re a fit?   You can apply online here.   Some of the req #s don’t come up in the search yet, but that’s a system thing.   Heck if you just search for “Presales”, you’ll find a TON of job openings above and beyond these.  If you can’t seem to work it – heck, just email me!   You can find me on LinkedIn (a great EMC customer – thank you!), and EMC email addresses have a standard format.

EMC has been a great place to work, and we’re finding a whole new gear in our gearbox! 

The. Most. Kick. Butt. Hardware. Episode. EVAH.

Well… Recording THIS Chad’s World episode was cool.  We wanted to do a mega sneak peek at the next-generation hardware platforms the teams have been working on…   We checked with Pat Gelsinger about whether he’d be willing to shine some light on some of the next-gen hardware work – and he said GO FOR IT – just make sure it’s xtreme :-)

The EMC Hardware Engineering team are the unsung heroes as EMC has been transforming to a model of being a software company, and using industry-standard (read x86) hardware.

Bill DePatie heads up this team – and he’s to EMC as “Q” is to James Bond – he’s the man with all the toys :-)

In this episode, we pull the covers off EMC’s next generation hardware.  This is the stuff that ultimately MAY (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) show up in future EMC platforms.  I can’t believe they let us do this (even with some of it blurred out by EMC legal).

A big THANK YOU to Alex McCullum from Air Worldwide for joining us…   He got the ultra-secret tour after we finished doing this, so Alex – remember, ssssshhh :-)

Check it out (and at the end, wait for the “EMC World Bail Fund” process)!

It’s worth restating something I said in this video:  these are all engineering prototypes – if/when they show up in shipping products – there’s absolutely no statement on that in here...  But, if I were a customer/partner – I would want to see what the engineering teams are up to.   And hey, it’s COOL :-)

For some more “behind the scenes” details, read on!

 

EMC TC Conference 2012 open for partners, customers!

All – This way something wicked (in the “cool” sense) comes…  EMC World rapidly approaches… and it will be EPIC :-)

Knowing a little about what’s coming, there’s SO MUCH it’s officially in ridiculous territory…   Wait until you see the next Chad’s World episode (will post on April 30th) where we show some of the next-gen hardware.   OMIGOODNESS.

This hasn’t gotten much airtime outside the walls of EMC, but coincident with EMC World, there is our first ever Global Partner Summit (register here) – a great event for our partners.

The other thing going on that we’ve been discussing internally is the EMC Technology Consultant (TC) Conference.  The TC Conference is huge.  We have all our presales technical folks – your technical trusted advisors – from across the Americas and EMEA, and select folks from APJ all in one place.   The folks in APJ also get the content brought to them via a TC conference Roadshow that hits Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney, and Beijing in July.

This is where we get everyone details on the good/bad/ugly (and workarounds) on our stuff, roadmaps, tools, refine the presales “arts”, and get frank executive time.

BTW – if you’re at an EMC competitor or just a passionate technologist and think this looks like fun, consider joining us here at EMC or our EMC Partners! Did you see our Q1 results? We’re doing great thanks to innovation, heart, passion – and most importantly the dedication and loyalty of our great customers.  At the same time – EMCers are having fun and learning at the same time. Our roadmap is crazy full of awesomesauce.  If you don’t feel the same about what you’re doing now, wherever that is - I WANT TO TALK TO YOU. Expect to see the next wave of EMC presales job postings soon.

Best of all, we hang as a community, as a team.   Actually, that’s not the best part.  The best part is that we’ve realized that this team, this community extends BEYOND OUR WALLS.   The TC Conference is open to partners.   Yup – you heard that right.   We know that there is NO air gap between our partners and EMC.   If you want to come, you are 110% welcome.   If you think this is a whole new partner-friendly EMC – you’re getting the memo.

Read on for details…

Get yer EMC ProSphere 1.5 HERE to learn, play, try!

Gang – happy to say that you can download, play and learn EMC ProSphere – no matter who you are.   EMC ProSphere is a pretty killer tool – simple, scalable next-gen storage resource management.

Built from the ground up to be stronger, faster, better in every way.   And, hey – deployed as a virtual appliance to boot :-)

Remember, like the virtual appliances we put out there for this sort of play/learn/try use, there is only best-effort support, and non-production environments only.   It’s the same code (even the same vApp deployment model) as the real deal, so if you dig it, please contact your local EMC partner!

• Original post covering ProSphere 1.5 and the design principles (and outing that the product team decided to share it with the world) is here.
• The recording of the webcast I did that was a deeper dive into the nuts and bolts (really cool use of things like Greenplum and vFabric/Spring) is here.   BTW – if you want the raw powerpoint, click on the below (some people are reporting having issues with IE8 – try another browser):

• The ProSphere public “get the bits” page is here.
• The series of HOWTO videos (great job shout out to the product team) is here.

Enjoy – and as always, feedback welcome!

A couple solid tech docs around funky DR/HA configs

I’ve said it before, and will say it again… Simple is a good thing in general when it comes to disaster recovery, and is why my “going in” view for most customers (not all) is that if you’re running vSphere, start with SRM.

That said, I see enormous interest in active-active stretched clusters (vSphere Metro Stretched Clusters), and amongst our largest customers – sophisticated multi-site topologies (ususally “2 close, 1 far”).  This second one is interesting – as customers start to virtualize stuff that is crazy mission critical, they EXPECT their protection strategy and SLAs to continue to work.  It can be a real barrier.  Is it everyone – no – but when it’s you, you know how important it can be.

The first (doc number: h7113) is focused on EMC VPLEX Metro with vSphere stretched clusters, including the “extra resilient” options around cross-connect and using the Witness.  It also includes the latest 5.0 u1 elements on PDL as well (right at the end).  Click on the picture below to get the doc….

The second (doc number: h8183) focuses on the second group of scenarioes – stretched clusters with 3rd site connectivity.   There are solutions today (outlined in the doc), but they have a relatively high complexity threshold.   When Lee Dilworth and I presented at VMworld 2011 (BC02479), we noted that there was more coming around these use cases.  Based on what I know is coming in the relative near term, I expect these use cases to become a lot more popular (so useful to read up now).  Download the doc below!

As always – feedback welcome!

“HELLO WORLD”: EMC VSPEX

[UPDATED 4/12/2012 @ 4:40pm ET] – some funny additional bits

[UPDATED 4/13/2012 @ 11:22am ET] – some more details on Brocade

Question: So – what did EMC launch today that “starts with V and ends with X” (in case you can’t tell, we’re having a little fun here at EMC)?

Answer: A simple, efficient, and reference architecture program for our customers and channel partners – one that sets a new standard in flexibility, and marks the first time customers can easily choose from the full spectrum of models of how to build their private cloud.

             

BTW – we do tend to be passionate and have fun inside EMC.   A peak behind the curtain of the VSPEX run up shows one of the main people behind (the awesome Gil Shneorson who along with Chad Dunn – and many others – are the beating heart and force behind many of our channel efforts) proudly showing his new tattoo:

And here is the launch YouTube gag video (I particularly like the smoke coming off the others – doesn’t fit my manifesto about talking about the other guy, so won’t dwell on it, but I expect a lot of darts thrown our way, so might as well have fun with it :-):

Interested?  Read on for more!