Again, going to cheat a little – because I’m really saving my “number one post” So, this one also has two rolled into one:
Number 2a) – The Hands On Labs.
Every year the Integration Engineering team (formerly known as GETO team) pulls out the stops for a crazy scale on demand hands on lab extravaganza. Right now, the last minute scrambles are going on as we speak (I’m seeing some of the bumps), but in the end, they (with support from partners) pull off something really special. This is what it looked like last year:
In 2010 the HoL was.. Incredible. ~145K VMs in 44 hours. ~15K labs served. On the backend, the EMC storage… 7,640,306,790 IOs served.
In 2011HoL will be… EPIC. The target is ~225K VMs, more hours ~50 hrs, ~31 labs scenario based labs, support for multi-language labs – Japanese and German for certain labs. What’s also awesome is that this year the VMware team opened up partner labs – EMC, Cisco, and others participating. The way this works is that the partner community rallies to support the main labs with kit and people, but the partner labs enable people to play with the partner’s VMware integration (also in scenario-based workflows).
The scenarioes are cool and based on four hypothetical customers – representing several different market segments.
Number 2b) – The Exhibitor halls – and specifically the startups.
I love roaming the exhibitor halls, meeting people and checking out the vibe of companies. As an ex-startup fellow myself – there’s something awesome about their vibe. Taking on the man (hey, that’s me now!), innovating, etc. You’ve got to love it!
…and… this year, I think it will be “year of the VMware-focused storage startup”. They are coming out of the woodwork, all based on technology disruptors creating an opportunity – a small window – to outrace the big guys if we’re asleep at the wheel. Most seem to fall into three categories (that I see), and I’m highlighting the ones that are making the most early noise.
- Tintri – “VM aware storage!” (make an NFS server, deeply integrate with vCenter via plugins, build in vCenter API integration in your storage platform to provide information in the VMware context).
- Nutanix – “hey, merge compute and storage, using scale-out NAS!”
- A ton of Flash startups including the big one (Fusion IO) eating up ones (IO Turbine) to make “Virtualization integrated server-based PCIe Flash!”
- UPDATE: Not traditionally “storage” related, but I also think Reflex Systems is really cool.
Startup land is fascinating. They must have a combo of “out innovate the bigger, slower folks”, and “leverage first mover advantage to grow while they are asleep at the wheel”.
If you want to see if the giants are asleep at the wheel – obviously the market decides… well all I’ll say on that one is I would STRONGLY suggest coming to SUP1006, VSP3205, SPO3977… If you’re one of those startups, you might want to be there too…
Can’t wait to see you there!
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