Working my tail off…. I have delivered 4 sessions myself (Cisco/VMware/EMC session, Storage HA session, Sharepoint on VMware session, and our “Emerging Technologies” session) , EMC has done 7 in total (VDI/SRM solutions, SRM automated failback, Cisco/EMC vCloud efforts), and one (the Sharepoint one) was so popular we’ve been asked to do it 3 times! Some of the EMC sessions have been in top rankings, and I believe at the top of non-VMware led sessions (will post the final results when I also post all the content and demos we’ve used).
the booth is HOPPING, with folks there constantly.
The keynotes have rocked – Paul’s vision of the Private Cloud is something the customers I talk to use to describe what they want to achieve, and something we are building our products today and tomorrow around. The demos in Steve Herrod’s Keynote were fantastic – and I liked the performance data a lot… perhaps the image he used of the EMC infrastructure that helped set those world-record scores he used put me in a good mood :-) Funny story – we could have done that whole workload on around 16 EFDs, and tried to do that, but in Q4 were completely oversold on CX EFDs… Oh well – it wouldn’t have made for as visual/humorous a point!
Have been busy talking with customers, press, analysts…. Highlight is seeing so many friends in the community – and putting faces to names.
Hands on Lab and all the EMC gear is doing fantastic, and the EMC booth team is great – they are demoing like mad!
Has been a BUSY week from an announcement standpoint – one every day.
New EMC Celerra Unified Storage Systems With Deduplication Top Industry Offerings; Up to 22 Perc
Innovative Iomega Network Storage Appliances Now VMware Ready Certified; New Cost-Saving Virtual
EMC Provides Operational Efficiencies With Expanded Portfolio of VMware Solutions
One thing tucked in the releases: EMC launched 3 (count em 3!) vCenter plugins. One to help automate VDI use cases, one to extend add an “EMC storage” tab, providing really cool visibility into the storage you can’t get in vCenter out of the can, and one (I think this one is the coolest) to automate SRM failback. These are available for free customer download on powerlink (will post direct links ASAP). These all add to the crazy-long list of EMC technology integration (Replication Manager for array-based, vCenter integrated and consistent point in time copies, SRM, Avamar, DRS/QoS integration, Control Center VMware Ready, Smarts ADM VMware Ready, IT Compliance Analyzer VMware Ready, etc…..)
and… one more day to go :-)
Oh – and turns out that VMware has included me in their vExpert awards – thank you John, and thank you VMware! I feel a bit weird being awarded this – I do it because I love it.
Quoting from John Troyer’s official announcement on the VMTN Blog:
Email went out tonight informing around 300 hard-working bloggers, user group leaders, and virtualization evangelists of all types that they had received a VMware vExpert Award. VMware vExperts were chosen on the basis of the contributions they had made to the community of VMware and virtualization users in 2008.
I’m humbled and honored by the award – and thank all of you, and hope to do the award justice in 2009.
Will do a formal update (with photos/movies/recordings of sessions/demos posted) after the show is done – it’s 3am here in Cannes, and I need to go to bed…
Congrats on the vExpert Chad! I got the same email too!
mike foley
RSA
Met you with Tim Shea
Posted by: Mike Foley | February 26, 2009 at 12:01 AM
Hope I get the oppurtunity for a one on one chat on this last day of the conference. I am currently designing the infrastructure and storage layout for a hosted Exchange solution targetted to support 2 million users and fully virtualised. We already host a 1.5 million user sharepoint solution so perhaps I should attend the shrepoint presentation ;-)
I will monitor the blog on and off today to see if you got this and look out for you on the floor.
Posted by: Barry Weeks | February 26, 2009 at 03:26 AM
Kudos on the vExpert award, well deserved
Posted by: Vaughn Stewart | February 27, 2009 at 12:06 PM
Chad,
do you have the location on Powerlink of the plug-ins.
Alan
Posted by: Alan | March 13, 2009 at 12:01 PM