VMworld 2010 – wrap-up report….

Well – here we are – a full week after VMworld 2010, and I’m JUST finishing up my event summary :-)

Summary: VMworld 2010 was insane in size, scope, and success.

Obviously the key product things were vCloud Director and View 4.5 along with the Tricipher and Integrien acquisitions (both of which I’m a superfan of), but I think there was a more important subtle takeaway.

Between the sheer size (17000 people, seemingly endless vendors/partners, and the HoL), the sheer koolaid (there are few technologies/companies that turn customers into promoters like VMware) and all the strategic messages Paul’s keynote about where VMware is going – there was a subtle change in the “gestalt” around VMware. 

I hear less these days about “they’re going to be the next Netscape” and more about how:

• “VMware, along with changes in client computing that are happening all over are making the traditional OS obsolete”
• “VMware is accelerating the commoditization of physical infrastructure – in some cases through building functionality in their stack and in others making some technologies no longer as critical.  This is forcing major changes in the things server/network/storage vendors do and major industry changes”
• “It’s not about a hypervisor, and VMware is no longer just a hypervisor company”
• “VMware could reasonably become a $100B company”

Getting that sort of macro level change in mindset is a small miracle, something that people should step back and respect that VMware is accomplishing.

Here’s a good 3rd party summary of the event that captures some of the “in the air” things I’m talking about (and an interesting dialog about online metrics :-)

If you want a 3rd party summary from a storage person’s perspective, this one struck me…

But forget the 3rd party’s this is MY blog :-)

So – without further ado, here are my key “funny” highlights and also the summary of all the stuff we did around VMworld 2010.  Read on!

Dilbert always captures the spirit of anything in tech land like no other:

Dilbert and Dogbert are perhaps a bit cynical :-)

My Personal Highlight…

The personal highlight for me was the CRAZY video my team produced.   If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor, take the 5 minutes to watch (and stick around past the credits)… you’ve got to check it out!   The fact that they did this: a) totally by themselves; b) totally under the radar; c) end to end for $1600, and d) produced a kick-ass result is – well - amazing, and a testament to their talent.

It’s also a testament to the team spirit of the vSpecialists here at EMC.  It’s an incredible place to be, and I’m incredibly blessed to lead the team.  

I’ll be posting literally HUNDREDS of openings between the vSpecialists, the VCE crew, and the Cloud architect teams in EMC shortly, so loads of opportunities to get in on the fun.

Of course, another highlight has to be the v0dgeball tournament, which you can see more on here.

Customers:

At VMworld’s past, this was one “execution” thing I think we missed on (ensuring we had excellent customer focus).   We made it a priority this year, and as a result, customer touch was over the top.  The vSpecialist team and Sheryl Chamberlain worked hard to make sure that EMC customers had a chance to talk/compliment/yell at (that last one is important, feedback – good/bad/ugly is important) key EMC execs.

• Customer “one on on” meetings:   100+ including:  ATT, JPMC, Telstra, Orange Business Systems, Citigroup, Ford, Siemens, Rackspace, Sprint, VA, Northrop Grumman, FEMA, Alcon, Merck, Comcast, Sprint, Petrobas, BMC, NBC, Travelers, McGraw Hill, Telefonica, Luminex, FedEx, UPS, Info Crossing, CRBE, New Hanover, AMEX, Fort Meade, BMC, KVS, SHI, RBS, Bloomberg and others.
• The EMC Customer Appreciation party ended up at the venue limit – we were around 800 people there.
• Customer interviews on the Cube Silicon Angle Live TV included: nScaled, Terremark, California Resource Agency, Public Library of Cincinnati, Foster Pepper, Dallas Cowboys, Switch Networks, West Pharmaceutical, Peak 10, Intuit, Stronghold, Alphawest/Opus, Aetheion Systems Integration, Forsythe Technology.    The Cube also interviewed EMC execs: Gelsinger, Burton, Mirchandi, Napolitano, Yarkoni, Cook and myself.   They also interviewed other folks from Compellent, IBM, NetApp and others.   you can see those customer interviews here.
• We had customers presenting in the EMC booth throughout the show
• Studio E Customer Appreciation Dinner for Architects and Managers:  Hosted by Josh Kahn and other EMC Execs for 20 customers.
• Executive Customer Dinners:  Telstra (Brian Gallagher), Siemens (Pat Gelsinger, Frank Hauck)

What did it look like/feel like?

There was so much happening – here’s a quick Flickr photo roll of the quiet before the storm, my internal meetings before the event, the show floor, some of the sessions, and of course the parties :-)

What did EMC do at VMworld?

For EMC customers, partners and EMCers themselves, I’ve been posting consistently, and all those posts are now up with the full high-rez demo videos (which you’ve been asking for).  Here they all are, summarized.  I’ve put them in logical (not chronological sequence)

VMworld 2010 – WTF- This turned out to be a preview of the team video.  I had no idea.

VMworld 2010 – the EMC awards ceremony – These were the award winners during our strategy pre-meeting.

VMworld 2010 - RSA, VMware and Intel Security Private and Public Clouds – EMC’s first big show announcement – GA of a security compliance audit/dashboard for Private/Public clouds, and preview of what RSA/Intel/VMware are collaborating on next – geo-tracking of VMs in public clouds.  This had amazing press pickup, suggesting (as I believe) that this is important.

VMworld 2010 - EMC Storage for VMware View - $38/client @ scales of thousands of clients – EMC’s second big show announcement – an incredibly efficient storage reference architecture for View use cases.  I think that for this IO band (6 IOps) this is a record cost efficiency for shared storage, mostly due to FAST Cache.  We also published a heavier workload 39 IOps at the 95th percentile using Window 7, and a Windows 7 client optimization guide for View. 

This makes it simple for customers:

1. Start with VMware’s reference architecture (~ 250/client all in except the end-client for stateless, non-persistent, no HA, as “low as you can go” cost wise)
2. Add your client cost (thick or thin client)
3. Then the choose if you want shared storage for HA/VMotion/DRS and persistence ($38/client more for shared storage) Or advanced power user profiles ($50-$100 for shared storage)

VMworld 201 - DRS… For Storage! – Very cool demo of how SIOC and FAST work together to deliver DRS capabilities for storage today in an Oracle use case.

VMworld 2010 - Mega Caches, Automated Tiering – or both- (aka applying a “marketing decoder”) – understanding the “behind the scenes” on the pros/cons of Mega Caches vs. Auto Tiering – an interesting question asked during the storage super-heavyweight challenge.

VMworld 2010 - Try VPLEX. Like it- Take one home –) – Very cool demo of vTeleportation across the latency equivalent of 1/3 of the way around the world.

VMworld 2010 - vCloud Director is here.. With EMC UIM right behind it – EMC’s third big show announcement was the beta of UIMv2.0.   UIM is the “physical infrastructure peer of vCloud director”.   Here’s a very cool demo/discussion of vCloud Director and UIM v2.0 in action together.

VMworld 2010 - EMC vCenter Plugin.Next – At the show, EMC previewed our next version of our vCenter plugin for storage.  Big news is unification of the plugins, automated provisioning of all multipathing, more PowerPath reporting, and a couple other goodies I can’t talk about.

VMworld 2010 - Customers speak volumes… – VMworld was all about the customers, and here are some speaking their minds.

VMworld 2010 – Hands-on-Labs = 7,640,306,790 IOs served – one of the biggest hits of the show was the VMware Hands-On-Lab, a real proof point that Cloud computing is very real, and the incredible power it can provide.  This is the background of what EMC was doing behind the scenes to support it.

VMworld 2010 – the EMC Hands-on-Lab – In our booth, we did an EMC Hands-On-Lab where customers could TRY everything we talked about – was a huge hit.

VMworld 2010 – EMC Supersession – This was the EMC Supersession that Pat Gelsinger, our COO presented and I co-presented.

VMworld 2010 – VCE Supersession – This was the session covering VCE, Vblock and solutions on Vblock.  A 3rd party view on this one was posted here.

VMworld 2010 – TA8623 “Storage Super-Heavyweight Challenge” – this was an awesome “open forum” brawl between EMC, NetApp, HP, and Dell (who is also a great EMC partner)

VMworld 2010 – TA8133 – This is a session I opened to Vaughn to co-develop and co-present on the “gotta know/gotta do/gotta avoid” bits about storage in VMware land.

VMworld 2010 – TA9820 – This was the session where I presented everything EMC is doing on the storage front for server/VDI/public cloud use cases today.   HINT: this one contains a lot of hints where we are going next.

VMworld 2010 – TA8051 – This was a session I jointly presented with Beth Phalen, the VP of VPLEX engineering that covered what we’re doing now, and where we’re going next around vTeleportation and storage federation under VMware.

VMworld 2010 – TA8101 – This was a session focused on the practical dos/don’ts for deploying VPLEX for vMotion between clusters and stretched vSphere clusters (geo dispersed)

VMworld 2010 – EA7061 – This was a session focused on Oracle on vSphere.

Thanks all – was a GREAT event!!!