Storage @ Work

VMware is hosting the VMworld Conference in San Francisco at the Moscone Center from September 11 – 13.

I’m pretty excited about this year’s show, considering that last years conference was one of the most exciting I’ve ever attended. The community surrounding VMware and its products is fairly electric and I expect it to be even more so after all the success they‘ve had with their ESX product since then.

The synergy between server virtualization and storage virtualization in SANs is transforming data center environments for many customers. The number of customers and vendors involved in this community is expanding rapidly. From my perspective, the virtual data center is as exciting as any development in IT over the last 20 years.

EqualLogic will have a number of things happening there. For my part I will be busy blogging from the show, trying to capture the feel for what is happening for those that aren’t able to attend. Watch our web site for breaking information about EqualLogic activities at VMworld.

Here is our schedule for VMworld. Many have asked me about the BOF (birds of a feather) meeting. It's going to be at Terra on Wednesday the 12th from 4:00 to 5:00 followed by a customer appreciation party from 5:00 - 7:00. For those that recall last year's party it was a pretty good time. Definitely a lot of energy and excitement around VMware, consolidation and virtualization. I know - it sounds geeky, but if you are into it, there is nothing better. See You there.

I'm pretty stoked about VMworld this week in San Francisco. Going to see lots of interesting stuff and meet with customers and friends from around the industry. I thought VMworld was one of the big highlights of 2006 and expect it will be even bigger this year.

EqualLogic fans might be interested in a few things of note we are doing at the show. The main thing that a lot of people will be interested in is that we are giving away a Harley. Not a stuffed doll of a Harley or a Spinal Tap version of a Harley, but an actual Harley Davidson motorcycle. Next year, you can be in Sturgis in August too!

I am actually a bit torn about this kind of give away. I mean, lot's of our customers tell us that they think our iSCSI SAN products are pretty terrific and I think we should just try to have an event for them (which we are doing - a Birds of Feather and a customer appreciation cocktail party on Wednesday). But I guess if you are going to go beyond the basic feelgood stuff at a major trade show, giving away a Harley isn't so bad. OK, the real problem - truth be told - is that I'm not eligible. Farley on a Harley? The Farley Harley? Farley's gnarly Harley? Videos from the Hogmeister? All these sound pretty good to me, but its not going to come to pass unless I shell out my own money for them. Maybe I'll turn in expense reports for the last year and go get one.

There are a couple Webinars going on this week. I'm doing one tomorrow (Tuesday) AM at 9:00 PDT with VMware and a customer using both technologies. We'll be talking about the synergy of VMware and EqualLogic iSCSI SANs in SMB accounts. Its very powerful stuff with important cost and uptime benefits. Then on Wednesday (also at 9:00 PDT), Eric Schott, our Director of Product management is doing another live webcast with VMware discussing some of the newest technology for Disaster Recovery in VMware environments. This is incredibly important technology that is going to change the IT landscape for many customers so you will want to check it out if you get a chance.

There are a number of breakout sessions with EqualLogic employees or customers participating: There is a listing of them here:

Come see what all the excitement is about at the EqualLogic booth this year, here is where we are in Moscone Center. On this map look for the blue rectangle (#1021) to the right of VMware's booth, which is the big one in the middle.

I caught up with Chris Fricke, from Clackamas County Oregon and we were talking. I like to say we have the greatest customers in the world and in this video, Chris shows why I say that. Thanks Chris!

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Chris Sims from the Clayton County Water Authority in Georgia was a panelist at VMworld today and he talks about their DR setup, VMware implementation and their EqualLogic iSCSI SAN. Like I always say, we have the best customers and it is a joy to work with customers like Chris.

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WMworld has been an awesome event. Yesterday we had our Birds of Feather / customer appreciation party. EqualLogic's Eric Schott and VMware's Kiran Ranabhor led an interactive discussion of VMWare's announced Site Recovery Manager. There is a lot of interest in this functionality and many who attended wanted to know how they were going to be able to use it.

Afterwards was a lot of fun hanging, snacking and sipping. Cool venue - Terra club at First and Harrison in San Francisco. Many thanks to those who planned this and all customers who came to spend time with the EqualLogic team. Also, a huge thanks to our customers who have made presentations and participated in panels at VMworld: David Siles, Lee Merrick, Jeff Stallworth, Carmine Iannace, Chris Sims, Matt Conley and Ken Kaban who made the trip over from the UK in order to attend and present. Our customers are the greatest!

I led a webcast last Tuesday at VMworld about using VMware and EqualLogic storage in SMB environments. Ben Matheson from VMware and Arell Chapman - a customer from United Bank and Trust joined me. I had suggested that VMware and EqualLogic were like peaches and cream, but then Ben said he thought it was more like a hamburger with fries. Either way, I'll take it. The best part of all was Arell's discussion of his implementation. People will want to listen to what he has to say. Click this link to view and listen to the webinar recording. (requires Real Player)

Then on Wednesday our director of product management Eric Schott and Vivek Chhabria from VMware presented on DR technologies and techniques on a webcast that has relevance to just about everybody. Click here to view the webinar.

I finally got around to mixing up some of the video from our customer appreciation party at VMworld. Like I always say, we have the greatest customers - it's nice to be able to kick back with them.

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We had special guests from VMware for this event too. Preceding the party was a birds of a feather session where we explored VMware's newly announced Site Recovery Manager (SRM). Very cool.

I just got done sitting in on the Wikibon conference call about storage clusters. Wikibon is an idea that I like: open discussions and content that intends to engage subject matter experts, vendors, analysts and customers.

But noble goals do not make for satisfying group gropes. The call today was a mashup of perspectives and expectations that never came together. I think the problem is that the words "cluster" and "storage" conjure up images that are as consistent among people as ink blot interpretations.

This is going to be Wikibon's challenge. They don't want to control the discussion as much as facilitate it. Unfortunately the storage industry has a serious penchant for willful fragmentation. Its one of the reasons why the vocabulary of storage is so confusing. Anyway, the call ran down many different threads without much fusion of ideas across them. One of the more interesting threads involved a discussion of Google and Amazon style storage, with Robin Harris insinuating that all large companies were going to need to adopt such designs. Hmmmm. Not sure about THAT one. Then there was the usual confusion about whether or not we were talking about clustered file systems or clustered SAN storage and whether or not that meant Fibre Channel and whether or not Fibre Channel had much of a future and yadda yadda yadda. Yikes!

I give Peter Burris a lot of credit for attempting to create a recorded summary out of the preceding discussion. His EMC-centric analysis of the storage universe came through a bit strong, but its not difficult to understand considering his many years of breathing and drinking EMC details and their role in the industry.

EqualLogic sells distributed iSCSI SAN storage systems that are built by adding storage modules that work together in an Ethernet network. We don't call in "clustered" - we don't call it "grid". Its distributed, its modular, its very easy to install and manage and it's performance scales as you add systems to the group. I really believe that the future of storage is already available from EqualLogic, its just that most industry observers have not taken the time to understand it.

VMworld Europe is going on right now in Cannes. I want to be there, but I have to be here. Could I get virtualized?

Not 2nd life. I don't really want a second life in Cannes - I want real life. Yes, I know its winter and the weather is not great. But the VMworld conference is happening and I love the energy at those shows.

Big news from VMworld Europe yesterday - VMware will be embedded in Dell and other vendor's servers.

Virtual storage is a terrific match for virtual server environments. This announcement about embedded VMware is great news, especially for our channel partners who will have more opportunities to help their customers engage/expand their virtual IT environments.

Here is a Youtube video with short customer interviews talking about embedded VMware.

Tim Sherbak has always been one of my faves at EqualLogic. A true beast of burden in the marketing department and our VMware champion.

Here he is commenting from VMworld Europe 2008 with John "Homey" Joseph on server and storage virtualization.

The camera angle adds interest. Tim's right hand gets gigantic in a couple places. Yo!, Tim! We always knew you had it in you!

In the video below, Scott Reynolds, an attendee at the Data Protection Summit tells Storage @ Work that the sessions at the conference were awesone. Too bad the conference was sparsely attended because the content was top-notch, great stuff. Even if the cake was B-grade. I don't know why, but conference interviews often involve chow.

FWIW, this is the first of three discussions with Tom Coughlin, an expert on storage devices technologies who covers the gamut, from consumer to enterprise applications. In this video he sagely reveals that "they can't smell your breath on a video". Thanks Tom for the confidence builder.

In this interview Marc Farley talks to Tom Coughlin about the world of storage for consumer electronics, including flash, disk drives, low cost computing and automotive applications. Some viewers will appreciate his analysis of the economic advantages flash has over small disk drives as the price of consumer products decreases.

In addition to being a brilliant guy and a true industry expert, he has also recently had a book published titled, Digital Storage in Consumer Electronics: The Essential Guide.

Interested people can get it here on Amazon.com.

The second of two interviews with Tom Coughlin at the Data Protection Summit about the world of storage devices - this time getting his perspective on emerging disk drive technologies used in enterprise applications. Among the topics discussed are drive encryption and secure erase.