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A Minor Milestone

admin — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 14:57:23 +0000

I'm on vacation this week — no blogging, no twitter, etc. — but I did manage to get around to checking my blog for any interesting comments.

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A Minor Milestone

Now THIS is going to be a party :-)

admin — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 03:47:09 +0000

Sure, VMworld is about learning. It’s also about networking with people – friends, colleagues, customers, and even respected competitors. Heck – I’m in full on cram mode now. We are prepping content, kit to support the hands-on-labs, finalizing face-melting demos, giveaways (1 iPad per hour), and much, much more. Hey, I’m getting daily “where is your content” nag emails (well deserved!) from the VMworld crew. but – it’s also about having a little fun while saying THANK YOU to the customers Since I started being “Mr. VMware at EMC” – one thing I said to Joe was “I want EMC to not only win in the VMware context on our own merits, but have fun while doing it!” So… here are details on the VMworld 2010 EMC/VMware customer appreciation party… Read on (including how to get an invite)… Where : (Temple) 540 HOWARD ST (2 blocks from Moscone Center) When: Tuesday August 31, 2010 6:30-10:30pm What: EMC’s Customer appreciation party – our chance to have fun, and thank EMC customers and partners. There will be great food, two open bars, and in general – a good fun time Who: It’s by invite – only up to 500 people – have your EMC team reach out to their vSpecialists and Brittany Coulson.

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Now THIS is going to be a party

vSphere 4.1, SIOC, and Array Auto-Tiering

admin — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:06:04 +0000

So – do these ideas work together? Do they complement each other or compete? What’s the source of these questions Chad – and why are you asking them? (BTW – this topic is one I’m covering at VMworld, along with some of the testing data) If you’re interested, read on… Storage IO Control (SIOC), along with Network IO Control (NIOC) represent VMware’s first forays into expanding the IDEA of DRS (which is in essence distributed resource prioritization) beyond CPU cycles and memory – and into storage and network IO subsystems.

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vSphere 4.1, SIOC, and Array Auto-Tiering

Robert Cockerill from Thames River Capital: A man with broad responsibilities and 3PAR storage

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:46:23 +0000

3PAR customers like that fact that 3PAR arrays are so easy and fast to manage. In this video, Robert Cockerill from Thames River Capital in London talks about all the various things he does, his Windows-based infrastructure, how 3PAR’s thin provisioning helps him manage it all and how simple it was to protect it with 3PAR Remote Copy.

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Robert Cockerill from Thames River Capital: A man with broad responsibilities and 3PAR storage

Speed Bumps Along The Way To The Private Cloud

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:58:24 +0000

Many of the IT organizations I speak with have started their journey to a private cloud model. Every road has its speed bumps: knowing what they are likely to be helps a great deal. I thought it'd be useful to simply share my perspectives of likely issues, concerns and challenges that tend to show up in each phase of the journey

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Speed Bumps Along The Way To The Private Cloud

Private Clouds And Dealing With Legacy

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:55:43 +0000

The good news — there's general consensus from the enterprise IT organization I speak with that — yes, they'd like to pursue a private cloud model. The challenging part — as they look around their data centers, all they can see is the legacy of past decisions: incompatible architectures, stove-pipe stacks and the rest. It's like an archeology project: you can see the layers of different waves that have come through the IT organization. How can you move forward when all you can see is history

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Private Clouds And Dealing With Legacy

Clarifying VAAI capabilities and implementations

admin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:15:55 +0000

Virtual Geek and I had a discussion on his post yesterday about vSphere's VAAI capabilities announced yesterday . I wrote about the fact that we already had zero detect technology in our product, which is useful for the new Full Copy command because it allows customers to remove zeroed data from clones when they are created and return them to array free space. The discussion became a bit confused when Chad interpreted what I was saying as pertaining to Block Zeroing.

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Clarifying VAAI capabilities and implementations

Whitepaper: Private Cloud Practitioner’s Guide

admin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:16:20 +0000

If you've been following this blog for a while, you know I've been describing how EMC's IT organization is progressing in re-envisioning our IT capabilities based on a private cloud model. You've seen bits and pieces here on this blog, as well as EMC IT's own web site . Today, I received a nice white paper entitled " EMC IT's Journey To The Private Cloud: A Practitioner's Guide ". While not as complete as many of us would like, it does serve as a nice contextual overview of of our journey: the rationale, the phases and the results to date.

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Whitepaper: Private Cloud Practitioner’s Guide

vSphere 4.1 Cross-EMC support whats the good/bad/ugly?

admin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 01:52:51 +0000

Whenever there is a major VMware release, a common question from EMCers, EMC customers, and EMC partners is: “what is supported day one, and what will break if I upgrade?” Any vendor who tells you “nothing will break” is either: lying (lying maliciously) delusional (lying, but unintentionally) – if you’re a competitor that piles on to this post, remember I have most competitor’s products myself, and I’ll call you on it a one-product company As soon as you have a broad portfolio – getting everything to line up is impossible. As we near major VMware releases, as the “face for VMware inside EMC”, I rally across the product teams to make sure we’re aligning. We all work hard, and push as much as possible – but inevitably there are little time gaps. They are all on eLab and the VMware HCL – but I’ve found it’s useful to have it integrated in one place. So – I’m taking the high road here and being as explicit as possible – even with gaps . Read on for details, but in a nutshell – core storage support is a rock on day one, and almost everything else lands within Q3, with some Q4 stragglers. BTW – also getting the inevitable “can I get a Vblock with vSphere 4.1?”. That one is a firm NO right now. Remember – the core idea of a Vblock is that it’s all integrated and tested so you don’t need to. That means that by definition it will always lag any given component a little bit – and that’s a GOOD thing. Of course, expect an update soon Remember everyone – always test before putting anything into production!!!! Read on for details… Storage: Platforms = YES. Day 1 support is perfect – and you can see it here . Every EMC storage platform target (Iomega, CLARiiON, EMC Unified/Celerra, Symmetrix and VPLEX) is on the VMware HCL day one across all protocols. This was a chunk of work – so thank you from me to the VMware and EMC teams that made that happen

The Impact Of VMware Storage Integration

admin — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:19:41 +0000

Today is the day that VMware announces the availability of 4.1, and a key set of storage integration APIs (VAAI) that provide all sorts of cool speed-ups between server and storage. EMC's announcement of day-one support is here . Chad Sakac (our legendary Virtual Geek ) does a great job of explaining what they are, how to use them, and what they can do for you. If your passion is hands-on tech, please head on over there. However, if you're more like me, and are always curious about what things might mean in a broader sense, this post might be more to your liking …

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The Impact Of VMware Storage Integration