Storage Nation

Phew – I hate tap-dancing around things, and I’ve been saying “project Redwood” for too long.  I’m glad the name got changed to vCloud Director – “vCloud Service Director” was a mouthful (note that the builds right before VMworld still have the old name).

DRS is not only a critical feature in vSphere, but also a critical IDEA for virtualization and cloud models (private or public).   The idea is basic: Virtualization encapsulates compute, and vMotion liberates those encapsulated objects, but VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) is the thing that actually turns the cluster of servers in a dynamic pool of resources. Not only is this important for efficiency, but prioritization and QoS are critical as everyone starts to virtualize things that come with SLA requirements

So – today RSA, the security division of EMC announced a very cool capability – a simple VMware security dashboard that integrates with vCenter, ESX/ESXi, with vCenter, RSA Data Loss Prevention suite, VMware’s vShield family (more on that soon), VMware vCloud Director, VMware vCenter Configuration Manager, EMC Ionix portfolsio, and HyTrust appliancevShield family of products (along with other partners).  It brings everything up to a high level dashboard which continuously assess state – and helps remediate (aka “fix”) problems.   It’s a solution for Cloud Security and Compliance. We also showed the next step of the evolution of “Project Roswell” – an ongoing effort between VMware/RSA/Intel to bring an unbelievable set of compliance capabilities to public clouds, enforced in a hardware root of trust. There will also be an RSA Securebook on Cloud Security published in October that covers these topics for people who are in the security business… Ok a bit of background… So – I asked in the open “VirtualGeek 2010 Survey” (full results here ) 2 basic questions.   “Is security an issue for you”.  Of the 121 respondents to that question – it turns out it is (to varying degress) to 71% of the people. Then I asked people to be a bit more specific about degree of “security pain”.

My team have something cooking I have NO IDEA about…   Nothing like a surprise! ( I love it gang!) This is some sort of teaser video… For what it’s worth – the whole crew is rolling in…  If you see someone that looks friendly, say hello, and ask them if they are part of the VMware Affinity team at EMC (vSpecialist = field people, but there are others), if they say “yes”, ask them to buy you and your friends a round Here’s a small group of us at the Marriott Marquis – having a good time before the marathon starts…   What’s cool (if you ask me – ever country, continent, role and responsibility – ranging from people who write IETF/IEEE drafts to people who sell are actually in that one shot – and they are all having fun together.  LOVE IT.

Obviously, VMworld is all consuming for me right now, but this crossed my path.  A killer set of engineering opportunities in our kick-a$$ BRS team, and on projects that I know are really cool.  Here’s the scoop: Looking for software developers with VMware domain experience for work in Irvine California. There are 2 Principle Engineer and 3 Senior Engineer recs open now

To celebrate the close of VMworld 2010, there will be a best 5 of 9 match to the death between @Beaker – Chris Hoff, aka hohoff from Cisco and his army of vSquirrels vs @sakacc – Chad Sakac, aka “Mr VMware at EMC” and his squad of vSpecialists. So – a little more detail?

Here it is in an nutshell – print out, and have it handy!  It captures the key sessions/content over the week we are leading/participating/supporting.

For the second year running, I’ve decided to hold a 2nd party…. The first is the EMC customer appreciation party @ Temple ( 540 HOWARD ST – 2 blocks from Moscone Center), Tuesday August 31, 2010 6:30-10:30pm.   We’re developing a solid rep that other than the rave, this is the party to be at VMworld    You can go here for the details , but warning, all the seats have been filled – in fact we’re WAY over, and bumping against the fire code for the building (like any good party should be – standing room only).

Alright, a little bit of levity on a weird day… Can’t believe that Hurd thing. But seriously, check this out… vSpecialist Herman Matfes was riding his motorcycle, wiped out, and the combination of his VMworld 2010 2009 backpack and Macbook Pro absorbed all the impact.  UPDATE (BTW, of COURSE the most important thing is Herman was ok, then that his Macbook pro survived You can only come to ONE conclusion.   Go to VMworld – it might just save your life

With VMworld 2010 coming (my goodness, I have 4 sessions, 3 of which are repeated – gasp.   So.  Much.  Work. To.  Do!), I wanted to ask my readers what’s on their minds VMware-related.   It’s always good to know.  I talk to customers every day, but rarely do much analysis of anecdotal stuff I observe. So – would love to hear from you!   I’ve made a quick little survey.   You’d be surprised how far reaching the last one went within EMC and VMware – so it’s a good chance to have your voice heard.   What’s your IT infrastructure look like