More Goodness From VMworld

Finally, everyone is trickling back from the VMware show in Cannes last week.

I recently covered the VMware solutions we announced there, but it turns out that there was a whole lot more cool stuff that got presented there.

As these bits come in, I'll share them with you to the best of my ability.

Have You Met Chad Sakac Yet?

Chad is EMC's one-man nuclear dynamo for All Things VMware at EMC.  Actually, there are probably several hundred EMCer's engaged in different aspects of this whole thing, but Chad was recently appointed to help coordinate and drive everything that's going on here.

Chad is a technologist primarly, so he's been able to share a number of great things of interest to the technical community.  And, by the way, if you ever get a chance to see him speak in person, do it.  He's fun, entertaining and incredibly knowledgeable on the topic.

A Great Presentation

Chad teamed up with VMware and delivered what was perhaps the most interesting presentation of the session (or so we've heard!) entitled "EMC and VMware -- Joint Solutions And Innovation".

I've included the pdf file here.

The first part goes through how we align with VMware's different use cases.  The second part describes a few of the areas where EMC has offered specific technologies designed explicitly for VMware environments. 

But, if you're a geek like me, you'll really like the performance examples at the end, especially the 16,000 user Exchange examples being VMotion'ed from place to place, and with miminal I/O impact.

But Wait, There's More ...

We also realized that a lot of our joint solution work with VMware isn't getting a lot of attention, so we were handing out copies at the show, which were well-received.

In case you missed it:

• A nice writeup on our Exchange solution (done with Dell and VMware))
• A great whitepaper on SQLserver (done with VMware)
• A useful piece on Avamar (done with VMware)
• And an especially interesting piece on using CLARiiON's QoS functions in a VMware environment

As always, the latest materials can be found on the VMware site: http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/

And I'm Still Looking For More Material

We did a number of sessions at the show, and I'm hunting down the presentations to share here if possible.

For example ...

• VMware Needs Shared Storage, so FC, iSCSI, NFS - or All Three? (Benoit Devijver)
• Control and Manage your Remote and Branch Office Backup (Tom Martin/Mike Zolla)
• Scaling your VI3 Infrastructure with VDI - easily and cost-effectively (Jeff Purcell)
• Automating DR for Virtualization: Site Recovery Manager + EMC = Best of Breed DR (Martin Glynn/Scott Baker/David Butchart) - Chad tells me that the previews of VMware's upcoming SRM product with EMC replication topic was probably the hottest topic at the show.

I'm also trying to find a way to get the great workstation demos out for general viewing, including ...

1. Optimizing SAP: A Unique Virtualization Solution with EMC - Invista and VMware - joint SAP, VMware, EMC (Christian Stein)
2. Backup Built for VMware Infrastructure - Avamar, Networker, Homebase (Simon Williams/Heribert Heckhoff)
3. Control and Manage Remote and Branch Office Backup (Martin/Mike Zolla)
4. Automating DR for Virtualization: EMC with Site Recovery Manager (Scott Baker, Jule Slootbeek, Martin Glynn, Jim Wentworth, Butch Butchart)
5. Extending Server DRS Policies into the IO Stack - VMware/EMC Joint Best Practices (David Butchart)
6. VMware Needs Shared Storage, so FC, iSCSI, NFS - or All Three? (Benoit Devijver)
7. Protecting VI3 Infrastructure with VDI (Jeff Purcell)
8. Managing the VMware-enabled Data Center (Werner Katzenberger)

And, In Summary ...

I, like many of you, wish I could have been there -- lots of great stuff to see, to be sure.

Hope you find all of this useful!

Comments

[Duane]

Chuck, just wanted to let you know that I have indeed had the pleasure of talking with Chad and hes been very helpful in the deployment of our NS502. After getting the device installed, we felt as an organization we were kind of left to fend for ourselves with the ISCSI world, but Chad was right there to chat with us and reassure us that we made the right decision in purchasing an EMC device. Chad is kind enough to return my emails and offers indepth explanations of how we can use the NAS device to our benefit. In a competitive storage world (EMC/HP/NETAPP) I can honestly tell you that having a resource like you do in Chad can often make the difference in a companies decision to stay with you or not.

[Chad Sakac]

Chuck, Duane, you're making me blush (and Duane, it's my pleasure - for me and everyone here, customers make the world)

EMC has an incredible set of infrastructure tools, and toys at our disposal for the VMware-focused world, so my job is easy :-)

Two (and there are thousands) fun examples:

1) did you know that EMC has virtual appliances? Not one, but MANY (including virtual storage arrays you can run on an ESX server!)

2) how much VMware-centric skill do we have? How about 100+ VCP certified folks - in our pre-sales ranks alone, with 50 more being added every few months!

Building the best VMware solutions, helping customers accelerate VMware deployments (because that's good for us, good for VMware, and good for customers - they get their ROI faster) - it's my dream job, and we have a dream team, and dream capabilities.

[Chuck Hollis]

Chad, we'll get you blogging yet!