Chuck's Blog

Cisco and HP Square Off In Server Land

We all enjoy it when vendors face off on key technologies -- like next-generation server architectures. 

Not only is it fun to watch, but intense competitive pressures are good for customers and good for the industry.  And we've only seen the first few salvos in what should prove to be a sustained battle for data center supremacy

Now, my biases should be clear (rooting for Cisco!) -- but, with the latest round of HP announcements, you can begin to see some very distinct differences in architectural thinking between the two companies.

vSphere as an I/O Engine

As more and more people consider bigger and bigger workloads running in virtual containers, the discussion inevitably turns to I/O throughput and latency.

Now, VMware is no slouch at driving big I/O workloads.  I shared one proof-point discussion from testing done last year in this regard on a previous post.

But today, VMware took a big leap forward in this regard with EMC's announcement of PowerPath/VE.

So, why should you care?

The Real Impact of vSphere

Another milestone day today -- VMware announces their "cloud operating system" -- vSphere.

Much will be written about what it does and how it works.

I thought I'd step back and talk about what it means -- at least, what it means to me.

Symmetrix V-Max: A New Paradigm For Storage Virtualization?

OK, today's a busy day in storage land -- EMC has some pretty big news.

But -- somewhere in all the speeds and feeds, architectural discussions and weighing in -- we in the storage world have an entirely new model to consider around storage virtualization.

Rather than take the extreme view that "this new model rocks, and all other are no longer worthy", I would say that the storage virtualization model embedded in the V-Max architecture is considerably different than those that have come before, and -- just on that basis alone -- it's worthy of discussion.

Symmetrix V-Max: Storage Architecture Redefined

Today is a very big day for EMC -- and for the broader storage industry. 

EMC has announced an entirely new approach to high-end storage architecture -- nothing more, and nothing less.

I think it's going to take a while for people to fully appreciate what's been done here, and what it means going forward.

Say what you will about EMC, but we're not afraid to make very big bets on very big ideas -- and that's what we've done here.

EMC 2009 Strategic Forum -- Paul Maritz and VMware - Part 1

We're continuing a sequence of posts recapping key themes and ideas from this event (targeted to investment and industry analysts) on March 10th.

Many important highlights, one of which was the sheer pleasure of listening to Paul Maritz, CEO of VMware, present his vision and strategy to this important audience.

Paul is one of those must-see industry speakers.  If you ever have a chance to hear him stretch out on his favorite topics, make the effort to go see him.

And this time, he did not disappoint -- even going farther than the material he shared at the recent VMworld in Cannes.

EMC 2009 Strategic Forum -- Private Cloud

Continuing on our post sequence from the past few days, Joe Tucci's last topic -- and perhaps the most major one -- is how he and Paul Maritz firmly believed enterprise IT would evolve over the next few years into a "private cloud" model.

Note: for regular readers of this blog, the ideas presented here are pretty much the same as my previous posts on the same topic.

But it was awfully good to hear Joe and Paul stand in front of a large room of financial and industry analysts, and spend a good hour on the topic -- it's that important.

And when Paul started his presentation following Joe, it smoothly picked up where Joe left off.

Virtual Findings From Gartner

Someone shared a copy of a recent Gartner report "2008 Data Center Conference Instant Polling Results: Virtualization Summary", dated March 2, 2009.

For those of you who are obsessed with methodologies, you won't like this one -- the sampling bias is rather significant, e.g. attendees at the Gartner conference who chose to answer this survey.

But, with that grain of salt, there are some interesting findings.

Of Barcodes, VMware and Private Clouds

People who read this blog must sometimes think I come up with all these ideas all by my lonesome self.

I do my fair share, but I'm also heavily influenced from others here at EMC.

Today, I'm going to channel another VMware uber-geek at EMC, Chad Sakac, and explore the simple but powerful concept of barcodes as today's virtualized environments evolve into tomorrow's private clouds.

It's just a well-understood concept from one domain being applied to another.

VMware And The Private Cloud

Big day at VMworld today.  Not only did VMware spell out their vision of enterprise cloud computing, but Paul Maritz went into considerable detail during his keynote -- more from Steve Herrod tomorrow.

Watching the twitterfeed and the blogosphere, it's almost like a thunderclap went off.

And maybe it did ...