Other than having and on and off bout with some stomach bug yesterday, all and all the show was great. Here are some of the highlights (The post is picture heavy… sorry):
TL;DR – I went to some sessions, they were cool, but not as cool as vmotioning a running VM onto the Isilon in the keynote.
The Sessions
Keynote #1
I don’t have much to add or say about this one, excepting that they touched on some pretty interesting things re: “Big Data” and the new way’s things are going to need to be done now that the world is going virtual.
Keynote #2
This one was a bit more interesting in that the following happened:
Project Lightning
(more here). Basically, EMC Really Really likes flash. Really:
the big news is outing the fact that for many moons, we’ve been quietly working on a project to not only deliver a server-side flash-based PCIe card, but more importantly – an end-to-end solution around applying the idea of “tiering” from the server all the way to the array.
The demo on this was was slick… I’m still a bit intrigued about the “vSphere & Isilon co-residence” bit that allowed a workload to be vmotioned ONTO the Isilon. Interesting implications… and kinda wonder when it’ll be available across the rest of the platforms.
UIM 2.1
Integrated with vCenter, Provisioning & Ops Goodness (more here).
(Image & youtube embed borrowed from Chad @ virtualgeek)
VPLEX Geo
Also Cool was vPlex Geo. 3rd site witness & Active/Active across async distances. Read more here.
PowerPath/VE #1:
I also took in a few PowerPath/VE sessions. The first was sort of a 101 on some of the changes to PowerPath for 2011. Highlights:
- Improved Bus Dead/Alive messaging
- High latency watermark metric now provided along with the warning
- PowerPath Viewer is a free download, runs on Windows & lets you monitor multiple hosts
- RSA encryption for Data at Rest w/ HBA assisted encryption. (Not sure if this is on vSphere, yet).
PowerPath/VE #2:
This one went a little deeper than the first & covered vBlocks & vPlex. Highlights:
- UIM is vBlock & PowerPath Magic – As in, it auto-configures your vSphere hosts in the vBlock to use best practices (dual dual port HBAs, each cabled to a different director, etc)
- rcli/rpowermt for remote administration of ESXi hosts
- PowerPath Viewer Q2 release for vSphere support
- Deploy PowerPath/VE using VUM
- VSI – is also VUM integrated & gives some slick views into your emc environment
- PowerPath/VE lives in the hypervisor kernel
Bloggers Lounge:
Sorry John Troyer, but EMC has set the bar pretty high:
Robotics?!
The Cloud
Summary
All and all an excellent first day, and I’m looking forward to Day #2.