SAN

(editor's note - this post comes to us courtesy of Tim Sherbak, one of our virtualization gurus)

The VMworld show is next week in Las Vegas and we'll be there in a big way.  We'll be there to show solutions highlighting data protection, disaster recovery, consolidation, virtual desktops, and systems management.  We’ve got a series of live demos in the booth including a full VMware environment built from our new blade and rack servers and the new Dell EqualLogic PS5500E.  We’ll be demonstrating VMware Site Recovery Manager as well as the new Auto-Snapshot Manager/VMware Edition, Blade Server Management, Chassis System Controller and our OpenManage system management tools. 

In addition, we’ve got some exceptionally innovative technology demos that VMware and Dell engineering have put together. 

Some of the new products we'll have there include the new quad core M905* blade and 4 socket 6 core R900* rack Power Edge servers, Dell EqualLogic PS5500E, Auto-Snapshot Manager/VMware Edition, our integration with VMware’s Site Recovery Manager, the Dell | EMC CX4, our on-demand desktop streaming (ODDS) and virtual remote desktop (VRD) solutions.   We’re even raffling off a couple of new Dell Latitude E laptops to some lucky attendees. 

Here’s a few of the breakout sessions that Dell is participating in or contributed content to and gives you an idea of some of the areas of our focus and energy.

• Dell Keynote Presentation: The Intelligent, Automated IT Infrastructure (KNDell)
• Managing Power and Cooling with Virtualization (PO2514)
• Server and Storage Sizing Best Practices for VMware VDI (VD2505)
• Planning and Implementing Simple, Affordable, Automated Disaster Recovery Through Dell | Virtualization Solution (BC2512)
• Operational Readiness – Truth and Fiction (PO2535)
• Fulfilling Regulatory Requirements in the Healthcare Industry Using VMware Virtualized Infrastructure (BC2411)
• VM-Aware Storage: A Blueprint for VMware Infrastructure Integration with Storage Hardware (TA1465)

A couple of interesting notes on a few of these breakout sessions. 

· John Joseph is providing our keynote presentation.  As you may or may not know, John comes to Dell as a part of the EqualLogic acquisition and has been fully involved in the virtualization market and intimately tied in to EqualLogic’s VMware partnership over the past several years.

· BC2411 is being delivered by Donald Wilkins of Navicure Inc. highlighting his virtualized environment built on Dell equipment and his experience in being one of the first to deploy VMware Site Recovery Manager.  For more on his implementation, check out our case study.

· TA1465 is being presented by Scott Davis, from VMware’s CTO office and reflects upon some interesting developments underway to optimize the integration of VMware and SANs (and smartly ties into the technology demos we’re demonstrating at the Dell booth – more on that later).

· VD2505 reflects upon a joint engineering project between VMware and Dell to analyze and understand infrastructure sizing requirements for virtual desktop workloads (a sneak peak of this presentation was just broadcast over the web. See it here. More than 700 people have signed up for the breakout session!  Virtual desktops are the new hotness.

· BC2512 is effectively a free hour of disaster recovery consulting from our Dell professional services group that also details implementing VMware Site Recovery Manager as a disaster recovery solution.

Also, be sure to check out the Akorri booth (#1314) where they will have a “Live” demo of Akorri BalancePoint managing multiple VMs in an ESX cluster running on Dell PowerEdge servers with Dell EqualLogic storage. It’s a great example of a Dell virtualized data center in a box.

And of course we’ll have a whole slew of virtualization experts on hand to consult with VMworld attendees. In fact, there will be presentations on a variety of topics all day long right in our booth. We'll also have people from our PartnerDirect program on hand for those interested in our channel program.

So please stop by the Dell booth (#1000).  You can’t miss it.  It looks like this:

And if you can’t make it to the show, our TechCenter has put up a Dell site at the VMworld virtual exhibitor booth so keep tabs on us there.

* These generations of servers were specifically engineered from the ground up with virtualized environments in mind and they hit the mark.  We just released VMmark scores for the M905 and R900 configurations and they are smoking! 

This video shows how to recover a complete file system (you might also think of it as recovering an entire volume) using the integrated snapshot capabilities of Dell EqualLogic storage arrays.

Alex McDonald at Netapp made a few snarky comments today about Dell's acquisition of EqualLogic.  As if Netapp should be casting stones about anybody else's acquisitions.  Anybody remember Spinnaker?  Dell has made very rapid progress with EqualLogic and now Netapp is desperate to find ways to compete. 

But I should really thank Alex for reminding me to post about our partnership with Exagrid for de-duplication functionality.  Exagrid has excellent technology and they are fast gaining recognition and traction with their products - including their ExaGrid iSCSI De-duplication Gateway™.  

FWIW, Alex linked to this post of mine on Storage@work from last March , to support his assertion we would never have a de-dupe solution. Hmmm....  maybe he was speed reading beyond his limits.  Whatever - I guess he missed the context where our partner Exagrid was preparing to announce their dedupe appliance for iSCSI.

Following on from my post and visit to VMworld Europe, I wanted to share a vlog of the disaster recovery demo that Will Urban, Product Marketing Consultant, and the Dell EqualLogic team were conducting on the Dell stand at this virtualization event.

For demonstration purposes the two Dell stands on the exhibition floor represented London and Paris offices and the demo goes through the simple a step-by-step process of testing your disaster recovery strategy before you need it. I particularly like the way Will describes an ideal disaster recovery conversation with a CIO and how Site Recovery Manager (SRM) can help you to simply demonstrate that your disaster recovery and business continuity plan is sound, prior to any crisis and without disrupting normal service.