This blog post written by Kamesh Pemmaraju, senior product manager for cloud solutions with focus on OpenStack

Last year, it was enough for Summit participants to just install OpenStack. This year, the OpenStack Summit has expanded to keep up with the OpenStack’s rapid growth. The incredible pace of innovation has added an explosion of complex issues such as orchestrating upgrades, elastic cloud networking, and OpenStack distributions. Once again, the Dell Solutions team is rising to the challenge. We will be leading and participating in a wide range of events, from Summit sessions to the final party.

I am privileged to be the moderator for a timely panel discussion on OpenStack distributions and how they will impact future OpenStack innovation. We want our audience to better understand how distributions contribute to OpenStack adoption, as well as how they meet the unique needs and requirements of different target marketplaces. The panel includes Perry Myers (RedHat); Pete Chadwick (Suse); Nick Barcet (Canonical); Yoram Heller (Morphlabs); and Joseph George (Dell).

We will also be presenting several informal, “unplugged” versions of our Summit sessions. If you can’t make it to the “main stage” sessions, join us for the whiteboard versions at the Dell booth. Our OpenStack gurus are offering some additional bonus sessions you won’t want to miss. (Overviews of the Summit sessions are posted on my blog. The whiteboard session schedule will be posted at the Dell Booth.)

Don’t forget to check out the latest videos and hardware on display. The booth will feature one of Barton George’s “Sputnik” Dell XPS 13 laptops running Ubuntu Linux. (For extra credit reading, watch Mark Shuttleworth’s OSCON video that talks about “Sputnik,” starting at about 15:50.) The Dell PowerEdge C6220 server was just added to the Dell OpenStack Reference Architecture (RA), so stop by to check out the display sample and get more info. The new PowerEdge C8000 series will also be featured.

Last but not least, we invite you to join us at the Summit’s many ongoing social events. Dell Emerging Ecosystem partner Mirantis and Dell customer DreamHost are both throwing big parties Monday night. On Wednesday, meet our Dell Board members John Igoe and Rob Hirschfeld at the 7:45 a.m. “Breakfast with the Board.” Dell, Morphlabs, and Media Temple are hosting the “Breakfast for Dinner” OpenStack Closing Party — register now to attend. We hope to see you there!

If you can’t join us in person, I will be sharing Tweets, videos, pictures and post on my Cloudel.com blog that will cover everything from the important announcements to open source fun. Stay tuned!