This morning’s adventures at Dell Storage Forum started with a keynote from Greg Davis and Brian Bell. They talked about the future of Dell Storage and the combining of the EqualLogic user group and the Compellent C-Drive conferences. Toward the end of the keynote the two Dell executives did Q&A with the audience, but with a twist. They took questions live via twitter and the response was actually very good. After the keynote we headed over to the Fluid Lounge. One thing I noticed walking through the hotel was that the Dell Brand was all over the place. From a Dell logo on the floor that made waves when you walked over it to a huge Dell logo in the hotel pool.
The blogger lounge was set up so bloggers and members of the TechCenter community would have a place to sit down and recharge. There was also a cool sign for all the attendees to sign.
If you are attending, it’s a must you stop by .
The next stop on our list was the hands on labs, here there were 24 labs running on 16 Dell blades with 1.5TB of RAM, 4 EQL PS6010 XV arrays, powering 1,667 VM’s. And of course none of this would be possible without the main ingredient, Awesomesauce!
That takes us into our Dell TechCenter booth. For those that are familiar with the popular British car show Top Gear on BBC America, you have at some point seen or heard about the “Star in a reasonably priced car” challenge where the star takes a lap around the track and has their time recorded. We are taking this challenge into the data center, well maybe just the expo floor at Dell Storage Forum. If you come by the Dell TechCenter booth during expo hours and take our Fluid SAN Challenge you will receive a free Dell TechCenter t-shirt and have your name and time entered into the record books. The challenge will involve performing various tasks on one of the Dell Storage products, so come see how you stack up against your peers by taking the Fluid SAN Challenge.
To keep up with all the happenings from Dell Storage Forum, save a twitter search for the #DellSF11 & #FluidData hash tag, stay tuned to the Dell Storage Facebook page, the Dell TechCenter Facebook page, and watch these twitter accounts, and the Flickr page.
Yesterday was day 2 of the Dell Storage Forum (see this post for a recap of day 1).
Day 2 was a continuation of information for the partner channels, as well as instructor-led training and hands-on labs for customers. The first general session was led by Greg Davis (VP and GM of global commercial channels for Dell) and Brian Bell (executive director of worldwide sales for Dell Compellent). They talked to our partners about how to bring fluid data architecture to our shared customers.
The hands-on labs opened. There are labs for every Dell Storage product, everything from basic configuration of arrays to integrations with common applications and our partner's software. Dennis Smith of the Dell Tech Center has a great post on these activities, complete with a video overview of the labs with Will Urban.
We've seen some great blog coverage from our customers and partners:
Virtualization Buster
Riverbed
On tap for today? Keynotes by Darren Thomas and Phil Soran. You can watch the keynotes live by clicking this link . There will be more hands-on labs. The Cube will be broadcasting live from the show floor . And we have a tweetup at Ragland Road .
For the latest in the very busy #dellsf11 stream, check out our Facebook page. It should be another busy day!
I've been holding off on doing my wrap-up post of the Dell Storage Forum because I wanted to wait until other folks finished posting about their conference take-aways. But you people are maniacs -- the content just keeps rolling in! :) I give up, here's my wrap-up. If I miss something you posted, or if you post something after this goes live (ahem Mr. Lund...), please add a comment with your link!
Fluid data architecture
The theme of the conference was Dell's fluid data architecture. Everywhere you looked you could see the fluid influence.
Every one of the b ig releases at the conference where about solidifying this architecture .
Folks in Orlando told us what fluid means to them in this video .
Where to find more information
There are still lots of tweets coming through on the #dellsf11 hashtag , and mentioning the @dellsf twitter account. You may want to follow the Twitter list from the event, to keep up with the community's influencers. We've been posting all of the great content that you guys have been posting on the Dell Storage Facebook Fan Page . There are some great pictures and videos on the Dell Flickr account .
Here are blog posts and other content generated from the Dell Storage Forum:
Dell Tech Center : one | two | three
Inside Enterprise IT: one | two | three | four | five
Dell Shares: one
Wikibon : This page lists all of the videos of interviews that were streamed live from the conference, as well as a list of blog posts created by wikibon during the conference.
Infosmack: Podcast recorded live at the Dell storage forum tweetup
Virtualization Buster: one | two | three
Fabio Rapposelli: one
Roger Lund's IT and VMware/Virtualization blog: one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | ten | eleven | twelve | YouTube channel
Breathing Data: one
A Technologists Corner: one | two
George Crump: one | two | three | four
The VAR guy : one | two | three | four
Infotech PR : youtube video
Clause EGGE: one
Emulex: Session presentation (slideshare)