The fluid data discussions continue today at Dell Storage Forum, beginning with a chat between Michael Dell, Phil Soran, and Darren Thomas. The three talked about how the Dell storage portfolio is even stronger with the addition of Compellent. Dell, now has the ability to play in all areas of the data center, from servers, networking, and the customers who want high-demand high-capacity storage to the customers who need storage on a budget. One of the concerns Michael wanted to address with the attendees was that Dell as a company has been and will be very “channel friendly”. Phil added to that by saying that the acquisitions has opened up more doors on the channel side because of the increased sales force Dell provides. One of the comments that got the best reaction on twitter was when Michael said “Ok you have big data, what about big impact and big decisions”. Our fluid data solutions enable customers to “use” the data to make the right decisions for their company and not have to worry about where it is stored or how it is managed.

After chatting among themselves, they took some questions from the audience. One of the questions was how long did Michael think it would be before we transition away from spindle disks and move to SSD. Michael’s answer was 

“Because spindle disks are so inexpensive and now that we have and at such a large capacity’s will be using them for a good while longer”. He also added, “With the newer SSD drives and non-volatile storage, tiering becomes even more important as well as back-up and recovery”. There were lots of great questions from the audience that were well received from the “Big 3”. Michael stressed the importance of gathering feedback directly from customers and partners during the event to continue delivering world class solutions, services, and support for our customers.

After the keynote we had another chance to interact with our customers during our lunch expo. We had a number of people from the EqualLogic and Compellent side come to our booth and talk to us about how great it is that we brought the EqualLogic user’s group and the Compellent C-Drive event together into one conference. They were amazed that we made the event bigger but yet kept it personal and relevant. During our fluid SAN challenge we asked attendees to complete a number of steps to create an EQL volume, snapshot, and a clone in the fastest time. We had a number of first time EqualLogic and longtime Compellent customers, as well as non-technical C-level executives and everyday users ALL complete the challenge in 3 minutes or less. If you haven’t stopped by the Dell TechCenter booth, come by and see if you beat the fastest time.

Once lunch was over we headed back to the fluid lounge where we were hosting today’s #SANChat. We had a number of people in the lounge having a great discussion around Data Center Bridging (DCB).

As the day came to an end we were treated to a bus ride over to Epcot for a special dinner and a fireworks show. During the dinner Darren Thomas took the stage and thanked everyone for being a part of Dell Storage Forum and reminded us about the session on Thursday where they will discuss the feedback gathered from user’s throughout the week. All in all it was a great day for food, fun, and fireworks!

To keep up with all the happenings from Dell Storage Forum, save a twitter search for the #DellSF11 and #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 for updates.