This week HP demonstrated several of their technology offerings to the storage community, and as a part of this event HP provided a hands on lab where attendees to 'kick the tires' of their storage technology offerings. As a part for this lab attendees were able to complete the same tasks with storage arrays and management tools from EMC and NetApp.
These types of educational experiences can really benefit the community by showcasing one’s enhancements and differentiation. I fully endorse these types of labs, sharing information empowers the user community and raises the bar in terms of what we must develop in order to remain an industry leader… except this isn’t what happened.
According to multiple tweets attendees were stating that tests designed to demonstrate storage integration with Windows systems and VMware were the command line interface and Filerview. This caught my attention as these aren't the tools NetApp recommends for our install base. A quick glance at a few of the sites covering the event confirmed the use of these legacy tools.
In fairness I need to highlight that HP did follow the steps provided in our storage best practices documents for VMware TR-3428 (VI3) and TR-3749 (vSphere). I would like to share with you that we are in the process of updating these documents with a goal of reducing their sizes by approximately 40%.
We hear the VMware community loud and clear - simplicity equates to scaling an environment.
Via the Twitter I reached out to Calvin Zito - aka the HP Storage Guy – and asked if he would be open in us demoing what we offer in these use cases via WebEX. Like a true storage enthusiast Calvin accepted my invitation along and we extended the invitation to HP TechDay attendees Ed Saipetch of Breathing Data, Stephen Foskett of the Pack Rat, Rich Brambley of VM/ETC and Devang Panchigar of StorageNerve.
WOW! From a storage industry perspective these guys are household names!
I am honored that these storage experts would their time to join us as we demo our technology in efforts to help share their understanding of current NetApp offerings.
The Agenda
We have put together the following demos in attempt to replicate the technology that was on display n the hands on labs at HP Storage Day. If I am missing any demos would someone please let me know?
• Array Management
• LUN Provisioning, Management, and Cloning in Windows
• SAN Datastore Provisioning & Management in VI3
• NAS Datastore Provisioning & Management in vSphere
• Per-deduplicated VM Cloning in vSphere
Partnering for the Benefit of Customers
While this event is not an official HP and NetApp event I do want to share with everyone that all of he technology on display is currently available with HP servers and EVA storage arrays virtualized with NetApp vSeries.
Your Invitation to the Event
I thought it would be appropriate to extend this invitation to you by making this event open to the public, so if you have time, please join us! Here’s the details:
Topic: NetApp Simplicity Demonstrated
Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Time: 4:00 pm, Eastern Daylight Time / 1:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time / GMT -04:00
Meeting number: 921 580 376
Meeting password: s1mpl3
Follow the link for more information or to join the demo. There is no requirement to register in order to attend this demo.
Teleconference: 888.765.3653 - Concall ID: 3521029
We are looking forward to seeing you next week, so please join us!
One final note: If I accidentally left anyone out of this post, my apologies. I thought I had additional confirmations. If you drop me a tweet and I’ll correct the post.
Looking forward to it Vaughn! I'm glad it's open to the public so now I can get my co-workers (the true storage experts I lean on) to attend.
Posted by: twitter.com/rbrambley | October 04, 2009 at 10:53 AM
Vaughn, I'm very interested in attending this session but I'm in training all week. Will this session be recorded so I can watch it later that day? Thanks!
Tony
Posted by: Tony | October 05, 2009 at 07:26 AM
Tony Great point - I will see if we can record it and publicly post it
Thanks for the suggestion
Posted by: Vaughn Stewart | October 05, 2009 at 09:24 AM