I am simultaneously proud and humbled to have been included in this year’s list.

You can find the full list of 2013 vExpert awardees here.  I’m sure you’ll see many familiar names — all folks whose future contributions I look forward to seeing.  Congratulations to all the 2013 awardees!

• Support for Hadoop’s HDFS 2.0
• Object Storage
• Extended RESTful APIs with support for EMC Atmos, Amazon S3, and OpenStack’s Swift
• Support for EMC’s newly-announced software-defined storage platform, ViPR
• Online Block-Level Data Deduplication
• New Audit Security features

I’ll break down each of the new features below.

Hadoop HDFS 2.0

Isilon was already the first storage solution to offer native Hadoop integration with built-in support for HDFS 1.0.  The OneFS update adds support for the new HDFS 2.0.

Isilon OneFS will allow for simultaneous support for HDFS 1.0 and 2.0, allowing the same data to be exported either way.  This will not only allow customers an easy way to test new Hadoop distributions before actually converting to 2.0, but will also allow that conversion to go smoothly with minimal downtime.

The new Hadoop integration will offer full support for Pivotal HD (formerly Greenplum HD).

Object Storage

You can argue that Isilon offers object storage today through the REST APIs added in OneFS 7.0, but the new update will expand upon this functionality and bring true object store capability to the Isilon platform.

In the update Isilon incorporates a REST Object Access to Namespace interface which will enable automated provisioning and management of storage.  Adding this support for objects allows customers to consolidate their object and file storage into a single, easy-to-manage, scalable system.  Object access will occur with the same high performance as Isilon file access.

Extended REST APIs

The new extended REST APIs in the updated OneFS allow for easy cloud-extensibility of the Isilon platform.  By integrating full support for:

• EMC Atmos
• Amazon S3
• OpenStack Swift

customers will be able to easily move both files and objects between their Isilon cluster and any of these cloud platforms.

EMC Software-Defined Storage — ViPR

EMC’s newly-announced software-defined storage layer, ViPR (formerly known as “Project Bourne”) will act as the go-between allowing object access from Isilon to the platforms mentioned above.

Online Block-Level Data Deduplication

The new version of OneFs adds simple block-based deduplication of stored data.  Administrators can easily set deduplication policies based on individual directiories or storage pools.

Data deduplication will be done post-process, which means that new files and objects will initially be stored on Isilon full-size.  Later, a background job will scan these files and objects for duplicate blocks, both within the individual entity, but also across all deduplicated entities throughout the entire Isilon cluster.

The deduplication granularity is a fixed block size of 8KB.  Depending on the nature of the dataset, EMC predicts customers can expect up to a 30% reduction in need storage capacity, power and cooling, and rack space needed.

Audit Security

The update to OneFS will add new enhancements to help ensure regulatory compliance.  The main addition enabling this will be full integration with the EMC Common Event Enabler (CEE).  CEE enables audit applications to record all file accesses occuring via SMB and/or CIFS.  This further allows for easy report generation and chain-of-custody tracking.  With these features, customers wil be better able to meet regulations such as HIPAA and Sarabanes-Oxley.  At least as importantly, customers will be able to demonstrate to an auditor that they are, in fact, in compliance with these regulations.

Isilon Futures

As part of the announcement, EMC spoke of collaboration between Isilon and VCE.  Existing VCE partners will be able to sell Isilon alongside a Vblock as part of an overall solution, for example, to provide home directory space for a Vblock acting as VDI infrastructure.

EMC said that in the future the Vblock and Isilon will be able to be managed through a single interface, so I expect that a future release of the VCE Vision management software will offer support for managing Isilon clusters.

Availability

EMC says the new version of OneFS will be delivered “later this year”.  Earlier rumors had placed the target date as June, but I’ve been unable to confirm that.

Working out my schedule details was originally an exercise purely intended for my own benefit.  Having everything in my calendar app will keep me on track once I’m embroiled in the full-on organized chaos that tech conferences tend to be.  However, a conversation with Matt Brender (@mjbrender) convinced me that others might be interested as well (and that I might want people to be able to find me), so following his example, I’ve decided to share mine here.

First, a disclaimer.  Just like how no carefully-contrived battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy, I recognize that no carefully-planned schedule survives arrival on-site at a tech conference.  Despite that, I still wouldn’t want to go into either endeavor without a plan.

So, if you’d like to meet up at EMC World, your best bet is to actually contact me directly (Twitter or email work best, but a comment on this post would also work).  If you want to try the “be where Dave is likely to be” method, what follows is where I’m likely to be.  If you want to know where I am for sure at any given moment, I’ll likely be live-tweeting the entire conference, so simply follow my Twitter feed.

Standard Disclaimers

All days and times listed are local Las Vegas time. Schedule subject to change without notice. Your mileage may vary. Do not attempt. Dave is a trained professional using all proper safety equipment. Yes, I know there are conflicts in the schedule. Terms and conditions may apply.

Dave’s EMC World 2013 Schedule

Here’s where I’m most likely to be found at given times.  At any given time not specifically listed the places I’m most likely to be found are:

• During Conference Hours
  • The Blogger Space
  • The EMC Elect Space
  • The Hands-On Lab
  • The Solutions Pavillion
  • The Partner Lounge
• Outside of Conference Hours
  • Dinner or other gathering with friends and colleagues
  • A poker table
  • Trying to catch up on work
  • Writing blog posts
  • (least likely) Actually sleeping

Sunday

Sunday will definitely be my lightest day at the conference.  The plan looks more or less like this:

• 16:30 – Arrive Las Vegas airport
• Check in to hotel
• Go to the Venetian to check in for EMC World while the lines are short (the Registration Desk is open from 15:00 to 20:00)
• Go to dinner with my colleagues from Accunet Solutions (@AccunetSolution)
• Scout out poker tables and/or find old friends to connect with

Monday

EMC World officially starts with the 2nd Annual Global Partner Summit (GPS).  I missed the first one since I was working a booth last year, so I’m very interested in seeing what will be happening here.

• 8:30 – GPS Kick-off Session
• 11:00 – GPS Global Alliances and Service Provider Keynote
  As a provider of EMC-related services, I’m very interested in this.
• 12:30 – Lunch with my fellow EMC Elect
  It will be great to meet the other Elect in person.
• 12:30 – EMC Community Network (ECN) Community Manager Summit
  I usually only interact with my fellow Community Managers online; it will be great to get some time together.
• 13:30 – GPS Americas Solution Provider Breakout Sessions
• 17:30 – Software-Defined Storage
  I’ll that this is one of the topics I’m the most curious about…
• 18:30 – Grand Opening Reception in the Solutions Pavillion
• 20:00 – EMC Unified Storage Division invite-only Poker Tournament
  (I’m very psyched that I managed to score an invite to this event.)
• 20:00 – EMC Partner-Exclusive Reception

Tuesday

EMC World kicks into full swing.  I anticipate going non-stop all day.

• 10:00 – VNX Family Update
• 13:00 – VSPEX Birds-of-a-Feather Session
• 14:30 – Pat Gelsinger’s Software-Defined Datacenter Session
• 14:30 – Meetup on [REDACTED]
• 16:00 – Isilon OneFS, an Insider’s Peek Under the Covers
• 17:00 – Meet with EMC Syncplicity folks
• 17:30 – EMC XtemIO: Revolutionizing Applications
• 19:00 – EMC Elect pre-Party
• 20:00 – EMC Community (ECN) Appreciation Event
• 20:00 – EMC Momentum Party

Wednesday

Another very busy day.

• 7:00 – Breakfast meeting
• 8:05 – EMC TV live interview spot
• 8:30 – Introduction to EMC XtermSW Cache
• 10:00 – VPLEX and RecoverPoint: What’s New in 2013
• 11:30 – Software-Defined Storage: True Storage Virtualization
• 15:00 – Engineers Unplugged Whiteboard Video Recording Session
  I got invited back!
• 20:00 – Customer Appreciation Party

Thursday

Final day of EMC World.  The last chance to meet with some of the folks attending.

• 8:05 – EMC TV live interview spot
• 11:30 – Software-Defined Storage: Limitless Innovation for Application Owners and Developers

Want to Meet?

If you’re like to get together, at the moment it looks like Thursday offers the most options. Reach out!

RecoverPoint is a SAN-based data protection/replication solution.  It works through the use of a specialized RecoverPoint Appliance (RPA) installed on the SAN.  The solution uses “splitters” to take a copy of all data writes and send them to the RPA.  The splitters can be one of three types: array-based (on supported arrays), network-based (on supported switches), or host-based (as device drivers for HBAs in environments not using RecoverPoint-supported arrays or switches).

Depending on the configuration, the RPA can use this duplicate data stream to provide one of three modes of protection:

• CDP – Continuous Data Protection (single site)
• CRR – Continuous Remote Replication (two sites)
• CLR – Concurrent Local and Remote — running CDP and CRR simultaneously

In any of these modes, RecoverPoint gives a DVR-like ability to rollback to any point in time within the user-defined protection window (larger protection windows require more resources, mostly storage space).

Let’s break down the new features in RecoverPoint 4.0:

Multi-Site Support

In previous versions, RecoverPoint in CRR (or CLR) worked point-to point from one site to another.  There was a way to set up a cascading solution, but that wasn’t true multi-site — it was chaining two point-to-point solutions together.

In 4.0, RecoverPoint adds true multi-site support, at both synchronous and asynchronous replication distances.  This allows for protection options not previously available.

Up to four remote sites can be configured to replicate data to a single RPA at a central site.  Or, for improved protection of mission-critical production data, a single RPA can be configured to replicate data to up to four separate remote sites — all while maintaining the point-in-time “DVR” capability.

Improved Management

RecoverPoint 4.0 adds RESTful APIs.  This, in turn, offers extensibility and an easy way to create fully-customizable reporting.

Additionally, 4.0 adds EMC Unisphere support for easy management.  EMC is working to standardize their management GUI across all their platforms, and today RecoverPoint (and VPLEX) join the Unisphere family.

Enhanced VMware Site Recovery Manager Support

RecoverPoint could previously be used with VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) to provide the underlying replication for the datastores.

RecoverPoint 4.0 adds advanced integration with SRM.  When SRM manages a site failover with RecoverPoint 4.0, adminstrators have the ability to select the specific point-in-time state of the datastore(s) that will be used at the failover site.  Think of it as enabling the addition of full CRR capability to SRM protection for thousands of VMs.

Virtual RecoverPoint Appliance (vRPA)

(Yes, I did save my favorite new feature for last.)

RecoverPoint 4.0, in certain use cases (specifically with EMC VNX) no longer requires the installation of the purpose-built RPA hardware.  Instead, the RPA is available as a fully-functional virtual appliance that can run as a virtual machine.  In addition to this giving the RPA all the additional flexibility and availability benefits that server virtualization can provide, this obviously reduces the solutions footprint in the datacenter, and can dramatically reduce the cost of a RecoverPoint solution.

The vRPA gets implemented differently than the hardware RPA.  RecoverPoint is a solution for FC SAN storage and, as such, requires the RPA to be connected to the FC SAN.  The vRPA, on the other hand, uses an IP connection (specifically iSCSI) to the VNX, as shown in the diagram below.

I’ve said before that I believe that virtual appliances will become the enterprise software delivery system of the future, but solutions like this offer specific examples for people having trouble understanding the whole idea behind the software-defined datacenter.  That idea may be too much to take in at once, but it’s easy to see how, with the vRPA, RecoverPoint becomes a software-defined data protection solution.

Today, EMC announced updates to their VPLEX family of storage virtualization devices, including a new way to purchase it — the VPLEX Metro Express Edition.

What’s a VPLEX?

If you’re not familiar with it, the EMC VPLEX creates a layer of abstraction between physical hosts and storage arrays — it virtualizes the storage.  Doing this provides datacenters with all kinds of flexible options they wouldn’t otherwise have:

• Non-disruptive migration of data from one array to another
• Mirroring data between dissimilar storage arrays
• Creating storage volumes that span multiple arrays

That’s just within a single datacenter — the configuration EMC calls VPLEX Local.  Add another cluster of VPLEX directors at another datacenter, and you can use the VPLEX’s AccessAnywhere cache coherency features to do all of that between datacenters at different locations — at synchronous replication distances with VPLEX Metro, and at asynchronous replication distances with VPLEX Geo.

For me personally, the most interesting thing about VPLEX is the ability to use the VPLEX Metro configuration to create a VMware vSphere Metro Stretch Cluster — a single ESXi cluster spanning two physically separate datacenters.  Virtual machines can be moved from one datacenter to another via vMotion with no interruption of service at all.

What Did EMC Announce?

EMC has announced a updated version of the VPLEX operating system — GeoSynchrony 5.2 — that adds some long-awaited features.  These features include:

• Non-disruptive volume expansion
• Support for larger block sizes (adjustable from 128KB to 1MB)
• Management by EMC Unisphere
• Support for VMware vSphere Storage API for Array Integration (VAAI) primitives

(That last is one I’ve been particularly interested in since VPLEX first came out…)

What’s the Express Edition?

One of the new features included in GeoSynchrony 5.2 is enhanced integration with EMC RecoverPoint.  VPLEX Metro Express Edition takes advantage of this in order to provide customers with a new way to purchase VPLEX — one that combines the data mobility offered by VPLEX with the continuous data protection offered by RecoverPoint.

VPLEX Metro Express Edition is a pre-packaged solution containing the hardware and software licenses for both VPLEX Metro and RecoverPoint Continuous Data Protection (CDP) — VPLEX protection and mobility for up to 40TB of data and RecoverPoint CDP for up to 40TB as well.

This combination takes things beyond the mere disaster recovery offered by other replication solutions, and offers true continuous operation and disaster avoidance, PLUS data rollback to any point in time.

I predict it won’t be long before this starts being referred to as “software-defined data protection”…

Buzzwords aside, this solution is another example of how advances in virtualization are taking us to whole new places.

Today, Amy Lewis (@CommsNinja) has posted the final version of the video we recorded.  I have to say, the editing makes it look very professional.

For me, improving efficiency and gaining flexibility have always been the driving forces behind virtualization.  Hopefully, we were able to get those ideas across in the video.

You can view the video in context on the Cisco Data Center and Cloud blog, or just watch it below.

The topic I was originally asked to speak to was “The Evolution of Virtualization”.  I was paired with Gabriel Chapman (@Bacon_Is_King), who I’d only known online up until that point.  As I understand it, that episode will be published next week.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share our thought process — what went into preparation for the episode.  In advance of PEX, Gabriel and I spoke on the phone and kicked a couple ideas around.  We talked about the efficiencies that virtualization creates.  We talked about logical partitions on mainframes and how we might represent that visually on the whiteboard.

I took notes during our call and turned them into an outline that we used as our starting point.  I’ve reproduced it below “as-is”.  I haven’t seen the video yet, so I thought it would be interesting to see how the final product compares to what we started with.

What are your thoughts on the evolution of virtualization?  Did we get it right?  Did we miss anything?  Personally, I find the idea of what I called “accidental advances” — benefits that arise as a side-effect rather than by direct intent — particularly interesting.

Evolution of Virtualization (Draft Outline)

At its core, virtualization has always been about creating efficiencies – getting the most out of what you have by maximizing the use of resources.

• The Early Days
  • Virtualization traces its roots to mainframe computing
  • By creating logical partitions, a single computing resource could be treated as several

• The Client-server world
  • As computing moved away from mainframes to individual single-purpose servers, resources were distributed inefficiently
  • Many standalone services were given their own server, only to end up using a fraction of its resources (CPU, memory, network bandwidth, storage, etc.)
    • Since all the hardware was separate, there was no way to share distribute those unused resources elsewhere and keep the services standalone and separate
  • Enter the beginning of “Virtualization as we now know it”
    • At first, virtualization was all about consolidation.  By virtualizing servers and encapsulating them, people were able to make full use of the hardware resources (e.g.: one host now housing ten virtual machines), while still maintaining that separation.
• Accidental advances
  • While this consolidation improved utilization of resources,things weren’t as efficient or easy as they could be – you were still limited to the resources within a single host
  • With the creation  of SANs and shared storage, new options opened up.
  • Sharing a pool of storage resources among multiple hosts allowed those storage resources to be easily provisioned and used extremely efficiently, allowing for even higher consolidation ratios
  • One day, someone realized that having multiple hosts share storage meant that the same virtual machine images were visible to multiple hosts.
    • With VMs no longer tied to a particular host, high availability became available.
• Where we are today
  • There have been further advancements in virtualization – we’re not just virtualizing servers any more
    • Storage – advancing beyond the simple sharing of storage, it’s now being virtualized, whether through a virtual storage appliance (where a virtual machine acts as an intelligent controller for storage resources) or through a storage virtualization product like EMC’s VPLEX.
    • Network – the idea of using a virtual network for handling VM-to-VM communication within a single host has been around for a while, but now virtual pools of network resources are being shared amongst physical hosts, whether through the distributed vSwitch capability that comes with vSphere or through a product like the Cisco Nexus
    • Virtual datacenters – so far, we’re only really seeing this at the lab level, but since you can run nested vSphere – that is, creating a virtual vSphere host capable of running virtual machines itself – it’s now possible to emulate an entire datacenter of multiple hosts on a single piece of hardware…
    • (anything else?)
• The future
  • Expect to see more things being virtualized
  • (Need to flesh this out, give some examples or predictions)

Magic Balloon is a brainstorming-style creativity exercise in the form of a game played on a whiteboard.  I originally learned about Magic Balloon in college when my friend Nat taught it to me.  It’s a fun game to play with your kids or with your crazy friends.  It’s also a great exercise for helping folks who think they aren’t creative or who find themselves unsure what to do with the big empty space of a freshly-erased whiteboard.

In February, I went to VMware Partner Exchange.  In the weeks leading up to the conference, Amy Lewis (@CommsNinja) of Engineers Unplugged fame reached out and invited me to do a video episode in the series. Naturally I agreed — even before we had a topic selected.

During our topic brainstorming conversation, I brought up Magic Balloon.  The conversation shot off on a tangent (as good brainstorming often does), and one thing led to another, and — long story short — at VMware PEX we recorded a Magic Balloon episode of Engineers Unplugged in addition to the episode we’d originally planned.

Since that episode has gone live (you can see it here), I wanted to write up some additional material on Magic Balloon and how to play.  So, without further ado, I present my “Guide to Magic Balloon”.

What You Need

• A whiteboard
• Dry erase markers (as many different colors as you’ve got)
• At least one other person

The Set-Up

The game starts with a drawing of a helium balloon in the center of the whiteboard, as pictured below.  I like to use red balloons, but you should feel free to use your favorite color.

A Magic Balloon game starting point.

Next, pick teams.  One team is trying to pop the balloon, while the other team is trying to protect the balloon.  Call the teams whatever you like: “Offense vs. Defense”, “Pro-Balloon vs. Anti-Balloon”, “Poppers vs. Protectors”, etc.  You can play one-on-one, or have teams with multiple players.

How to Play

The team attempting to pop the balloon goes first, drawing a way to pop this balloon.  It’s important here to remember the first of the game’s only two rules:

Rule One: Draw things about to happen, not having already happened — this gives the other team the opportunity to respond.

For example, the traditional opening move in Magic Balloon is to attempt to pop the balloon with a pin, as pictured below.

The traditional Magic Balloon opening move.

Don’t let yourself get stuck in tradition in Magic Balloon, though — remember the point is to have it be an exercise in creativity.  Shoot at it with a BB gun, have a bumble bee try to sting it, whatever comes to mind.

After the opening move, the team that is trying to protect the balloon takes their turn.  For example, they might draw a brick wall between the pin and the balloon, as pictured below, so the pin can’t pop it.

Bricks would stop a pin, right?

This is a good time to introduce the game’s only other rule:

Rule Two: No repeats — nothing that’s been drawn can be used agin in the same game.

Players can decide how strict they want to be with this rule.  If one team drops an anvil on someone or something, does that mean no more anvils?  Or does it mean no more dropping things?  It’s up to you.

Game-play then proceeds with each team taking a turn drawing things on the whiteboard.  In our example game the next few turns might go like this:

• The popping team responds to the brick wall by trying to use a jackhammer to knock it down.
• The protecting team declares that the jackhammer is electric (by adding a cord) and will attempt to stop the jackhammer by having someone unplug it.
• The popping team sends in a big dog to chase the plug-puller away.
• The protecting team has someone show up with dog treats to distract the dog.

This would give us the situation pictured below:

A chain of six Magic Balloon events.

Game-play continues in this fashion.  Sometimes a game will be a single, ever-growing chain of action/reaction events.  If a team gets stuck and can’t think how to respond to the latest event in the chain, just remember it’s a brainstorming game.  Come back at it from a brand-new direction.  If the brick wall didn’t work to stop the pin, try a giant electromagnet.  If the pin didn’t work to pop the balloon, dump sugar water on the balloon to attract a swarm of hummingbirds to pop it with their beaks.

How Does the Game End?

The game ends when one team gives up, or when you run out of space to add anything else to the drawing.  (In which case, erase the board, switch sides, and start again..)

I find Magic Balloon to be a fun way to fill some time and a great way to unlock creativity and get in a brainstorming frame of mind.

How do you use your whiteboard for creativity and brainstorming?  Tell us about it in the comments!

I’ll close with the video of Magic Balloon we recorded at VMware PEX.

Release of a product of this nature is another indicator of an overall change that’s been occurring at EMC.  Back in the day, if you wanted to add a new volume to your Symmetrix array, you called EMC Support and they sent an engineer on-site to edit your bin file…  Those days are gone.  EMC’s focus has shifted to user-friendly, easy-to-use management interfaces that no longer require advanced degrees in storage in order to run.  For example, RAID levels — a former staple of EMC conversations — are rarely even mentioned any more.

So, what is it that makes the Cloud Edition different than a regular VMAX?  Here’s what I know:

VMAX Cloud Edition

In addition to a VMAX array itself, customers purchasing the Cloud Edition will also receive two management servers configured in a highly-available cluster.  These servers connect to the VMAX via 8Gb Fibre Channel HBAs.

These management servers provide the brains that differentiate the Cloud Edition from the rest of the VMAX family.  The servers run a multi-tenant self-service portal with predefined service levels.  This makes the VMAX Cloud Edition ideal for folks who want to provide enterprise-class Storage as a Service (SaaS) to their internal users from their own private cloud, or for service providers who want to give their customers a truly-robust high-performance offering.

Service Level Definitions

The VMAX Cloud Edition has five predefined service levels that make provisioning new storage easy.  Those levels are:

• Bronze – intended for backup, archive, and file storage
• Silver – an attempt to balance price and performance, intended for data sets or virtualized applications
• Gold – high-performance for write-heavy I/O, database transaction logs, etc.
• Platinum – “very high” performance, intended for mission-critical applications or OLTP databases
• Diamond – “ultra high” performance, intended for high-performance computing (HPC) or other latency-sensitive applications

VMAX Cloud Edition Features

The VMAX Cloud Edition offers the following features:

• Self-Service Portal – In addition to providing an easy way to provision the service levels described above, the portal allows for easy management and monitoring, as well as chargeback or “showback” reporting.
• Data at Rest Encryption – In addition to helping to secure the multi-tenancy, this data encryption helps those customers who need to meet regulatory compliance needs or have concerns about data exposure if drives are removed or replace.
• RESTful APIs – By providing Representational State Transfer API access, EMC is providing customers and service providers with an easy way to create their own web-based front-end to the self-service portal, allowing them to add their own branding, billing info, and management policies.
• Federation – The materials I’ve seen don’t spend a lot of time on this particular point, so I wanted to draw attention to it.  The portal allows management of up to ten VMAX Cloud Edition arrays as one giant SaaS entity.  That means you can get up to 10PB of usable space…

Starter Kits

As part of the approach to making storage easier, EMC is offering six different “Starter Kits” for the VMAX Cloud Edition.  Any of the Starter Kits can be grown over time to the full 10-array 10PB capacity configuration.  The available starting configurations are:

• 5,000 IOPS and 50TB usable capacity
• 10,000 IOPS and 50TB usable capacity
• 15,000 IOPS and 100TB usable capacity
• 25,000 IOPS and 100TB usable capacity
• 30,000 IOPS and 200TB usable capacity
• 50,000 IOPS and 200TB usable capacity

Notice the focus on the actual information you care about, not drive counts — another indicator of the change at EMC and across the storage industry.

Availability

The VMAX Cloud Edition goes GA on 7 March.

I think this product opens up all sorts of great use-case possibilities.  What use cases do you foresee?  Let me know in the comments!

This will be my third Partner Exchange, but my first as an actual attendee.  In 2011 and 2012, I was working at the conference.  In 2011, I presented in the EMC Partner boot camp session and then worked in the EMC booth in the Solutions Exchange giving demos on the then-new EMC VNXe.  In 2012, I was responsible for running EMC’s booth in the Solutions Exchange.

This year, however, I’m going to actually get to attend sessions and trainings, as well as have sit-down meetings with several of our partners.  Plus, I’ll get to see a lot of the folks I interact with online, but in-person.

Things I’m Looking Forward To

While there are a lot of things happening at PEX, here are a few of the things I’m looking forward to the most:

• The EMC Partner Boot Camp on Monday.  This will be a great chance for me to get roadmap info and other good information to bring back to my colleagues.
• The VCDX / vExpert Reception on Tuesday.  It’ll be great to see the other folks in this community.
• The Solutions Exchange.  This is where the sponsoring partners bring their latest and best products and solutions to show them off.  I’m definitely interested in seeing what new things will be on display there this year.
• Meetings with Accunet Solutions‘ partners.  This will be a great opportunity to map joint strategies together.  Among the meetings I have set up are:
  • VMware
  • EMC
  • Cisco
  • Brocade
  • Ingram Micro
  • Gigamon
• My debut on Engineers Unplugged on the Cisco Datacenter blog.  Amy Lewis (@CommsNinja) has invited Gabriel Chapman (@Bacon_Is_King) and I to record an episode on the evolution of virtualization.  Gabriel, me, and a whiteboard — how awesome is that?

Keep Up with Me at PEX

If you’ll be at PEX and want to meet, reach out to me and let’s set something up.

If you won’t be there, and want to keep up with me in more or less real-time, I’ll be doing my usual conference live-tweeting, so keep an eye on my Twitter feed.  The official hashtag for the event is #VMwarePEX, so it’ll be easy to keep up with the conference from afar.

For (slightly) more coherent info, keep an eye out here.  I’ll be posting reports from PEX as I get the chance.

Hope to see you there!