VMworld 2010 virtual roads, clouds and INXS Devil Inside

This past week I spent a few days in San Francisco attending the VMworld 2010 event which included a Wednesday evening concert with the Australian band INXS.

Despite some long lines (or queues) waiting to get into sessions, keynotes or lunch resulting in delays reminiscent of trying to put too many virtual machines (VMs) onto a given number of physical machines (PMs) in the quest to drive up utilization, the overall event was fantastic.

While at the event, I had a chance to meet up with fellow vExpert Eric Siebert whose new book Maximum vSphere made its debut. I was honored when asked by Eric to help out with his chapter on storage, learn more about Erics new book here.

Eric was just one of many people I was able to catch up with or in some cases meet for the first time face to face. Among the many fellow twitter tweeps included @3parfarley @aebarrett @charleshood @cxi @edsai @ericsiebert @hpstorageguy @iben @jmichelmetz @jtroyer @keithnorbie @KendrickColeman @MesabiGroup @PariseauTT @RayLucchesi @RickVanover @rodos @rogerlund @rootwyrm @sakacc @scott_lowe @ServerVirt_TT @SiliconValleyPR @ssauer @ssharwood @StorageOlogist @stu @Texiwill and @vmworld not to mention many others who are not on twitter.

Big thanks to @rogerlund for organizing a very impromptu ad hoc lunch discussion with a couple of other IT pros representing vary different as well as diverse spectrums of public, private, small, large and ultra large environments. I was only at the event for two days and thus there were many others that I was looking for at their booths or in the hallways (I saw @ekhnaser among others that I could not call out too in time) or in the meeting rooms as well as in the lunch hall.  I look forward to seeing you all at some future event or venue.

On the food scene, while I did not have a chance to dine at one of my local favorites Brandy Hos, I did have a fantastic lunch at Henrys House of Pain (aka Henrys House of Hunan on Sansome). I also had a great outdoor dinner in the alleyway based Cafe Tiramisu where I enjoyed their signature dish. The dish which was essentially a fruit de mer (Fruit of the Sea) over linguine covered with a thin pizza crust that was baked. It was fantastic and brings a whole new dimension to the theme of a classic pot pie meets fruit de mar, give it a try!

On an even lighter or fun note, following are photos and links to some videos of the INXS event courtesy of Karen (aka Mrs Schulz). In addition to being an award winning photographer, Karens day time job is that of an applications development analyst (e.g. an IT Geekette) at a large Minnesota based Mining and Manufacturing company that is also involved in many different sticky and abrasive among other products.

Karen (Photo Courtesy Karen Sculz)

Karen took the following photos (and videos) with her Cannon Powershot S5 Digital camera.

Me heading to INXS show at VMworld 2010 (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

Me sitting in the middle of the virtual highway (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

INXS at VMworld 2010 (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

JD Fortune of INXS at VMworld (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

Kirk Pengilly and JD Fortune of INXS at VMworld 2010 (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

Tim Farriss of INXS (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

Here are links to some videos that Karen captured from up front near the stage during the INXS show at VMworld 2010.

Devil Inside (not to be confused with the devil is in the details of clouds, virtualization and other IT topics)

By My Side (Where a vendor or solution partner should be during and after the sale for their customers)

Disappear (What should not happen to your data or virtual machines in physical, virtual or cloud environments)

Never Tear Us Apart (What should not happen between your servers, storage, applications and data)

Need You Tonight (The call that many system admins get during their off hours)

New Sensation (What many are experience with virtualization and clouds)

Dont Change (Ironic final song of encore of a concert at conference with a theme of change)

A big tip of the hat along with thanks goes out to John Troyer of VMware as well as Sarah Shvil of the VMware Analyst Relations team for helping make it possible for me to attend as an independent IT industry analyst instead of on the coat tails of a vendors exhibit hall pass (disclosure: I paid for my own travel, lodging and dinning expenses).

Me hitching a ride on the virtual highway to the clouds and VMworld (Photo Curtsey Karen Schulz)

Hopefully with some luck, I will be able to hitch a ride and attend VMworld again next year in Las Vegas, perhaps even as a repeat vExpert as well as IT Industry Analyst.

Thats a wrap for now.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

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