Gestalt IT Field Days 2009 Day 1

Yesterday was the first day of the Gestalt IT Field Days.

It was a great event which ran smoothly. We started the day at the VMware ECB for breakfast then a tour of the VMware demo lab racks. From the main building we walked over to one of the R&D buildings for some vendor presentations.

First off was MDS Micro, followed by Xsigo and then the VMware team responsible for building their demo labs, including for VMworld. Some good time was spent running through a lab exercise on the Xsigo equipment creating virtual vHBA and vNICs to present dynamically to an ESX host. Bandwidth control was also applied to the some storage traffic to show QoS.

After more nice VMware food it was back onto the bus to the 3Par offices. Here we had a number of speakers from 3Par followed my a number from Symantec. Certainly the primary speaker from 3Par received my vote as best presentation for the day (if I try and spell his name I will get it terribly wrong, will try and update the post tomorrow). The vote is due to the fact that he was passionate, knowledgeable and was the first person all day to pick up a whiteboard pen and start drawing!

Here is a video of the days events where each of the vendors gives a little summary of their message.

Over the next few days I will review my notes and write up some technical items on some of the technologies with my thoughts.

Rodos

[Note : I am attending the Field Days as a guest of Gestalt IT. Travel and accommodation is provided as part of the event. See the Field Day FAQ and my comments for details.]