Here is the video update from Day 2 of Cisco Networkers.
Included is a look at the UCS B-250 Extended Memory blade. You can also see this video for a view of it from the video below by Pete Nichol from Cisco. The boys get sneaky and steal the Palo adapter out of the B250 and put it in a B200 to test it out. You need a newer version of UCSM to make the palo work, so don't try this at home. I think they told me that to stop me swiping the Palo for my lab!
Cisco Networkers 2009 kicked off in full swing this morning with the keynote from Guido Jouret who is the Chief Technology Officer of Cisco’s Emerging Technologies Group.
Some key messages that I took from the keynote
"Cisco are trying to be more than a comms company but be an experience provider to lead us all into the future."
Cisco did a live demo from the other side of the world via LiveDemo which is TP on steroids.
"People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware". Alan Kay examples of this occurring are the iPhone, wii & Cisco TP
Perfect Storm coming over power grid, its old, people are retiring and its not green. Cisco is investing heavy in SmartGrid and an energy internet.
Cisco want 2 make all this video work across consumer, Enterprise and service provider networks for end to end anywhere experience.
There is lots of vido in the Enterprise today but its silo'd. They need to all be converged and video needs to become simply a data type. Cisco Medianet is taking IP to the next level.
Video is 65% of Ciscos internal traffic!
People on IP enabled phones such as iPhone use 30 times the bandwidth! The melenials are going to bring video to the workplace.
IP traffic will increase fivefold from 08 to 13. Its has take 25 years to get this far. Video will make it dble next year.
"IT as an experience creator"
Thanks for all who came to the session I was speaking in, on insights into deploying Cisco UCS, I hope you received some good insights for how to successfully deploy UCS into your environment without "implementation fear".
Here is my video update for the day (below, otherwise visit http://rodos.haywood.org). Note there was lots of talk about the Flip video from Cisco in the keynote. All of this video was taken with my Cisco Flip, it really is as good as they say!
I will be at the show hanging out, sitting in sessions, chatting to people, doing both duty on my employers stand, as well as speaking in a session or two too.
To keep the discussion kicking along I will be posting to Twitter insights, tips and facts on Cisco Unified Computing System every 30 minutes, for all of the 3 days. I certainly hope its not considered spam, there are 48 gold hand picked tips that are going to come your way. Hopefully they can get discussion going (virtual or physical) for those who are there, participating via CiscoLive or just following it on Twitter.
You can see the tips by following @rodos. Each post will start with "#CNW09 #UCS Tip XX:" where XX is the sequence number of the tip. So you can also search the appropriate hashtags from your favorite Twitter app.
Cisco have announced the C-Series of UCS rack mount servers but until now no one has seen any, publicly. Well at Cisco Networkers in Brisbane Australia you can get a look at one on the Alphawest stand in the World of Solutions hall.
Of course if you can't wait, or if you can't make it to Brisbane, I took a very quick and unprepared video which is below (if you can't see it visit the http://rodos.haywood.org/).
Note I don't give too many details and also make the mistake of calling it a blade server, thats what you get for no planning. The box only arrived in country today and just made it in time by a matter of hours. It will be on the stand for the next three days after which it goes back to what it is meant to be doing, that is powered on in the lab doing beta testing. I may not be able to be so public about those activities.
Thanks to the executives in the Cisco SAV BU who allowed us to show this on our stand, you guys rock! Thanks to the local Cisco team in Australia who got it here. Thanks to our marketing team who did an great job of creating a secure glass case for it to live in and hence stop people stealing bits, especially as its fully loaded with RAM.
See you on the show floor as well as the session I am speaking in, "UCS : Opportunities, Objectives and Outcomes (ITMPCS-6500)" which is on Tuesday at 1:45pm to 2:30pm, where I will share my early insights from deploying one of the first UCS implementations.
Rodos
P.S. A rare reminder. Contrary to the tone of this post, this is my person blog and any statements, or announcements here are not official in anyway and I do not represent my employer, they and I will deny anything. Check for press releases at http://www.alphawest.com.au/ for anything official.
The first day of Cisco Networkers in Brisbane Australia today. There was setting up the stand, unpacking some gear plus sitting in on the "Data Centre Design & Concepts TECDCT-3873" session.
The session went into some deep networking concepts. I did okay with lots but some was just to Networking geek for this virtualisation and Cloud guy. There was some great stuff on FCoE, UCS and DC design.
My main takeaway was how much pinning and specific pinning such as MAC pinning is being use in the DC networking of the future. Having spent a lot deep diving into UCS I see a lot of this day to day already, what never clicked to me before was that we have been using this a lot in the past because a VMware vSwitch uses MAC pinning.
Here is a quick video I did at the end of the day to summarise (no more 20 minute videos like I did at VMworld)!
Hopefully I will be able to show more snippets from the event each day.
With over 20 years working in the IT industry I have had varied sub careers. My first decade was as a programmer, developing applications whilst working and living in Asia. There was the obligatory dotcom involvement in a fun start up. Working in the SI space I loved being able to work at integrating many various technologies and solving a wide variety of IT problems.
Falling in love with server virtualization caused me to become involved in Cloud Computing which became a great passion due to how much it could help IT do greater things.
Today I spend my time assisting a large team of Solutions Architects across A/NZ at Amazon Web Services. Just like everyone at Amazon I enjoy working hard, try to have some fun and hope to be a small part of making history.
