Two solid days at VMworld 2011 and I got to do and see a lot. Here is a breakdown of the top 5 things I saw at VMworld.
#1 The SiliconAngle / Wikibon Cube
You couldn’t miss it. You walk into the show floor and there they
were, larger than life. The SiliconAngle / Wikibon Cube broadcasting
live from VMworld2011. Guests that were on the cube included, Tom
Georgens (NTAP), Pat Gelsinger (EMC), David Scott (HP), Rick Jackson
(VMware) as well as many more. The Cube also had 12 Industry
Spotlights. The most interesting spotlight had to do with Storage
Optimization, especially for VMware.
Oh the times they are a changing. Now that you can deliver HD TV
live over the internet, the Cube has broadcast from a number industry
shows and user conferences. The great part about this, it is like the
ability to watch a sporting event being covered by ESPN but for tech.
The Cube brings all of the highlights of these events right into your
computer screen. Now if you can’t make an event, no problem, you can
catch all the most important messages from the Cube. The Cube is now
the new mechanism for delivering content to users in the way they want
to receive the content, TV. For more, check out www.siliconangle.tv
#2 Storage Optimization – Industry Spotlight
In the Storage Optimization industry spotlight, the first 15 minutes
Dave Vellante and his co-host John Furrier tee up the concept. They
discussed storage optimization, where it has come and were it is going,
especially in VMware environments. We are hearing more and more about
storage efficiency technologies. During the next 15 minutes Dave and I
discussed the 5 essential storage efficiency technologies including:
- Tiering
- Thin Provisioning
- Virtualization
- Compression
- Deduplication
We also discussed the fact that the IBM Real-time Compression
technology is not only the most efficient and effective compression
technology in the industry; we also learned that IBM really acquired not
just a real-time “compression” technology but a platform that can do a
number of things in real time. In fact, the 5 IBM storage efficiency technologies all operate in real time which is the most effective for customers.
We have been hearing a great deal about storage optimization in a
VMware environment due to the fact that virtualizing servers was
successful for the server side of the house but it didn’t do all it set
out to do, it didn’t fix the overall IT budget.
Virtualizing servers only pushed the financial problem to the storage
side of the house. Users have told us that when they virtualize their
servers, storage grows as much as 4x. By leveraging the right storage
optimization technologies together, users can get their budgets back
under control and also deliver the promise that server virtualization
set out to do.
#3 More Free Time for “Real-life”
While on the Cube as a panelist with my good friend Marc Farley
(HPsisyphus, formally @3ParFarley) Dave asked us what was the most
interesting thing we saw on the show floor while walking around. I
didn’t hesitate in my response. There were two in my mind. First, it
couldn’t be any more obvious at how fast data is growing. Over 50% of
the 19,000 people there had cameras taking pictures and taking video.
That data is going to be stored somewhere. Additionally, they had these
cameras for a reason. Either we have more bloggers and tweeters than
we know about, more marketing people are going to these events or more
people are using social media to inform and educate others. The way in
which users want to receive data is always changing and evolving, and at
least at VMworld 2011 we were delivering content in a number of ways
especially photos and video. All that data will end up in the “cloud”
somewhere.
The second thing I noticed was the amount of free time VMware has
given back to the IT user. I heard, on more than one occasion, end
users talking about family, vacations and travel instead of the usual
banter about how challenging their jobs are and the issues they have
with their vendors which is the normal think I hear at these shows.
This was not an anomaly. I am chalking it up to the fact that VMware
makes people’s lives easier.
#4 Proximal Data
These “most interesting things” are not in any particular order. I say this because I believe that Proximal Data is THE
most interesting thing I saw at the show. Now Proximal Data just came
out of “stealth” in early August. They didn’t have a booth at VMworld
but they did have a “whisper suite”. So, I have to confess, since I
used to be an analyst, sometimes people will ask me to come take a look
at their technology and their message to see if it is in line with what
is going on in the industry so I got to hear the pitch.
Proximal Data’s message is right on. It hits a very important and
growing topic with VMware these days, the I/O bottle neck on virtual
servers, and they solve this problem in a very unique and intelligent
way.
First, the problem. One of the issues facing VMware today is the
number of virtual machines that can be hosted by one physical machine.
The more users can get on one system, the more efficient they can be.
The problem is, today systems are running into I/O workload bottlenecks
that are causing a limitation in the number of virtual machines one
system can run.
One way to solve this problem is add more memory to the host but that
could be very very expensive. You can add more HBA’s or NIC cards but
that can be expensive and also difficult to manage. You can add more
flash cache to your storage to improve the I/O bottleneck but doing that
only solves ½ the problem, you still need to solve the challenge on the
host side, again with memory or host adaptors.
The solution: Proximal Data. With some advanced I/O management
software capabilities combined with PCI flash cards on the host, for a
very reasonable price per host. The software combined with the card is
100% transparent to both the virtual servers and to the storage, which
to me is one of the most important features of the implementation.
Transparency is the key to any new technology. IT has a ton of
challenges and has done a great deal of work to get their environment to
where it is today. To implement a technology that causes all of that
work to be undone is very painful. Remember, the hardest thing to
change in IT is process, not technology. It’s important to preserve the
process. That is what Proximal Data does. Proximal Data can increase
the I/O capability of a VMware server with just a 5 minute installation
of the PCI card and their software. This technology can double and even
triple the number of virtual machines on any physical server and that
is a tremendous ROI. A new win for efficiency.
There are a number of folks entering this market these days; however
Proximal does it transparently with no agents making it the most user
friendly implementation. While these guys won’t have product until
2012, when it hits the market, I am sure it will be very successful.
#5 Convergence to the Cloud
Are we seeing the coming of the “God Box”? A number of vendors are
talking more and more as well as investing in public / private cloud.
There are more systems popping up that have servers, networks, high
availability and storage all in one floor tile. These systems are
designed to integrate, scale, manage VM’s simply, increase productivity
and ease the management of all possible application deployments in any
business. Additionally these boxes help you to connect to the cloud to
ease the cost burden. Is the pendulum swinging back to the “open
systems” main frame? Only time will tell.
Bonus
One more for fun. The first meeting I had at VMworld was with a
potential OEM prospect of the IBM Real-time Compression IP. I have
always said that this technology could revolutionize the data storage
business much like VxVM did for Veritas many years ago. Creating a
standard way to do compression across a number of system can help users
with implementation as well as ease the storage cost burden. I hope
this moves forward and I hope more folks step up who want to OEM the
technology.