OK, so I really meant to do a series of posts speculating on General Availability announcements based on a close reading of the VMware Partner Exchange Content Catalog. Life intervened, and I only got through the VSAN content. And now that VMware PEX 2014 Day 1 has come and gone, it seems anti-climactic. There were no GA announcements on VSAN, BC/DR to vCHS, Desktone’s integration into the VMware lineup, NSX in the channel, or Airwatch mobile device management integration into the EUC lineup.
On the other hand, I’d have to characterize VMware PEX Day 1 as a success. I saw great content on the future BC/DR in vCHS product and great technical content on VSAN. VSAN and disaster recovery to vCHS is scheduled for “Q1” (only 7 weeks left!), but that could change. Seriously, it could. The sessions answered a lot of nagging questions I had (Q: Is the VSAN disk group a RAID 0 under the covers? A: No.) and brought up some others (Q:Can vCHS be used as a BC/DR target for a VMware View environment? A: Hmmmm…).
The class on qualifying/positioning vSphere Data Protection Advanced was really nice. If you have access to the content, definitely check it out. It’s a refinement of the existing material on vDPA, so if you’ve seen it before, it’s probably not earth-shattering. But an refinement nonetheless. The big differentiator was the ability to back up physical environment, namely SQL, Exchange, and Sharepoint. The impression I got was that this was application focused, not bare-metal. Anyone else think that too?
The Solution Center (exhibition hall) was quite interesting. I finally got to talk to someone at Hitachi Data Systems (“No, I don’t think we go through you at all for distribution”) about their solution stack. Their purpose-built flash storage was pretty interesting (though I can’t find it on the corporate web site). I didn’t see Cloud Physics at the Solution Center or on the list. What gives?
Oh, I sat down and got a free social media consultation, which focused on LinkedIn rather than this blog, but was still valuable.
Another interesting opportunity is asking random Partners what they’re seeing which is interesting. Do they think VSAN will be as disruptive for low-end storage?
If you’re here at PEX and would like to meet up to chat about this stuff during breaks, after the day, or over dinner, ping me and we can set it up.
Good post, John!