Guest Post by Steve Flynn, Director Product Marketing, EMC Backup Recovery Systems
‘Shot through the heart, and you’re to blame, you give Love – a bad name!’ …… wow, was that a great show last night or what? Bon Jovi can still rock the house, and VMworld can sure throw a fantastic party. When I first discovered Bon Jovi’s music, it was 1984. I was 23, and he was 22. Now I’m – well, you do the math – but HE still looks 35!! There has to be something in that New Jersey water.
The concert was a fitting ending to another great and exhausting day. The morning kicked off with VCE’s Trey Layton’s Vblock talk. Vblocks have really taken off over the last year, and it was great to see how the converged infrastructure is evolving – particularly in the area of data protection, which can now be based on Avamar and Data Domain – as part of the Vblock. If you’re not backing up your Vblock with EMC backup solutions, you really are Livin’ On a Prayer.
I could not resist attending the encore offering of Rachna Thusoo and Jeff Hunter’s session on VMware’s next generation Backup and Recovery Solution. This is the session that gets under the hood of the new vSphere Data Protection introduced earlier this week with vSphere 5.1. As you probably know by now, this solution is powered by EMC Avamar technology. Rachna and Jeff detailed the capabilities of the new product, including its deduplication advantages, unique changed block restore options, and self-service recovery.
But the highlight of the day, was definitely Chad Sakac’s spotlight session on IT Transformation with EMC and VMware. Chad’s passion for the technology, and enthusiastic delivery is truly contagious. His demos and description of new (and upcoming) EMC and VMware products – including EMC’s Virtual Storage Integrator, VFCache, and in particular his walk through of the new vSphere Data Protection solution – were in Chad-speak, ‘face-meltingly cool’. Check out Chad’s blog on VDP here.
It’s been great to have VMworld back in San Francisco again, after a year’s hiatus in Las Vegas. This was the fourth time since 2004 that the event was held at the Moscone Center, making the Bay Area feel like the unofficial home of the event. As Bon Jovi would say, Who says you can’t go home?
