VMworld 2011 is upon us and the excitement around the event continues to build. Like many vendors, NetApp has quite a lot going on and I thought it would very beneficial to offer you a set of CliffNotes to make sure you don’t miss anything. With that, here’s your TOC:
TOC: Everything NetApp
Put Your Hands On It Without Violating HR Policies
What If I Wanna Hear Your Take
Thanks For All Of This, But I’m In It For The Prizes
It’s Not All Work
NetApp, in conjunction with EMC, Cisco, VMware, VCE, and others are participating in the 2nd annual vOdgeball event. This year, the teams have chosen the Wounded Warrior Project as the recipient of the money we raise for the event. The details about the event are here and if you don’t have anything to do on Sunday between 7pm and 10pm, please come out and support some friendly competition and an amazing charity. For NetApp, we will be sponsoring 2 team — The NetApp HoneyBadgers and The NetApp vBallers:
The HoneyBadgers include: Vaughn Stewart (Captain), Julian Cates, Scott Baker, Adam Fore, Joel Kaufman, Michael Slisinger, Jim Weingarten, Seth Forgosh, and Nick Howell (Red Shirt).
The vBallers include: Friea Berg (Captain), Nick DeRose, Lisa Crewe, Chris Gebhardt, Rob McDonald, Heather Sutherland, Nick Triantos and Chris Wells
Put Your Hands On It Without Violating HR Policies
NetApp, EMC and Cisco were invited by VMware to provide a “pod” for the VMworld Hands On Lab. The team worked some long nights to pull this off and as a result, I’d encourage you to take time out of your time at VMworld and use the HoL program to gain some immediate insight on the integrations, storage efficiencies and steady state infrastructure analysis tools to improve your virtualization initiatives. The lab highlights our Virtual Storage Console, Insight Balance Product, Plug-ins and it’s all presented in a day-in-the-life of an administrator who is asked to make decisions as workloads and requirements change. Consider your schedule and stop by. Besides, if you are prize collector, attending the HoL will get you a special pin used by our prize patrol team. Located in the Sands Exhibit Hall D, the HoL hours are: Sun 2-8pm, Mon 8am-3pm, Tue 10am-10pm, Wed 8am-6pm, and Thu 8am-4pm.
What If I Wanna Hear Your Take
NetApp has a series of speaking sessions throughout the event. Some are traditional, some support other customers/partners, and some are panels. Here are the details where key members of the NetApp team will be participating in speaking engagements:
| Session ID | Day | Time | Title | NetApp Speaker |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SPO3987 | Mon | 10am – 11am | Sponsor Breakout: Seven Corners and NetApp Accelerate the Journey to the Cloud Together | Spencer Sells |
| VSP1956 | Mon | 1pm – 2pm | The ESXi Quiz Show | Vaughn Stewart |
| SEC2942 | Mon | 2pm – 3pm | Building Trusted Clouds: Proof Points, Not Promises | Ravi Kumar |
| SPO3988 | Tue | 10:30am – 11:30am | Sponsor Breakout: Oak Hills and NetApp Do the Math: Implementing a Practical VDI Solution Designed to Scale Beyond 50,000 Seats | Vaughn Stewart |
| SEC2942 | Tue | 3pm – 4pm | Building Trusted Clouds: Proof Points, Not Promises | Ravi Kumar |
| VSP1361 | Wed | 8am – 9am | PowerCLI 101 | Glenn Sizemore |
| SUP1009 | Wed | 9:30am – 10:30am | Super Session: Thomson Reuters and NetApp Build a Successful, Efficient Cloud | Val Bercovici |
| VSP3223 | Wed | 2pm – 3pm | Storage as a Service with vCloud Director | Nick Howell & Jack McLeod |
| BCO2863 | Thu | 11am – 12pm | How to Use Distance to Your Advantage to Create a Unified Data Protection Strategy | Scott Baker & Larry Touchett |
| EUC2692 | Thu | 11am – 12pm | Panel: Rethinking Storage for Virtual Desktops | Vaughn Stewart |
What Can I See At Your Booth
This year, NetApp have a front-row booth at VMworld, booth number #401. Our booth will provide focus area and live demonstrations related to Cloud Computing, Integrated Infrastructure Stacks with FlexPod, Virtual Desktops and Enterprise Business Applications. The Cloud Computing booth will demonstrate our plugin to vCenter Orchestrator, tenant-level backups with our SnapCreator product, building SLA-based storage service catalogs with OnCommand, and we will show steady state analysis with the OnCommand Insight products. For Virtual Desktops, we’ll demonstrate storage efficiencies from NetApp, virtual storage tiering, space reclamation for thinly provisioned pools, and our partner Liquidware Labs will be there to highlight our partnership and their product portfolio. In the Enterprise Biz Apps booth, we’ll highlight disaster recovery with SRM5, app-consistent backups and multi-level restores with our new product SnapProtect, and how to isolate workload anomalies with Insight Balance (such as misaligned VMs). Lastly, in the FlexPod booth, we’ll demonstrate mixed workload deployment and management, secure multi-tenancy, steady-state analysis with our Insight products, and our partner Cloupia will be there to demonstrate an industry leading unified infrastructure management tool and a truly amazing new release that they will unveil.
There is a lot more to see, and certainly spending 1:1 time with some of NetApp’s vExperts and professionals to talk about your virtualization initiatives, considerations you are making in your designs, and how to broaden the adoption and proliferation of VMware technologies will be a major benefit to you.
Thanks For All Of This, But I’m In It For The Prizes
This year we will have some really great opportunities to go home with more than some bag inserts, pens, hand sanitizers and the like. Your first job – help drive NetApp brand awareness by stopping by the booth and picking up your official NetApp hat:
Wear the hat – literally everywhere, because our prize patrol could be anywhere; the exception will likely be your hotel room. If you’re spotted wearing it, they’ll hand you the card like the one shown (I know, it was for CiscoLive — it’ll be branded appropriately) and you have a chance to win: a BlackBerry 32GB tablet, XBox Kinect, Sony Internet Blu-Ray Player, Amazon Kindle, and different tiers of gift cards. Now I pointed out that we will be participating in the VMworld HoL and that we would be running live demonstrations at our booth. That said, as you complete visit and complete each of these, you’ll be given a pin to add to your hat. The pins are holographic (expect the one for the HoL which flashes – hint: that will grab the attention of the prize patrol if you have it going) and look like the following:
Collect them all, and the prize patrol could tap you to be put in a raffle to win a 46″ Sony Internet TV (and yes, we’ll send it to you to forego any headaches of getting it into the overhead compartment).
Folks — we are going to have an absolute blast at the event and we want you to be a part of it. Looking forward to seeing you there!
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