Monday 8/31/09
I’ve put some additional comments and updates / corrections into the Impressions #01 blog article in blue. See https://netcraftsmen.com/blogs/entry/vmworld-2009-impressions-01.html.
Fleeting impressions:
- There are a lot of people here!
- VMWorld isn’t as big as Cisco Networkers (Moscone N & S only). That’s space-wise. They announced there are 12,000+ attendees! Fitting into more big sessions, fewer breakouts (or that’s my impression).
- Better backpacks for attendees though (a bit more room in them). The cool leather zipper tabs do tend to rip off. (I never thought I was muscle-bound but …). Otherwise quite nice.
- They seem to have planned Monday a bit oddly, or not gotten out the word that it was primarily “newbie introductory sessions only” or something. Perhaps a vast number of last minute attendee sign-ups. So there’s not enough to do — the Expo floor isn’t open (great missed opportunity to get lots of attendee eyes in front of vendors), the Self-Paced Labs are over-run, and the basics VMware 101 sessions are vastly overbooked (50-100 or more people in waiting lines then giving up). Probably hard to add seating capacity at the last minute.
- Does that mean the conference is a vast success, exceeding all expectations?
A Whole Lot of Computing Power Going On!
As you go down the escalator after registering, you see a lot of hardware. Upon closer examination, the display says:
- 16 Cisco UCS racks (plus others)
- 1024 processors
- 48 VM’s per server
Totals:
- 776 physical servers
- 37, 248 VM’s
- 28 racks
Savings:
- Space savings: 154,000 sq ft reduced to 1700 sq ft
- Power savings: 25.329 KW reduced to 528 KW
- Dollar savings: I didn’t get the numbers, but it was something like $150 M reduced considerably.
That makes quite an impression!
I’ll note those numbers mean a fairly good-sized data center now fits into 1 or 2 rows of equipment (most data center rows I’ve seen have been about half the length of the displayed hardware).
The VMware Business Case
Went to Partner session, all fired up to go sell!
A lot of it covered how VMware is the market leader, has the credibility, provides reliability. And milestones, e.g. one virtual desktop customer now has 15,000 virtual desktops running on vSphere / VMware View.
There was also a lot of discussion of how VMware helps customer save money (space, time, power, etc.). See above.
The biggest insight for me was how VMware is looking ahead and working to differentiate themselves from the wannabe competition. Thus they’re shifting marketing focus from virtualizing servers to virtualizing data centers (automating and managing moving parts or whole data centers out into the cloud). Something the competition doesn’t do. (Good joke about ensuring it’s not “Hotel California”, where your servers check in and don’t ever check back out.)
There’s lots more, but I’m getting tired, so writing about it will have to wait until tomorrow.