Tag Archive: Cisco UCS


I’ve spent more than my usual amount of time in an around airports this week – Travelling to and from the Tech Field Day event in Boston , then hung around with a few of the other delegates before their flights back.

 

It seems that one of the other delegates flights had a pretty severe delay on it due to the incoming flight being late. We realised the only way his flight would be on time would be if they used a different aircraft. My mind immediately went off on a bit of a tangent to Cisco UCS ( as you do ! )

 

The flight plan consists of a number  , a given size and model of Aircraft and a source / destination. With me so far ? The flight plan is given to a particular aircraft , so plane #767-4001 becomes Delta Flight DL270 going from Boston to Heathrow – and will be known as DL270 while that Flight is in use. If for some reason there is a problem with 767-4001 , the airline can opt to use a different plane , for example 777-4002 , which is not quite the same model and in fact has a few more seats & flies a little faster. The plane is still able to take of and land under the identity of DL270.

 

This is very much like a service profile – its not fixed to the hardware ( plane ) and can be associated with different hardware ( which may not be of quite the same specification ) should you require. Its is purely a definition of what would make up that profile just in the same way that we have defined flight DL270 to fly me from Boston back to London.

 

Now if I could only persuade my UCS Chassis to serve complimentary drinks…..

I’ve finally recovered from the non stop week that’s been VMworld Europe 2010. My feet no longer hurt, I’ve come down from the caffeine rush , and I can purchase a pint of beer for less than a week salary.

Its been a very different experience this year for me. I think that because its the first year that I’ve been more active within the community and as a blogger ( with the badge to prove it ) So the list of people to talk to has also snowballed.

Id badge with various "pins"

I attempted to compensate for this by extending my stay slightly to arrive on Sunday and leave on the Friday , giving me what I thought would have been more than enough time to meet , speak to and listen to what people had to say. I think I could have been there another week and still missed someone ! I was also able to spend a little time with some of my colleagues from around the world , which I’m sure will pay dividends both in the short and long terms.

I left my planner pretty open this year , having made the mistake from previous years of trying to fit too many sessions in , instead concentrating on the things that I wouldn’t be able to catch up online a few weeks later , such as the interactions at the solutions exchange, bloggers lounge & lab sessions.

 

 

There are 1001 other reports of what people did during their time in Copenhagen, so I wont dilute the blogosphere with yet another one but will leave you with a few things that I saw that hopefully will be worthy of some further investigation. 

 

Cisco UCS Express – the branch in a box issue is one that crops up time and time again. This could well be the perfect solution. I really want one to have a play with and if it comes in at the price point mentioned I’ll be impressed !

VAAI Integration – since the 4.1 release , the major storage vendors have been working hard to get this into place and working. Some great demo’s of this from IBM , EMC and 3PAR.

Veeam Backup Version 5 – I usually get a little annoyed at marketing of stuff you can’t actually buy yet , but with an announced release date of 20th of October, I’ll let them off. If you’ve managed to be on the web for more than a month without hearing about these guys , you probably don’t have your router switched on.

 

As well of plenty of things that got me excited , a few things left me baffled , confused and a little irate. They can be summed up by the Infrastructure Center from http://www.mysoftit.com/

I’m still a little bit confused by what this actually offers over using vCenter & a decent backup product. It claims to be able to manage Xen and Hyper-V in the next release but not under the same pane of glass. “in the next release” was a phrase used almost every second sentence , leaving me to wonder what actually was in the current product. The Guys on the stand were not native English speakers, but I have a hunch the pitch makes just as little sense in German as it did in English. Sorry to single you out guys , but perhaps you just accosted me at the wrong time Smile

 

The Party as ever was immense on its scale though like others I felt the venue was a little on the monolithic side – the Palais at Cannes offered the multi level , multi room experience that added the wow factor that the Copenhagen Party was slightly lacking in. I was impressed by the various acts , including a good old fashioned breakdance-off. As fellow bloggers have said, its the people that make the party and there were plenty of opportunities for networking with the other attendee’s