The day has finally arrived and I’m sitting in the BA Lounge in Terminal 5. As with any long distance trip I have that usual mixture of trepidation and excitement, especially when travelling to a place I haven’t visited before.
T5 is Heathrow’s new flagship terminal and the dedicated home for British Airways. Unfortunately, my experience to date travelling to and from T5 has been less than spectacular. So far, today things seem to have been a little easier.
So, looking forward to the remainder of today, what can I expect to be in store for me and the other Gestalt IT attendees?
Well, after landing and heading off to the hotel, we’ve dinner planned for 7pm with a chance to catch up with everyone. Of course for us UK folk, that will already be 3am UK time. We then have to leave the hotel by 7am the next morning – yes 7am to go to the VMware offices. It’s pretty clear that we’re going to have a busy time.
I’ve compiled a list of some of the things I’m hoping to achieve or learn about whilst I’m here. I know some of the vendors; others I have no knowledge of at all. Here’s what I’m looking for:
3Par – information on the new “Thin built-in” technologies, which were just supported in software; real world calculations on TP savings; array clustering; solid state and block-level tiering; VMware integration; vStorage API support; CLI/API interfaces.
Data Robotics – more information on proprietary RAID; management framework integration; hot swap operation (graceful rather than forced); futures (larger devices, rack mount, FC(oE) support); DroboShare futures (AD integration, iSCSI support)
Nirvanix – CloudNAS; security; block and file protocol support.
Ocarina – Value proposition (cutoff where de-dupe savings recoup hardware investment); platform integration (e.g. BlueArc); compression ratios; data replication between archives; imgestion rates; ingestion methods.
Xsigo – market positioning – fabric or array; perceived competition; TCO/value proposition.
Whatever happens, I’m sure it will be a fascinating trip. Look out for more updates here and on Twitter (@chrismevans)!
