Gestalt IT is pleased to announce the first date of 2010 in our ongoing series of Tech Field Day events. Our next event will convene in Boston, MA on April 8 and 9, engaging some of the most innovative and interesting IT infrastructure companies in Massachusetts.

The unique Field Day℠ concept brings together as equals two groups together that rarely meet: Product vendors and independent thought leaders. The event includes 15 delegates and just 6 speaking slots. Both vendors and delegates are nominated and selected by an independent team of volunteers based on interest, technology and passion. The resulting discussions are packed with technical information, with feedback and questions flowing both ways across the table.

Just six companies will sponsor and present at Tech Field Day Boston. Delegates will spend three hours with each vendor, learning about their products, technology, and relevance to modern IT practices. The Gestalt IT Tech Field Day events have attracted some of the biggest names in information technology, and Boston is no exception. Our presenting sponsor list for this event includes industry leaders such as Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, and Data Robotics.

The Tech Field Day delegates have immense influence on the ways that products and companies are comprehended by the general public. The world of media has changed, with social media and blogging gaining special importance. Our Field Day events are an opportunity for these writers (and their targeted audiences) to interact with top technology providers.

Only fifteen delegates are nominated for each Tech Field Day event. Our selection process focuses on the unique characteristics of thought leaders: Independence, open-mindedness, technical knowledge, and influence are key criteria. The global team of delegates come from a variety of backgrounds, including server virtualization, enterprise storage, networking, security, and systems administration.

The delegate and sponsor lists will be available at GestaltIT.com in mid-March. We encourage those interested in IT infrastructure topics to follow the delegates on Gestalt IT (http://gestaltit.com), Twitter (http://bit.ly/TFD2TL and http://bit.ly/TFDTS), Facebook (http://bit.ly/TFDGFB), or Vimeo (http://bit.ly/TFDvids).

About Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This is the concept behind Gestalt IT – that experts in a variety of disciplines are stronger when they work together. As a group, we formed a media organization focused on promoting community among independent thought leaders in IT infrastructure topics. Our productions include the Gestalt IT web site and the series of Tech Field Day events. Gestalt IT Media LLC community organizer, Stephen Foskett, can be contacted at http://GestaltIT.com, sfoskett@gestaltit.com, or (508)451-9532.

© Stephen for Gestalt IT, 2010. | Announcing Gestalt IT Tech Field Day Boston 2010
Read more posts categorized as All, Events, Exclusive, Featured, Top Story

What a week in Las Vegas at VMware Partner Exchange 2010! For all those that complained just 4 months ago that VMworld 2009 was disappointing because the announcements were few and far between, all I can say is, based on what I watched, experienced, and touched this week at PEX 2010, VMware should grab your attention again soon! Unfortunately, so much of what was discussed falls under the VMware Partner NDA that I’ll have to ask VM /ETC readers to wait for the technology to become public. We’ll have plenty to discuss when it does.

For now I’ll quickly wrap up my week and drop some hints about VMware’s future direction based on my understanding about what I saw during the PTAB meetings, the Keynotes, and the Hands On and Self Paced Labs. I’m also linking to some reactions from others to support my impressions.

The official VMware News Release for Partner Exchange can be found at this link:

VMware Partner Exchange 2010 Kicks Off With Record-breaking 2,600+ Attendees, 55 Sponsors and 45 Countries Represented

PTAB: Cloud Infrastructure and Virtual Desktops

I knew what was on the Partner Technical Advisory Board meeting agenda before I arrived, but I have to admit I was still pleasantly surprised. In short, the two day meeting was split by topics. We talked about virtual servers on Day 1 and virtual desktops on Day 2.

The server discussions included everything from possible future enhancements to the vStorage API to details about Project Redwood architecture. Discussions included a mix of vSphere roadmap possibilities and potential directions of VMware in the private and hosted cloud. VMware is serious about Platform as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service, and Software as a Service, and the slides presented to the PTAB committee revealed a considerable strategy to make it happen. I’ll just say it is a lot clearer to me where exactly Zimbra and SpringSource fit into VMware’s future plans.

Switching to the second day and to the topic of virtual desktops, if you are like me you would assume it to be a different day of independent content. Surprisingly, the paths of servers and desktops seemingly are going to collide in the VMware virtual cloud. I would suggest that you get ready to rethink what a VMware Virtual Infrastructure actually means. The boundaries will be changing as to where VMware’s technology actually begins and ends.

Among the 32 other PTAB members with me was Brian Knudtson. Brian has been providing his own coverage of the VMware PEX 2010 on his Knudt Blog. Check out his posts as well – Partner Exchange Day 1 – Sunday (PTAB Day 1) and Partner Exchange Day 2 – Monday (PTAB Day 2).

Keynotes: VMware Gets Aggressive About The Cloud and SMBs

EVP of Worldwide Field Operations Carl Eschenbach opened the official first day of the conference with his Keynote on Tuesday morning. Eschenbach later called on stage Rick Jackson, VMware’s Chief Marketing Officer, they established that 2010 would be an aggressive year for VMware. The two also emphasized VMware’s intent to secure existing and future business in the SMB market. The day 1 Keynote concluded with the promise that special discounts would soon be available for the vSphere Essentials bundles.

On Wednesday morning, VMware’s CTO Steve Herrod took the stage. Herrod’s Keynotes usually provide the product demos and are therefore always the most anticipated for me. The PEX 2010 Keynote 2 definitely did not disappoint! With the help of a few VMware product managers, Herrod demonstrated a technical preview of the Redwood Cloud UI as well as a future virtual desktop environment with application virtualization integration. A key point to the demos was that the Cloud is a series of “layers of abstraction” above the physical hardware. I thought Herrod and company did a great job illustrating this by providing example scenarios where screen shots of both the user’s perspective and the system administrator’s tool set were provided.

Keynote reactions from others

VMware employee Duncan Epping echoes my amazement about what was previewed on Wednesday:

“I was impressed with all the insights Steve gave in terms of upcoming products, brand new projects and even a couple tech previews. I am looking forward to the upcoming version of VMware View and a new project which I can’t disclose as the VMware NDA Police would again kill me.”

Responsible for all things VMware at EMC, Chad Sakac says the following on his PEX wrap up post:

“Steve Herrod did some big unveiling.   Project “Redwood” (end user self-service portal targeted for Private and Public cloud uses) was public outed for the first time, as well as the next version of VMware View (loads of stuff in here, more to come soon).  He also talked about the scaling and feature goals of the next generation of the vSphere generation.”

Chad’s post is really about 10 blog posts on Partner Exchange and EMC’s doings in Las Vegas shoved into one title. He covers lots of topics. Check it out.

Hands On and Self Paced Labs – The VMware View Buzz

Previously mentioned for posts about PTAB above, vExpert Brian Knudtson comments:

“… I attended the Advanced View 4 Lab, which ended up actually being a Tech Preview of the next version of View. This next version introduces many new features and some considerable changes to the interface and scalability of the product. According to the lab instructors, they didn’t even get their hands on the code until three days before the conference and had to learn it while building the lab. I have to say that I was very impressed with the product, the improvements they made and the stability of a product still in the Alpha stage. This release has more features than View 4.0 had and is everything that View 4.0 should have been. It will truly be a game changer.”

I too attended the VMware View lab, and got a first hand glimpse of what everyone was excited about. View dot next, the only version name or number VMware employees would commit to, is amazing.

I also used the self paced labs to explore configuration of The Nexus 1000v virtual switch as well as using the REST client to connect to the vCloud API. PEX 2010 was actually the first time I’ve used the self paced labs. The customized lab interface that allows an attendee to select a lab at their terminal coupled with the monitoring screen visible to all lab takers is really cool. During my few hours in the self paced labs on Wednesday I noticed average activity of over 300 VMs on the monitor.

It was good to see Randy Keever again. Randy’s GETO team built and managed all the conference lab infrastructure, and Keever was actually sitting at the administrator’s table during my VMware View lab. The set up was mostly the same from VMworld 2009 in September. Early reports from attendees on Monday said they experienced some congestion when simultaneously starting installation processes in a lab, but Randy’s team identified the issue as a too aggressive vSphere host oversubscription strategy and were quickly able to add additional blade servers as vSphere hosts. For those that see this as an opportunity to knock ESX oversubscription, realize that conference labs are a unique scenario. How often will administrators experience an environment where nested ESX hosts are created, started, and reset on an hourly basis. My labs started on Tuesday. I can tell you I had no issues.

Looking Ahead

2010 should another great year for VMware virtualization. I’m hoping I can fill in the blanks for VM /ETC readers between now and VMworld 2010!

© Rich for Gestalt IT, 2010. | VMware PEX 2010: My Wrap Up
Read more posts categorized as Cloud Computing, Events, Server Virtualization

Our first Tech Field Day event has come and gone, so our attention now turns to the future.

Looking Back

Tech Field Day number one, held November 12 and 13, 2009, was amazing. There’s simply no other way to describe it!

The event generated incredible interest, dozens of blog posts, thousands of tweets, over a dozen videos, and that’s just the start. Delegates have banded together on Google Wave to write group posts and are continuing to share what they learned at the event. The sponsoring vendors are exhilarated as well, talking about the incredible amount of interest the event generated in their products.

It is probably best to just let everyone speak for themselves, though.

Take a look at this video, created from one-on-one interviews with sponsors, delegates, and supporters at the event in November!

Tech Field Day Overview from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

The Future

How could there not be another event like this? We have potential delegates and sponsors lining up, asking to be part of it. In fact, we have been overwhelmed by the interest!

Here’s what we know so far:

• We will hold at least two more Tech Field Days in 2010, and possibly more
• We are aiming for March and June, though dates are definitely TBD
• These will take place wherever sponsor and delegate interest intersects, probably Boston, San Jose, Denver, and perhaps London, Seattle, and Research Triangle in North Carolina
• We have formed a steering committee to review potential delegates and vendors so we can stay true to the Tech Field Day ideals
• We already have a few vendors confirming their support with signed contracts for slots at multiple events

Want to get involved? There’s always room for more!

• Prospective delegates – Are you an independent IT infrastructure thought leader? Maybe you blog about VMware or lead a community dedicated to networking or record a podcast about storage? Fill out this Google form so we can get to know you better! Maybe you’ll be invited to join us at Tech Field Day in 2010!
• Interested sponsors – Does your company have an awesome IT infrastructure product that would interest the Tech Field Day delegates? Let us know by filling out this Google form and we will be in touch!

You can also email or call Stephen Foskett (stephen@fosketts.net, +1-508-451-9532) for more information.

© Stephen for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Tech Field Day: Past and Future
Read more posts categorized as Events, Exclusive, Featured, Top Story

Ocarina Networks presented to us during the Day 2 morning session of the GestaltIT Tech Field Day. Their presentation was a deep dive into storage compression and optimization. If you read my Ideas About Presenting To Engineers from earlier this week, then you’ll know what I mean when I say that Ocarina had “black magic” that wasn’t as interesting to me as how and where the solution was deployed in the data center. After all, Ocarina claims that they will optimize and compress data on any storage device. I wanted to know how they could integrate with existing, third party storage before I was ready to absorb how their compression and de-duplication was actually achieved.

I don’t want to mislead anyone – almost all of my fellow delegates where deeply impressed with the block by block algorithm lesson on Ocarina’s technology. The storage gurus where so into it I had to wait for the hands on labs to start before I could get my questions answered. In fact, I never did the labs because I spent the whole time at the white board understanding the deployment options.

My post is therefore about implementation options of an Ocarina solution. I’m using several quotes from posts by Carter George, co-founder of Ocarina Networks, taken from the Online Storage Optimization Blog to help me explain the deployment options. Then I’ll cover some ideas about how could Ocarina function in a virtual environment.

For those that want to know more about the deep dive on the Ocarina technology, follow the links at the end of this write up to my fellow attendee’s posts.

Ocarina needs an ethernet connection

First of all, Ocarina’s technology works with NFS storage and CIFS. That means ip connectivity must exist between the data shares and the Ocarina server / appliance for 2 of the 3 possible deployment options.  Basically, Ocarina will remotely monitor the storage device for select activity it can optimize via the normal management interface. I was told that there was no need for a dedicated or private network.

3 Deployment Methods

As the post Going Native CIFS explains, Ocarina can be deployed in one of three ways:

“Ocarina Inside”: Ocarina is embedded in a NAS vendor’s solution.

Examples of “Ocarina Inside” are EMC Celerra, HP Enterprise NAS, BlueArc, and HDS HNAS.  Additional “Ocarina Inside” partners will be announced soon. This is the best form of integration, because it makes deduplication and compression completely transparent to users and applications, and lets each storage vendor deliver all their full value-add, including in the CIFS protocol stack.

Ocarina Appliance: A split-band appliance

In the Ocarina Appliance case, Ocarina’s optimization happens out of the customer data path, but in order to expand files to their original state upon user access, the Ocarina intercepts read requests in-band. If an I/O (over CIFS or NFS) is to an Ocarina-optimized file, we step in, rehydrate the file, and pass it on to the user. This involves being a proxy for NFS and CIFS (and other protocols including WebDAV and http)

Ocarina Native Format Optimization (NFO): files are optimized in their native format

This is a special use of Ocarina where we take certain rich media file types – photos, images and video – and compress them in a special way. What we do is compress them, but have the output be a new, smaller file but in the same native format it started out in. We’ll take a JPEG photo, compress it, and produce as output another perfectly formed JPEG photo….just smaller. The same is true for example for Flash videos. Now in this case, there is no need for a decompressor or for Ocarina to be in the read path or on the protocol at all. We can read files from your NetApp, shrink them, write them back on to your NetApp and Ocarina need not be involved at all when users or applications go to access those files.”

Virtual Machines and Ocarina

I got the following information from the post titled Dedupe Misconceptions. The post specifically references VMware virtual machines, but the scenario can be easily imagined for any virtualization solution.

In a virtual machine environment, a storage array may be storing thousands of VMDK’s, the VMware files that store a given virtual machine. Inside each VMDK file is a complete virtual machine image, including the operating system, application files and user data. If you have 1,000 VMDK’s that holds virtual Windows machine, you’ll have tens of thousands of “files” inside that VMDK file, including a copy of Microsoft Windows, the application you are running the in the virtual machine, and often the data for that application as well. How much of the Windows operating system do you suppose is duplicated across the 1,000 VMDK’s in this example? Well, almost all of it. What’s more, the thousands of files that make up Windows do not change – are not changeable, in fact, unless you do an OS upgrade.

Large parts of the VMDK file are duplicate with others, and they stay the same, day after day. Perfect candidates for dedupe. Sure, the user data in a VMDK may change, but any competent dedupe solution is not deduplicating whole files – the dedupe solution is deduplicating something at sub-file granularity: blocks, objects, chunks, etc.

VI Design Ideas for Ocarina

Unfortunately, Ocarina cannot optimize primary storage for live VMs. This is not to say there is not a place in a virtual environment for the technology.

When I asked Ocarina how they felt they fit best with virtualization, It was suggested that VMs that remain powered off could be moved to a secondary NFS LUN / datastore that was compressed. Before these VMs could be powered on they would be migrated back to the primary datastores not optimized by Ocarina. At a high level, this seems like a great way to maintain backup clones of production VMs without provisioning twice as much storage. To that point, we also listened to a Nirvanix Enterprise Cloud Storage presentation while at Ocarina’s office.

Then thinking about other virtualization scenarios for Ocarnia, I considered how significant storage savings could be achieved for file servers, document management, interior design drawings, photography and film repositories, or any other applications that manages a lot of files. In order to consolidate hardware the server operating system could be encapsulated as a virtual disk, but the application data could be separated to a dedicated CIFS or NFS share. I’ve even posted before about leveraging the built in capability of NetApp filers to act as a network CIFS share. I mention NetApp specifically in my post, but remember, Ocarina works with any storage device. Ocarina would be optimizing the application data in these scenarios and not touching the virtualized pieces.

For those that want to know the deep Ocarina storage details here are several links to other Tech Field Day blog posts on Ocarina:

• www.techhead.co.uk -videos of CTO Goutham Rao
• rodos.haywood.org- more video of Goutham and a lot of detail about the Ocarina compression and de-dupe
• storagemonkees.com – a great summary of the Ocarina session with a ton of storage insight
• renegade.tweakblogs.net – Technology details and then more details in the comments
• blogs.techrepublic.com.com/datacenter – good overview of the Ocarina compression and dedupe

© Rich for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Considering Ocarina Networks Optimized Data For Virtual Environments
Read more posts categorized as Events, Server Virtualization, Storage

Our first-ever Tech Field Day event has now come and gone, and it was more successful than we could have imagined! Fifteen of the best independent IT infrastructure thought leaders came together in California for two days of in-depth discussion and evaluation of some of the hottest technology products around.

Delegates and Coverage

The coverage of this event was simply astonishing! Twitter was filled with Tech Field Day-related discussion, and dozens of articles and blog posts have already appeared. Many more are already in the works, so watch the blogs of our esteemed delegates over the coming months for a deluge of information!

Our first Tech Field Day attracted 15 well-known bloggers from across the spectrum of independent IT commentary. L-R: Greg Knieriemen, John Obeto, Carlo Costanzo, Rod Haywood, Rick Vanover, Stephen Foskett, Nigel Poulton, Bas Raayman, Ed Saipetch, Simon Seagrave, Chris Evans, Devang Panchigar, Greg Ferro, John Hickson, Robin Harris, Rich Brambley

The delegates have already written much about the content of the sessions. Here is a sampling of their commentary:

• Robin Harris:
  • Consolidated I/O for virtual data centers
  • A data robot is eating the low end
• Carlo Costanzo:
  • Tech Field Day : MDS Micro & Xsigo
  • Tech Field Day : Additional Notes
• Rod Haywood:
  • Gestalt IT Field Days 2009 Day 1
  • Gestalt IT Field Days 2009 Day 2
  • Gestalt IT Field Days 2009
  • Ocarina Networks
  • Drobo configuration
• Chris Evans:
  • Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – Day 1: MDS Micro, Xsigo, VMware
  • GestaltIT Tech Field Day – Day 2: Ocarina, Nirvanix and Data Robotics
  • Enterprise Computing: Thin Provisioning and The Cookie Monster!
  • Review: DroboPro – Part I
• Ed Saipetch:
  • The Five Rules of Tech Field Day Club
• John Obeto:
  • Gestalt IT Tech Field Day 1: Liveblogging 1
  • Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – Day 2 Liveblogging
  • Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – The Summary
  • Data Robotics and the Drobo
• Devang Panchigar:
  • GestaltIT TechFieldday 2009: Post 7 (Day 0)
  • GestaltIT Techfieldday 2009: Post 8 (Day 1)
  • GestaltIT TechFieldDay 2009: Post 10 (Day 2)
  • GestaltIT Techfieldday 2009: Post 11 (The Fun Day)
  • DROBO S and DROBO Elite – Introduced 11/23/2009
• Rick Vanover:
  • Quick Thoughts on Virtualized I/O
  • Storage in the cloud: Availability and SLAs
  • Field Day recap of activities – day one
  • Day 2 recap of Tech Field Day
  • Gestalt IT Field Day – Looking back on the event
  • Storage-based compression and de-duplication overview
  • Awesome mobile technology for demonstrations
  • Tech Field Day Presentation Ideas
  • 3PAR Storage Architecture, Protection Notes
  • Need Virtualization Test Storage? Consider a Drobo
  • Storage-based compression and de-duplication overview
• Bas Raayman:
  • GestaltIT Tech Field: Day 0 – It started with a haiku
  • GestaltIT TFD – Day 2: Wind instruments and data deduplication
  • GestaltIT TFD – Day 2: Top secret at Data Robotics?
• Nigel Poulton:
  • Xsigo – Try it out, I dare you!
  • EMC V-Max pub discussion
• Simon Seagrave:
  • Gestalt IT Field Day – Ocarina Networks: Data Compression and De-duplication
  • VMware “Booth Rack” with Tim Myers (Gestalt IT Field Day)
• Greg Ferro:
  • Drobo — Guessing How BeyondRAID Creates Space and Volumes
• Rich Brambley:
  • GestaltIT Tech Field Day: Day 1 Journal
  • GestaltIT Tech Field Day: Day 2
  • Tech Field Day: Thoughts About Presenting To Engineers
  • MDS and Xsigo Power VMware GETO Mobile Demo and VMworld Booth Rack
  • Considering Ocarina Networks Optimized Data For Virtual Environments

Presenting Sponsors

The event never could have happened without our presenting sponsors. Their commitment to making the Tech Field Day a success showed through their preparation and presentation, and we are truly grateful.

Our first day began at the beautiful VMware campus for breakfast before we headed across the street to their briefing center at Xerox PARC. There, Xsigo and MDS Micro wowed the crowd with their combined virtual I/O and high-density server technology. After lunch, we headed to 3PAR’s offices to dive into thin provisioning, wide striping, and thin reclaim in combination with Symantec Storage.

Day two started at Ocarina HQ with a solid discussion of data optimization technology. We also met Nirvanix and learned about cloud storage for the enterprise. Next up, W. Curtis Preston introduced his new end user-focused venture, Truth in IT. Our final presenting sponsor was Data Robotics, who delivered a one-two punch with solid technical information and an advance (but embargoed) look at some awesome new products.

There is not nearly enough space here to do justice to these presentations. But the coverage provided by our delegates speaks volumes!

Special Thanks

I would also like to call special attention to some unsung heroes of the event:

• TechValidate, sponsor of our awesome Thursday evening mixer at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, and CEO Brad O’Neill, whose wise advice is always welcome.
• Marc Farley and Sunshine Mugrabi, who supported me in every way I asked, including locating everything on long, unexplained shopping lists. They even put together a touching and funny thank-you video for me personally! See also Sunshine’s posts, Traveling at the Speed of Social Media and Party Time! A Tech Gossip Column.
• VMware provided an excellent day-1 setting as well as breakfast and lunch. I would especially like to thank John Troyer, who helped me to launch the event on the VMware Communities Roundtable (podcast 67) and helped in so many ways. See also John’s post, Gestalt IT, the Craigslist of new tech journalism. The event was also featured in episode 73 of the VMware Communities Roundtable.
• Liz Zaborowska of Bhava Communications was a joy to work with, even creating and distributing personalized shirts for the delegates.
• It was great to have the assistance of Greg Knieriemen, and StorageMonkeys will soon post an InfoSmack Podcast recorded at the Field Day!
• Finally, I am so pleased to have been able to have Claire Chaplais serve as our event manager. She truly has extraordinary skills, and her patience, care, and thoughtfulness were obvious to everyone involved.

Thanks to everyone, the Gestalt IT Tech Field Day was an amazing success. In fact, we were so pleased with it that we are already planning Tech Field Day 2! Watch this space or contact Stephen Foskett for more information!

© Stephen for Gestalt IT, 2009. | What a Tech Field Day!
Read more posts categorized as Events, Exclusive, Featured, Top Story

GestaltIT Tech Field Day is over, and the attendees and sponsors have indicated they were extremely pleased with the event. This is not to say that everything went well the whole time. In fact, if you followed along on the social media conversation then you caught some interesting tweets and replies during the brief moments that waned. However, those times were few and far between and mostly insignificant in the total experience of all who participated. The great thing was that the sponsors monitored the social conversation (Twitter) too, so any criticism was truly constructive and lead to direct questioning about how to make it better. After all, the presentations will be repeated for other engineers and customers and refining the message betters the audience reaction next time.

All that being said, I wanted to offer my thoughts on what I think could help both sides during future GestaltIT Tech Field Days (yes, it looks like there will be others!)

Watching CLI Demos Is Like Listening to the Ballgame On The Radio

I’m not saying using CLI demos, configuration, or hands on labs are bad, but watching text scroll down a screen is not exactly engaging either. If CLI commands are the method of configuring the product’s features then so be it, but

Rather, after you tell me the product has a capability then show me the results from the user’s perspective, or in other words, a screen shot of “My Computer” or “Disk Manager” before and after better explains what actually happened. That’s a simple example. But the point is a few images are worth a thousand commands when you want to high-lite what the product does.

The Server and Network Guys Need To Understand What It Needs Before They Care About How It Does It

Look, I know the GestaltIT crowd is mostly storage gurus, and as one of a few server and network engineers I’m not who the sponsors prepared for. But, don’t count me out! Fact is, your storage product needs servers and networking to do it’s thing. My kind needs to understand the infrastructure your product requires before we entertain your technology.

Many of the company’s products I learned about this week were first time introductions for me. By nature of the GestaltIT Field Day’s objective, the sponsors of the future events will be lesser known technologies too. Take some time to explain a logical view of your solution. I’m not talking about the marketing either (although GestaltIT attendees have the expertise represented too). For example, if you have a hardware appliance that optimizes my storage than show me a Visio, photo, or whiteboard where to put it in the data center. Be sure we understand the implementation and connectivity first. Then I’m ready for a deep dive on why your technology works, but until I can visualize where it sits in the rack and what talks to it, I’m content to take your word that your “black magic” works – and yes, telling me it is “black magic” is OK while I’m understanding where it goes. Show me the actual “ingredients” of your “potion” at the end. In some scenarios, the tour of the data center and the hands on exploration of the hardware could be more effective before the presentation as opposed to the traditional “on the way out” time slot.

My 2 cents: a suggested outline for presenting

• Welcome – Introduction to product
  • use case: how technology solves specific problems
  • target customers
  • Infrastructure architecture and requirements
• Photos, samples, tour, etc. (get the audience out of their seats!)
  • Model nos. and their capabilities
• Technology deep dive (sit them back down)
• Hands on Labs, demos, etc (have support for questions beyond the scope of the script)

We’re going to debate about using the technology, and that’s a good thing

In the end, the best part about the group of Tech Field Day attendees is that we are a mix of technology perspectives, and those perspectives created invaluable discussions on the bus, at the dinner table, and at the bar. Those talks are where it all comes together for us. The group discussion was so beneficial that we are considering building in time between sessions in future event scheduling to allow us to meet and debrief.

To illustrate the importance of  this, there were several sessions this week where I personally missed the point. I either tuned out, was distracted with email or tweets, or I couldn’t visualize the way the technology made a difference. However, later each day I got the chance to question those in the group that understood – sometimes to the frustration of many. As a collective we struggled to understand what we saw from the holistic perspective: networking, storage, and servers. The result was that everyone ended up considering the technology in ways slightly differently than our own, first impressions. The key is the chemistry of the group allows these debates!

Help us have these discussions by making sure all the data center perspectives (server, networking, security, and storage) are covered by the presentation.

© Rich for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Tech Field Day: Thoughts About Presenting To Engineers
Read more posts categorized as Events, Server Virtualization

The call rang out across the Interwebs all last week: What do you know about the companies presenting at our first Tech Field Day event later this week? Many have answered, with over 150 quizzes filed already! Yet there is still time left to answer and enter for a chance to win a techie prize pack including a new Apple iPod Nano with video and other great stuff!

Fill out all seven quizzes now (it shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes) and you’ll get 7 chances to win!

• Do You Know Xsigo?
• Do You Know MDS Micro?
• Do You Know 3PAR?
• Do You Know Symantec Storage?
• Do You Know Ocarina?
• Do You Know Nirvanix?

We will be announcing the winner tomorrow, November 10, 2009!

What’s this all about?

Gestalt IT is a group of folks passionate about IT infrastructure. We’re not some big publisher, analyst house, or PR agency. We’re just regular independent individuals who want to learn and share. So we put together our own event, Tech Field Day, to help us learn what seven cool companies are offering.

Everyone Is Invited!

Although just 15 folks will be attending the event, we’re not alone! We will be covering the event on Twitter, on our blogs, and just about everywhere else we can think of. We’ll even have a running Tech Field Day Scoreboard so you can follow along at home!

The “Do You Know…” contest is another way to bring wider participation. We’re using your feedback to help us ask the best questions during the event, and will try to get the straight truth right from the source. It’s also a fun way to see who knows what about these companies. We’ll have a follow-on series of posts, videos, and quizzes after the event, including a second contest.

So go ahead and get involved! Enter the contest, ask your questions, and follow along as we dive into our first Tech Field Day!

Enter Now!

Here are all seven quizzes in one place, listed in reverse chronological order. Only one entry per person per quiz please!

© Stephen for Gestalt IT, 2009. | One More Day To Enter the Tech Field Day “Do You Know?” Contest!
Read more posts categorized as Events, Exclusive

Domo arigato, data roboto, but what can you do? The Tech Field Day attendees will get up close and personal with Data Robotics as the final presentation on Friday afternoon.

You will certainly hear a great deal about this company soon, but until then the question is put to you: Do you know Data Robotics? Answer the following quiz and you’ll be entered to win a prize package, including the new 16 GB Apple iPod Nano with video! Check out the introductory page for contest details and rules, and watch this space for six other quizzes in the “Do You Know…” series. Each quiz gives you another chance to win!

© Stephen for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Do You Know Data Robotics?
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Does Nirvanix smell like teen spirit or a state of enlightenment? The Tech Field Day attendees will get up close and personal with Nirvanix and their partner, Ocarina, first thing Friday morning.

You will certainly hear a great deal about this company soon, but until then the question is put to you: Do you know Nirvanix? Answer the following quiz and you’ll be entered to win a prize package, including the new 16 GB Apple iPod Nano with video! Check out the introductory page for contest details and rules, and watch this space for six other quizzes in the “Do You Know…” series. Each quiz gives you another chance to win!

© Stephen for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Do You Know Nirvanix?
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Oh, Carina, what do you think of Ocarina? Do they make network components of flutes? The Tech Field Day attendees will get up close and personal with Ocarina and their partner, Nirvanix, first thing Friday morning.

You will certainly hear a great deal about this company soon, but until then the question is put to you: Do you know Ocarina? Answer the following quiz and you’ll be entered to win a prize package, including the new 16 GB Apple iPod Nano with video! Check out the introductory page for contest details and rules, and watch this space for six other quizzes in the “Do You Know…” series. Each quiz gives you another chance to win!

© Stephen for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Do You Know Ocarina?
Read more posts categorized as Events