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Archive for the ‘blades’ Category

VMware employee Hany Michael has started an incredibly useful series of design posts and diagrams titled VMware vSphere On Blade Servers. His first post VMware vSphere on IBM BladeCenter H delivers a multi layer .PDF that provides a template design of 4 common vSphere deployments with HS22 and the HS22V Blades. 

I’m just highlighting the iSCSI design in this post, but be sure to get a copy of Hany’s full PDF for diagrams of FC and 10GE designs as well.

Here’s an image of the BladeCenter H iSCSI design taken from the Configuration 2 layer. Click the image for a larger view.

Some things to point out why I think this diagram is so useful:

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HP Blades Day ended for me with another opportunity to be a guest on an Infosmack podcast. Episode 40 was recorded mid afternoon on the last day of the event with an all-star lineup. Here’s the official podcast summary from the episode’s web page (linked above):

“Infosmack Podcast Episode 40 – HP Blades Day Wrap Up. Greg Knieriemen of Chi Corporation and Marc Farley of 3Par and StorageRap.comwith guests Rich Brambley of VM/ETC, Simon Seagrave of TechHead, Stephen Foskett of Gestalt IT, Chris M. Evans of The Storage Architect and Devang Panchigar of Storage Nerve. This week’s podcast is a special wrap up from the HP Blades Day in Houston, Texas.

Disclosure: The participants on this podcast were provided travel and accommodations by HP.”

Like when I’ve been on Infosmack before, here’s an embedded player to listen to the latest episode now.

For those wanting to know a little bit more about some of the most important topics we were discussing in Episode 40 check out the following links:

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The final day of HP Blades Day consisted of some quick morning sessions and then the Factory Express and HP Pod tour. The guided explanation of the HP server assembly process was clearly the pinnacle of 2 days that was already filled with many highlights.

Here’s a 30 second video of some of my photos from Friday.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

For more information about HP’s Factory Express program that let’s each customer “choose how your solution is built, tested, integrated, shipped and deployed” check out this video.

For more information about the HP POD “ship to order datacenter” check out this video.

If you’d like to see all my photos from Wednesday through Friday check out my full HP Blades Day photo album. I’ll eventually add the HP Blade Day photo album to my Photos page here on VM /ETC as well.

Disclosure – I toured the HP Houston, TX facilities during an all expenses paid blogging event hosted by HP.

VM /ETC readers will probably recall that I love to report on the NFL and it’s teams use of virtualization and blade centers. I must say, as a man born in Philadelphia who is a long time Atlanta Falcons season ticket holder, I had to “do what’s right” and publish this post. All rivalries aside, I find examples of popular events, teams, and venues such as Cowboys Stadium to be the most interesting real world virtualization implementations to reference.

Disclosure – I was introduced to this video during an all expenses paid blogging event at the HP Campus in Houston, TX.

HP Blades Day Day 1 was a busy day. Although there were some Internet connectivity challenges for me, I was surprised to find a good bit of conversation on twitter was available from other attendees. Today will be another day of more great content presented by HP. Look for posts with session information and opinion over the next few days.

Here’s a 30 second video of some of my photos from Day 1.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

The following is our agenda looks like for day 2:

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Wednesday night in Houston, TX was a great finish for a day of travel. By 6 PM all of the HP Blades Day attendees had made it to the hotel, checked in, and met in the lobby. After some general group socializing we ended up grabbing some pizza at a nearby restaurant called Pizza Fusion. It was a great evening with a great group of folks!

Here’s a 30 second video of some of my photos from last night.

Today we will get down to business at HP. Here’s what our agenda looks like:

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Tomorrow I leave for Texas to attend HP’s Infrastructure Software & Blades Tech Day at the HP campus in Houston, TX. HPBladesDay is taking place on February 25^th & 26th. This exclusive blogger event was outlined in the invitation email I received as follows:

“This day and a half deep dive about the blade server market, key data center trends and client virtualization will be with HP technology leaders and business executives who will discuss the company’s business advantages and technical advances.  It will also include customers’ and their own key insights and experiences and provide demos of the products.  You’ll get an insider’s tour of HP’s Lab facilities as well.”

So, for the rest of this week I’ll be tweeting, snapping photos, taking movies, and sooner or later blogging about my experiences and HP’s blades servers.

This will be my second HP blogger event. Regular readers will recall I was also lucky enough to get invited to the HP Storage Day event at the Colorado Springs HP campus last Fall.

Podcast Coverage

Greg Knieriemen, also a HPBladesday attendee and the infamous Infosmack podcast host, has asked me to record another Infosmack episode from Houston with him. GestaltIT’s fearless leader and blogger extraordinaire Stephen Foskett will also be joining us on the show as well as in Houston at HP’s event. I’m willing to bet that several other of the bloggers in attendance could end up on the podcast, so look for another great Infosmack talk next Monday when it is released.

HP’s own blogger (Around the Storage Block blog) Calvin Zito (@HPStorageGuy) will also be there. Since Zito has also recently started his own podcast, look for great coverage in all social media formats from him as well.

Twitter and Blogs

Knieriemen has already created a Twitter list.

Twitter / @Knieriemen/HP Blades Day

You can also follow HP Blade team (BladeNews) on Twitter

The official event Twitter hashtag is #HPBladesDay

Here’s a list of other bloggers attending, (but not a complete list): Read the rest of this entry »