VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘nfl’

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.

Who Dat? Who Dat? Who Dat virtualizin’ on BladeCenter S ?

I posted last year about the NFL’s use of virtualization at the Super Bowl, and I wrote my beloved Atlanta Falcons in case they needed help when the NFL made it’s  decision to standardize on IBM Blades for all 32 teams. This year, Kevin Houston, a fellow Softchoice employee and author of the increasingly popular bladesmadesimple.com blog, has posted on how the ‘09 NFC Champion New Orleans Saints have capitalized on these very technologies during the season.

Houston writes:

“Other than the obvious threat of having to relocate or evacuate due to the weather, the Saints’ constant travel required them to search for a portable IT solution that would make it easier to quickly set up operations in another city.  The Saints were a long-time IBM customer, so they looked at the IBM BladeCenter S for this solution, and it worked great.  (I’m going to review the BladeCenter S below, so keep reading.)  The Saints consolidated 20 physical servers onto the BladeCenter S, virtualizing the environment with VMware.   Although the specific configuration of their blade environment is not disclosed, IBM reports that the Saints are using 1 terabyte of built-in storage, which enables the Saints to go on the road with the essential files (scouting reports, financial apps, player stats, etc) and tools the coaches and the staff need.  In fact, in the IBM Case Study video, the Assistant Director of IT for the New Orleans Saints, Jody Barbier, says, “The Blade Center S definitely can make the trip with us if we go to the Super Bowl.”  I guess we’ll see.  Be looking for the IBM Marketing engine to jump on this bandwagon in the next few days.”

Be sure to read Houston’s entire post for more about the many features of IBM BladeCenter S

Maybe the S model of IBM BladeCenter stood for “Saints” all along!?

A recent partnership announcement between Cisco and the Miami Dolphins was showcased last night before the Monday Night Football game. The Dolphins have created a unique fan experience using Cisco TelePresence to enable virtual meetings between fans and Dolphin’s players. More from Cisco’s official announcement follows in this post, but I experienced Cisco Telepresence first hand during VMworld 2009 when I participated in a virtual meeting with people in 9 different locations all over the U.S. and Canada.

In my case, I and 2 co-workers took a break from attending VMware’s conference and sat down in Cisco’s TelePresence booth in San Francisco. We were able to participate in a live meeting with groups of customers hosted by fellow employees in locations such as Houston, Atlanta, Toronto, and Montreal just to name a few. Our meeting was actually about creating a unified data center with Cisco UCS  and VMware vSphere. TelePresence truly created a face to face experience by displaying the individuals talking and managing the conversation as others chimed in.

Participating in virtual meeting from VMworld

View of participants in other cities

It’s great to see Cisco’s technology used for NFL game entertainment. Like the NFL’s use of IBM bladecenters reported at last year’s Superbowl, I’m hoping my Atlanta Falcons will soon follow in the Miami’s lead for the Georgia Dome. According to a related feature article by Cisco titled Cisco Helping Stadiums Compete with the Couch, “some of the biggest teams in professional sports [omitted] are turning to Cisco Systems to wire new state-of-the-art stadiums and digitize older ballparks. In recent months the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Yankees, the Kansas City Royals and the Toronto Blue Jays have connected their stadiums from the locker rooms to the concession stands with Cisco technologies.” Falcons, I’d love to help!

Here’s some info on what exactly the Dolphins have created for fans from Cisco’s press release. Note the mention of fans sharing Flip Video at the end of the quote as well.

Read the rest of this entry »

VMware, IBM BladeCenter S and N-series storage to be used by all 32 NFL Teams

Not only did the National Football League (NFL) rely on IBM and VMware for the server infrastructure at it’s biggest game of the year, Super Bowl XLIII, but a CRN.com article by Joseph Kovar reveals that IBM VAR Vicom “provided 34 SANs based on IBM’s N-series storage products, as well as a server virtualization solution based on VMware to consolidate the league’s offices.”

“IBM’s sponsorship of the Super Bowl and its direct deal with the NFL for the Super Bowl infrastructure was key to signing that larger deal, which includes one chassis to be installed in each of the 32 team’s IT infrastructures, said Vic Verola, vice president of sales for Vicom Computer Services, a Farmingdale, N.Y.-based solution provider and long-time IBM partner.”

Dear Arthur Blank,

If the Falcons need local support of your new VMware Virtual Infrastructure and IBM hardware let me know. Read the rest of this entry »