Where is Simon?

What a crazy couple of months it’s been at work!   You can probably tell from the lack of blog posts on the site that I have been busy doing other things, namely working with a small group of others from the EMC vSpecialist team to create a VMworld EMC hands on lab offering for the upcoming VMworld events in Las Vegas and Copenhagen.  Plenty of hard work and brain power has gone into creating an engaging (we hope attendees will agree) though informative and relevant 60 minute lab for VMworld attendees to come and sit.  Although there were quite a few products in the EMC portfolio to choose from we (shout-out to our Technical Enablement Team Lead, Chris Horn) decided to include the products listed below as between them they cover a nice even spread of EMC’s offerings, all of which are directly relevant to today’s modern business and IT department.  The EMC products you’ll be able to come and get hands on time at VMworld 2011 are:

• EMC VNX including the VMware vCenter VSI plugins
• EMC Isilon (Big Data and an all round cool product in my opinion)
• VMware vShield 5 with Data Security (using RSA technology)
• EMC Avamar (backups and recovery)

It was definitely no easy task trying to cram all of this into a 60 minute lab but we’ve managed to do it and I feel we’ve created an interesting ‘real world’ type scenario to follow, which will make the lab all that more engaging.  Throughout the lab scenario attendees will follow a fun storyline that touches on each of the products named above to solve various common issues faced by many IT departments and businesses.

This week (starting 8th August)  I’ll be working with the VMware VMworld lab team to run through our lab and perform further testing and ‘tweaks’ to refine it and make it ready for show-time at VMworld.

As someone who loves the IT industry and tech in general I feel very fortunate to do what I do and have the opportunity to work with such a talented bunch of people.  The hours can sometimes be very long though luckily for me even the longest of days don’t feel like a chore due to my genuine geeky interest in what I do.  Just as well as I think I could have possibly gone mad by now.   

Below is a picture of our new lab room (still being unpacked as you can probably tell) where much of the EMC VMworld magic is being created.

Some of the spare time I have had I’ve channelled into a side project with Simon Long called vBeers.  We have now put together a vBeers (www.vbeers.org) web site that helps fellow virtualization and IT geeks create their own social gathering of like minded individuals, and get news of their vBeers event out to the masses.  Although it is called ‘vBeers’ it isn’t actually about the consumption of beer (many prefer soft drinks or wine) but the coming together of virtualization and tech enthusiasts who share the love of tech and like talking about it with others in a social and relaxed environment.  The concept of vBeers has certainly gained momentum over the past six months with new vBeers events created by individuals going up on the vBeers.org site every few days.  We’re so pleased that vBeers has been embraced by the vCommunity and that the site is helping the virtualization and IT community to connect.  If you haven’t heard of vBeers head over to the vBeers.org website to find out more.

Anyway… I thought I’d put this short post together to give you an insight into what I’ve been up to and why the number of new TechHead posts have been rather scarce over the past month or so. Start expecting to see some new blog posts hit the TechHead site in the coming weeks as I start to catch up on many half written posts.

Thanks for reading and as always please leave a comment with any questions or other.

Simon