By now, I’m sure you’re noticing a trend in the titles of my blog posts (Yes, I’m sure the core semblance you’re able to surmise is that I start it “EMCWorld Day x” and then a bunch of jibber jabber which you really have to stretch to understand, and even then you ought to be committed if you truly understand…:)) But I’m sure this will all come to fruition and understanding as you read through this particular break down! :)

Welcome to Day 2! Woohoo! I don’t know about you, but every single day is LONG, not in a bad way.. and getting back to the hotel late after being out with peers, colleagues, customers, partners and beyond until the late hours… writing these blog posts and waking up early in the morning certainly doesn’t help.  But it is all good – And I apologize for the lack of tweets… the ATT network just cannot sustain thousands of people DDoS’ing the 3G and Edge networks by simply trying to use their devices in a very small area :) [re:keynote, session, anything ;)]

I’m sure the first words out of your mouth when you see my blog posts is WTF IS UP WITH ALL OF THE RED PHOTOS! Yea, I know, I get it. No seriously, You’re preaching to the choir, or more specifically to roxanne – I wish she didn’t have to turn on the red light.. or atleast if the iPhone would have the ability to not take the powers of Suck and combine them with red lights to produce photos which look like this.. but we’re going to walk past that.. and we’ll start by quoting my good friend Charles Hood (@charleshood) to do that!   The masterful blogger Charles Hood said it right and properly in a recent Flickr photo he appeared in, where he said “When it comes to Social Media, EMC *gets it*.”  And let me tell you just how true that is.

So, our journey into Social Media at EMC and EMCWorld begins… at the Bloggers lounge!

The cast of characters in the photos above.. the sheer mindshare is enough to take on the world, twice and come out prosperous multi-fold!

Starting in order of sequence, It is paramount that I bring to you, the amazing, hyper-intelligent, cat loving and beautiful Jamie Pappas! (@jamiepappas)   If it weren’t for her, everything that Charles Hood and so many others have had to say would not be true as it is today, and we have her to thank for this!   Infact, if you have the opportunity to meet and talk with her, you will be better for it :)    I guess I cannot leave Stu-master @stu “Stuart Miniman” out since he is after all in the photo.  Stu is great too, and helps make the EMC Social Media experience what it is today as well, not to mention if you want to know about Fa-ko-ee, he’s definitely your man there too. ;)

I’m sure everyone has met, read and knows Barry Burke (@storageanarchy), I mean how could we not know the man who gave me the Symmetrix sticker which sits on my laptop.. ;)

Challenge me to say otherwise.. but I have to say.. the smile on Steve Todd’s (@stevetodd) face… if that doesn’t bring a smile to your face, I think you need to re-evaluate your priorities!

Bringing us on to Photo #4 which is the rare shot of the beautiful Mark Twomey (@storagezilla) deep in conversation with the mysterious non-blogging Gilda Farvid! (Hey! How did Gilda get into the bloggers lounge?!?! ;)) We’ll see about getting Gilda back on the blogging circuit since she joined our ranks of champions :)

HELP! HELP! HELP! There’s a Virtual Army at my door and I need some vSpecialists to extract my VM’s of Mass De…. eh, this example is going nowhere fast!  But people who are going up, up and up!, the motherload in this photo definitely calls for an “OMFG HOWZ CANS i MEETZ THEM!”  – Incase you cannot make out their names or faces… You’re looking at (from left to right) Simon Seagrave (@Kiwi_Si), Alan Renouf (@alanrenouf) and finally the champion master himself, the infamous Scott Lowe! (@scott_lowe)

Finally we have a group shot with the lot of us, you know of all of us, however on the far right the other hidden vSpecialist, Ed Saipetch (@edsai)

So what does this mean? Are you trying to say that everyone at EMC not only maintains a blog but a transparent relationship with the community, customers, partners and even competitors through mediums like Twitter and beyond?   No.. I’m not saying that, but you can.   This entire relationship around how EMC handles it’s social media is akin to that old adage, keep your friends close, and frankly we don’t have enemies.    For those of you who think we do… just remember how closely knit the entire tech community is – We’re not enemies, we’re all friends who at one point or another in the past (and in the future) will work together and collaborate on one thing or another – Welcome to EMC 3.0 – The future of not only doing things right, but doing it transparently.   (Disclaimer: Hopefully no one spanks me for in any way claiming what EMC’s social media strategy is, I’m just an observer, it’s pretty damn obvious ;))

But, that’s enough about the Bloggers lounge, social media strategy, ninjas and giant celerras! (err….)

I did attend a session! In between being unable to get a cell signal in order to make it onto conference calls, and meeting some absolutely great people at lunch.. no.. I did attend a session! Later in the week I’ll also have some mega-deep dives on sessions.. but being that I was only into one session today a little bit, I’ll give you a brief overview:  Architectural Deep Dive of the VPLEX! … Hmm, Yea I knew that, damnit, how dare I do my home work before these sessions…. Good session, absolutely informative for the FULL BALLROOM it was in (Can we say STANDING ROOM ONLY) around just the Architecture of the VPLEX alone? Yea.. Definitely good things coming from this bad boy.   So, sorry I won’t tell you much more than… you’ll see the deep dive later on the sessions I attend… (I hope I’m allowed to share what I learn from the sessions… because I will be anyway, grin)

Afterwards, with mega-sessions running continuously and constantly everywhere, I headed back down to the Bloggers Lounge where Steve Todd was interviewing people on the moment they realized their future was in technology (the watershed moment) [Oh, did I mention that the explanation of what the watershed moment involved Steve Todd serenading me with an indigo girls song? How can you not love this man?! :))   So, I did my interview (and separate other interviews which I’ll publish details on when I find out where it’s posted) And good thing… as my voice is dead from this point forward!   Dead how and why?!

I think that helps explain the first bit of it… My first Red Sox game, and they won! (Wow, the ENTIRE crowd really comes together as one large ecosystem, feeding upon each others emotions and the relationships and bonds from simply sitting near others.. this is definitely a reflection of social dynamics – It’s no wonder they do so well…! The cubs are similar.. except that’s purely alcohol driven. ;))   But after that involved spending an amazing time with my good friends at Emulex for a good bit before the night closed out and we headed off for some Karaoke!

Hopefully YouTube doesn’t block this wondrous short video I captured because it has ‘music’ included in it.. but I have a tendency to sing along… loudly… and lose my voice. #fail? ;)

I hope you other attendees have been taking advantage of everything the vendors, partners and beyond have had to offer because this is the time and place to enjoy yourself! :)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

$Wait!%$! You can’t end your post there! What? Why?! You barely even mentioned Emulex! Sure, but who cares about them, even though I really like their CNA’s.   Hmm, didn’t you meet someone who is an absolute rock star over there? Think.. think back.. ringing any bells?! ;)

Yes, I think it is important that if you’re not aware of Thomas Jones (@niketown588), a rockstar over at Emulex now is the time for the introduction!   Thomas GETS it.  You know how we were talking about EMC “Get’s Social Media”, well Thomas Jones really GETS it. (It doesn’t hurt that he’s buddies with Louis Gray ;)) But his take on things, his character, demeanor, Emulex should be proud to have an (I’m refraining myself from using expletives because of how much Thomas rocks :)) … amazing guy like this to take the company forward into the future :) – Oh and be sure that you get to see his Shirt which is signed with everyone’s Twitter ID’s :)  Okay.. enough… Time to crash.. have a GREAT Day 3 and be sure to enjoy all of the rest of your time at EMCWorld! :)

I sure do say Wow a lot, but seriously, do I not have an infinite number of reasons to?! :)   Today in particular was a heavy and hectic one! (One in which involved a lot less photos being taken in general!)    But that is solely driven just on the sole fact of SO much going on! If you’re here in attendance at EMC World 2010, I hope you’re having as good of a time as I am! (I’m certainly having my fair share of busy times! :))

My day actually started off a little similar and yet extremely different than everyone else’s!  Not only did I get to take in Joe Tucci’s keynote, but in the final moments of his speech and presentation, as the clock ticked past 10:30AM, I was no longer under marching orders which entitled me to deliver this blog post!  EMC and AOL use VPLEX to reduce complexity in migrations, eliminating downtime!  What a way to start off the day, right?!

I was able to get that published, online and out to you guys from the amazing Bloggers lounge, where I had the great honor of finally meeting so many of my peers, good friends, colleagues and industry champions!    I’m not sure I have the power in me to even be able to reference even half of the folks of you… so feel free to make yourselves known:)

Knowing I had matters to attend to, I headed out from the Bloggers lounge over to the Partner Pavilion, a man on a mission as I was.. to visit my good friends at Brocade :)    It was at this point I finally got to officially meet in person the lord master, @charleshood of the infamous blog Welcome to my valve on the series of tubes.  Charles is quite a dynamic character, great guy and an absolute gentleman!  

So, other than Charles playing with my iPad (or that might be his.. I honestly forget.. doesn’t matter, right?! :))  As I was curious to talk to one of their masters of the IP stack solutions which Brocade brings to bear, I had the amazing opportunity to meet my new best friend from Brocade, Seth Fiermonti!  Watch the video to see Seth take me and your on a whirlwind tour of the NetIron MLX-16 IP switch from Brocade (all the benefit of Foundry with the honor of the Brocade name! :))

The time was however on… to take a trip back over to the Bloggers lounge… I did tour about a bit, visit a session.. and then came back down to catch this random glimpse of my best friend and honorable executive, Joe Tucci!   While I didn’t have the opportunity to shake Joe’s hand, I do have the honor of him understanding and respecting what we do as bloggers :)

After this point, it was time to head back out to the Pavilion floor to show all of the wonderful Sponsors, Partners and more that we truly appreciate them being there.. by taking their SWAG! :)

Check out these sexy new VMware stickers, they’re not only sweet! (No, they’re not pink.. but that’s the photo I took.. me thinks you ought to deal with that! :))  And one of the best ways to deal with this, is by watching @mrdenny compete to provision storage using the SMC for the VMAX – And realizing.. wow, it really IS EASY to win prizes! :)

But hands down, the best of the best is the photo of my fellow TC on the right there, Greg.  He said this (unprompted) which forced me to not only take his photo, but to share his quote :)

“This is what I envision heaven being like”.  And if you were there in that particular area, you’d find it to be sooooo true! Both from the stand point of how bright, lively and airy that section is, but equally taking other undertones of the premise of the Cloud giving you that ultimate kind of Nirvana, whereby… your future is heavenly! (and no, not because you’re dead. ;))

After this point, we headed off to the House of Blues for the Brocade event, where there were literally casts of thousands in attendance! The event itself was amazing, great, my feet are DIEING! My phone was low as it was, and the subsequent battery death resulted in fewer photos. :)  Perhaps my phone will last longer here on Day 2, so I’ll have the opportunity to share more with you :)

I hope if you’re attending you are having a great time! If you’re not, hunt me down and I’ll be sure you get the most out of this experience, whether it be through meeting who you need to meet, learning what you need to learn, and solving what you need to solve!   Rock on everyone, and ready for another raucous EMC World Day 2 coming soon!

OMG! IT’S FINALLY HERE! Yea baby, you heard it here first! The VPLEX is a REALITY! But no, it’s not just vapor, and no, it’s not just ‘oh look an announcement’ what I’m really excited about is those who have actually been using it.   In particular, I’d like to showcase AOL who has used it, in this whitepaper – “AOL extends Virtual Storage to cloud computing with EMC VPLEX clusters” It’s pretty short, to the point but so succinct in the message it delivers.

Referencing a few quotes from this whitepaper really speaks volumes to the types of challenges we all face within the Enterprise space.

Stevens said, "We take disaster avoidance very seriously because the costs are so high if our systems aren’t available. Not only are there huge administrative costs and logistics involved with recovering hundreds of systems, but we risk losing customers forever if they can’t access our services."

That particular point is especially resonating – How many times have you lost a customer due to services being down, imagine if you can take that burden off the table from a storage stand point, that’s particularly cool if you ask me (not to mention being able to actually set and meet a true 5-9’s Forever SLA)

Stevens explained, "Because there is no downtime with migrations, we don’t need to devote huge amounts of time coordinating with application owners, database administrators and system administrators, and even our external customers. The actual migration itself is much less complex for our storage administrators."

"We’re no longer delaying migrations to avoid disrupting a peak load cycle.  So we’re returning our systems before the lease expires and not getting hit with high fees."

I’m not sure how many of you have to deal with regular lease cycles, even when you OWN the equipment scrap the leasing… dealing with the maintenance burden and moving data and equipment around non-disruptively in order to meet the needs of your application owners and the business without the hellacious burden of downtime windows managing apps unique SLA requirements.

And to think, in the use case and example above – This is something any customer can do TODAY by leveraging VPLEX, and that just opens the doors to extending your datacenter across geographic boundaries and the infinite number of other really cool things that the VPLEX will offer.

I’m glad such a renowned organization like AOL was able to be a part of this from the beginning, not only to provide this blog post I’d be able to share with you, but especially to be able to solve real world challenges today by using the technology of the future (Available now! :))

I don’t know about you, but wow! What a day! I started my day by waking up really early, forgetting countless things that I really need (business cards.. shaving gear, I really should check on that!) but hey, I’m here in Boston… so let’s revisit some of the events of the day.. (I’m sure you’ve seen some of these photos if you follow my twitter feed ;))

No day would start off any perfectly than having the opportunity to meet with the honorable Judge Wopner, presiding over affairs of foods.

The wonders and powers that conversation and CLEARLY looking like a geek will do (No, not Neil.. me! :)) as we engaged in a conversation with this Canadian SE from Dell – Great guy, Dell – You really struck it rich with a good guy like this!

The concert really kicked off to some good madness… this is the only photo I took of it… but it turned out decently for the iPhone.. so I’ll buy off on that one!

Yes, there were a LOT of others of us social folks than those shown here.. but these are the best three complimentary shots I can really get without lots of solo’s!

Each of these photos speaks… so many volumes about the social dynamic, the interaction and the pure culture we resonate whether it is peer to peer, customer to peer, or even out-lyers :)

Other than the gangsta street DBA’s who apparently bring their DataWarehousing to the STREETS of Boston for the late night crowd like some of us..

I think if there is much to be said… it would be in the form of this fortune I acquired for dinner.   So I look forward to you new people, new realizations, and your issues! :)

And if you see any of us that are shown pictured here.. come up to them, introduce yourselves, say hi.. and if you see my CXI shoes.. say hi ;)

!Breaking News! !Breaking News! !Breaking News!

I came across something disturbing so I had to inform you the public BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!   This morning while showering, I saw something which I felt needed to be shared.  I have a shower curtain which happens to be a map of the world (Hey, don’t judge! :)) and I noticed something… OMG LOOK OUT, WHAT IS THAT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MAP?!

That’s right! LOOK AT THAT! THE LENGTHS EMC WILL GO TO SPREAD IT’S MESSAGE OF VIRTUALIZATION!

I immediately rushed to WikiPedia to find out details about what this means – And according to WikiPedia:

Chad Sakac, Officially known as the “Republic of Chad” is divided into three major geographic regions.  (Storage, Networking, Compute?!?)

Apparently, the demonym of these folks are called “Chadians” (which is a far stretch from vSpecialist, but hey, I’m not WikiPedia…)

And then, outrageously.. I read this, “Beginning in the 7th millennium BC, human populations moved into the Chadian basin in great numbers. By the end of the 1st millennium BC, a series of states and empires rose and fell in Chad’s VCElian strip, each focused on controlling the Cloud”

Obviously, this entry in WikiPedia is making reference to one by one all of the top tier talent in the Virtualization, Computing and Networking industry were joining one by one to be a member of Chad’s forces.   So what does this all mean? Let me sum it up for you in a few points…

• Chad Sakac apparently has FAR more reach and influence than previously realized.  The fact that his blog gets so much attention is definitely understandable now!
• I came to this realization of Chad’s influence on the WORLD days leading up to EMC World! Coincidence?! I think not! (I’ll see you at EMC World if you’re attending @cxi/emcworld2010 )
• And if you think this revelation and announcement is paramount, keep your eyes on the blogosphere come the rest of this week, Chad’s overtaking a country will look feeble in comparison!

See you at EMC World 2010! Be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and whatever! :)