Storage Virtualization Charlotte: Thoughts and Reactions

I’ve just finished my day in Charlotte on my Storage Virtualization Seminar tour for TechTarget. We had another great crowd – everyone seemed interested even if some were shy about speaking up. I was especially pleased to see the optimism about the city’s post-Wachovia future.

Comments at the event focused on management, with my concerns about ownership and intra-departmental conflict rising from consolidation of server, I/O, and storage really getting attention.

Some highlights from the crowd:

• Satisfaction with IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) remains high. There were some large SVC users in the audience, and they have no complaints.
• Users are becoming aware of FCoE – the group here in Charlotte raised the first questions and comments I’ve heard yet from end-users.
• VMware is in use almost everywhere, but the folks were interested in Hyper-V, Xen, and Virtual Iron as well.
• Interest in deduplication and thin provisioning was also high, with many questioning the performance and space claims but overall optimism.
• Some talk turned towards retention policies, archiving, and how to control the use of storage systems.
• Everyone was clamoring for better metrics and clearer descriptions of system capability, particularly around storage utilization.

Congratulations to the winners of the TechTarget, Dell, and Agilisys giveaways!

If you were at the show and gave me your card, I’ll send the presentation PDF to you as soon as I get a better (faster) connection. If not, please drop me a line and I’d be happy to add you to the list.

My virtualization talk comes to Toronto next, and a shortened version will be presented at Storage Decisions San Francisco in November.