Got here a bit late….panel session between Dell (Travis), HP (Mike), NetApp (Vaugn) & EMC (Chad)

• Dell and HP talking about how they’re good at moving storage functions into server hardware when it makes technical sense b/c they sell servers too.
• What would you deploy today for VDI?
  • NetApp — Cisco + NetApp FlexPod — validated design — deployed by trusted partner.
    • Use dedup on the storage controller, SAS drives, dedup-aware FlashCache modules.
    • Can do some delegated access, etc.
  • Dell — talking about reference customer, does tiering, SAS + Flash, EQ 6000 XVS
  • HP — http://www.hp.com/go/cv (Client Virtualization)
    • Blade system architecture, HP P4800 blade/SAN
    • Engage partner, what goes on shared storage and what doesn’t.
    • Chad talked about convergence and compute…but let’s talk to about converge of network and compute.
    • With HP FlexFabric none of the storage traffic goes outside the rack.
  • EMC — simple as I possibly can.
    • 1st — start small, decide what community of users and use cases is best to start with. Don’t overcommit.
    • 2nd — use profiling tools, get I/O profile from users.
    • 3rd — what do I want my consumption technology model to be? Reference architectures are good…change lots of parameters while having reduced risk.
    • 4a – If like reference architecture model, I’d use VXI model from Cisco using EMC storage.
    • 4b – If wanted to order View appliance, would go VCE FastPath route, delivered and up in 4 hours.
      • Sized at 500, 1000, 1500 user sizes.
• Gartner talking about how B-Series blades can’t do local read cache.
  • Chad – goal of UCS B-Series is to get as stateless as possible…so staying away from local read cache keeps more stateless.
    • If really need local read cache, good fit for reference architecture that mostly matches vBlock.
  • Vaughn – let’s think outside the box…rambling about that for a while.
    • don’t stop thinking about convergence as it applies to desktop
• Question around what to use for intelligent caching
  • All voted for #1 – hypervisor features.
  • HP voted a bit for #3 (storage side features).
• Question about federal space and creating AD objects dynamically.
  • Vaughn answered by referencing dedup that enables static desktops with space savings.
  • Chad — good on NetApp for object-based dedup, advances in View 5 that help as well, make sure to look at (I think that part is right).
• Question (from me) about what do you see coming in the next 2-3 years from the storage side to affect app/desktop delivery?
  • HP & Dell — just more convergence of the existing stack (sounds like vBlock and/or Flexpod to me…where EMC/NetApp are today).
  • EMC – server-side cache is biggest storage thing, face-melting stuff will be further up the stack if talking 2-3 years (hypervisors, brokers, etc.)
  • NetApp – move to object-oriented storage, dedup is good, more integration between brokers and storage.
  • I’ve missed some of the points as was standing at the microphone and not taking notes during the discussion.

Much thanks to Vaughn Stewart for the free Kindle (for better or worse I didn’t identify myself when asking my question and he gave me a free Kindle from NetApp for a good question….or something like that….maybe I’m just a pawn in Vaughn and Chad’s quest for world storage domination :-).