I was south of the equator in my last post and this post is coming from north of it. Well, just 85 miles north of the equator in Singapore, where VMware held its Partner Exchange event for south Asia, a great chance to connect with resellers. The event represents a melting pot of VMware partners across the region, in keeping with the renowned food culture in Singapore that mixes Chinese, Malay, Indian, Japanese, and Thai with western cooking.
Weather and food were quite different than other recent VMware events. There were fewer startup companies in attendance, but the challenges that customers ask their resellers to help them with are very much the same. Not surprisingly, VM backup and DR topped the list and budgets have always been an issue in the region. It was somewhat of a surprise, though, how many of the Drobo technology partner local teams already knew about the level of engagement our companies share.
The solution that got the most feedback was VMware Site Recovery Manager. Most smaller organizations have not yet deployed DR for rapid failover of critical VMs between sites. Past requirements for like storage across multiple sites was a severely limiting factor, but now that vSphere 5 has built-in vSphere Replication, it opens up DR to more users. I expect we will have dozens more partners selling Drobo in the region after they saw just how easy it could be to deploy and manage Drobo along with SRM v5.
Net = The “melting pot” food scene in Singapore is well known, though users in Asia tend not to add technologies when they first come out; they prefer to wait until new solutions have first had a chance to be deployed and proven in markets such as the US. Launched last year @ VMworld, the latest version of VMware Site Recovery Manager is getting affirmation as a solution for host-based, any-to-any storage replication. If you have been waiting to take a look at DR for your VMs, now is a great time to consider VMware SRM.
Talk live to Mario and other Drobo experts @ http://www.drobo.com/live or e-mail mario@drobo.com.
Mario Blandini
Mario is VP of Technology Solutions @ Drobo. Responsible for technical marketing, the pre-sales technical team, product marketing contribution, and solution development with industry partners, he is the voice of Drobo webcasts / podcasts and the pitch man in most Drobo videos. Talk live to Mario and other Drobo experts @ http://www.drobo.com/live, or e-mail mario@drobo.com.
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