They flocked to the Drobo booth at VMworld 2012 in San Francisco. Over 1000 people took the Do The Math challenge for a chance to win an SSD acceleration for their B1200i or a free B800i array. Odds were much better than the lottery, one in thousands vs. one in millions, and the prize still great: $2,999 MSRP. The winner is Jeff Stallworth, IT Manager @ Auburn University. Congrats to Jeff!… Continue Reading
Tag Archives: VMware
And the winner @ VMworld 2012 is … Jeff Stallworth
Drobo B1200i = vSphere 5.0 certified = unique
The B1200i is not the first iSCSI SAN storage device certified, and products such as the Dell PS4100E or EMC VNXe, which SMBs consider when looking for innovative modern storage, have vSphere 5.0 certification. Drobo B1200i delivers Thin Provisioning just like those products, but it also provides automated tiering with SSDs that those products do not. Tiering with SSDs is exactly the capability SMBs need to support their VMware environment. With Drobo they get both capacity and performance at a price they can afford for a 100% certified solution. That’s what’s unique.… Continue Reading
Drobo supercharges VMUG in San Diego
This week I had the chance to go back to San Diego CA, something I always love doing. For me it is like going back to campus with fond memories of days @ college, as my days in the Marine Corps started in San Diego. Right outside the base is Old Town, the site of the first European settlement in present-day California. Junipero Serra and team had great taste in choosing a great spot with beautiful weather.
I brought with me as my 2 free checked bags (can be up to 50 lb each on Southwest Airlines) a Drobo B1200i and Drobo B800i.… Continue Reading
Drobo and VMware vCloud, psychedelic in a great way
What do storage tiering, Jimi Hendrix, and cloud computing have in common? You might think all of them can be psychedelic, “offering you creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly ordinary fetters.” Most practical IT people do not like these concepts at first because they are a different way of going about delivering IT infrastructure. The same can be said for Jimi Hendrix music for conservative folks, it is not until you have an open mind and think differently about the music that it strikes you as profound and brilliant.
Another thing that associates these three concepts is John Arrasjid, Principal Architect @ VMware. John was was recently on a Drobo webcast talking storage tiering in a vCloud architecture. John is one of many VMware experts that use Drobo storage in his labs, and is also a member The Elastic Sky Band @ VMware. If you attended VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas, you may remember the band setting a psychedelic mood with a rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing filled with great sax and guitar solos. … Continue Reading
My favorite city-state for business and dining pleasure
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.… Continue Reading
Toronto VMUG – The storage scrum
My last post started with a Canadian reference, and this one continues the Canadian theme. Drobo was a sponsor at the VMware Users Group (VMUG) in Toronto, the biggest city in Canada and lesser known as #5 in size for the whole of North America. It was a great chance to meet up with current Drobo B1200i users such as the University of Toronto, and connect with many new folks to talk about the latest technology.
Why the storage scrum? It’s not related to the Canadian Rugby League, of which the first 4 domestic teams hail from the Toronto area. Hockey is tops in Toronto but did not pair well with the word “storage”. Moreover, with 18 of 29 sponsors in the storage space, it seemed that the discussion was tightly centered on storage, its role in virtualized environments, and the continued journey to the cloud.… Continue Reading
Where replication belongs – not where you’d think
According to Merriam-Webster, to belong is “to be suitable, appropriate, or advantageous,” for example, “a dictionary belongs in every home.” And Drobo belongs in any group of vendors you’re considering when looking for business storage. Some may say we don’t pass the suitability / appropriate test, specifically without support for storage-based replication. The reality for SMBs is that replication does not really belong on the end devices such as storage arrays – it is far more appropriate and much more advantageous for replication to exist on a server.