I’m just about ready to start my 18 hour trip to Las Vegas for EMCWorld 2016.
The first hop to Miami should be a relatively quiet one (if I can get some sleep); on the second I’ll start to prepare for the madness that will ensue next week. The agenda is packed with good events and new product launches…
Arriving Saturday evening in the PST timezone, I reckon I’ll be pretty knackered. I’m looking forward to meeting up with the various people from around the world, whom I’ve either met at other EMC(World) events or from the Storage Field Days.
EMC Netherlands traditionally organizes a “Dutch Delegation” program around EMCWorld, where Dutch attendees can network, chat, have a beer and share a dinner. This kicks off on Sunday with a ziplining trip near the Grand Canyon. Apart from giving you a good adrenaline kick, spending the day outside helps reset the internal clock in your body and reduce some of the -9 hour jetlag symptoms. More than welcome!
Later that afternoon the check-in for EMCWorld 2016 opens up, so I’ll be picking up my conference badge, swag-bag (which usually holds the conference schedule and floor map, some marketing spam and one or two things to write on). Maybe we can sneak inside already, have a peek at the social lounge (where most of the EMCElect will be hanging out), and run into some familiar EMC faces.
EMC Elect
Speaking about the EMC Elect: we’ll be going on a tour to the Switch SuperNAP datacenter again. I’ve been there twice already, but since Switch seems to erect a new, massive datacenter every other week (each with new, better, improved technology compared to the last one), this could still be interesting. What definitely will be interesting is the EMC Elect briefing which Rob Peglar (now working for Micron) will be giving. It will be focused on flash technology… and the rest you’ll have to read on either my blog or someone else’s!
By the way: keep an eye out for the #EMCElect hashtag on Twitter; we’ll be live-tweeting during some of the events, so if you can’t make it physically to EMCWorld, at least you can be there virtually. Don’t hesitate to shoot some questions towards us; we’ll try and find the answer for you.
Dell & EMC <3
So we’ve all heard from the upcoming Dell & EMC merger. There’s lots of rumors in the air on how that’s going to be accomplished, with Dell selling off several business units such as Documentum and VMware to make the cash. My dearest of colleagues back at work have been calling me a Dell engineer since the first day the news broke and are asking me Dell thin client questions since “Hey, it has got some storage in there so you should know!”, so yeah… super.
We’ll undoubtedly hear more during Mondays General Keynote with Joe Tucci and Michael Dell himself.
Next-gen VNX
There will be a number of product announcements at EMCWorld 2016, one of them being the next generation VNX. It will NOT be called “next-gen VNX” or “VNX3”, but you’ll have to wait till the 2nd of May at 9AM PST (which is 18:00 CEST) for the full newsflash. There are quite a lot of improvements that I’m enthusiastic about; aspects of the old CLARiiON and VNX systems that I definitely did NOT like at all. Stay tuned!
I’m planning on attending a couple of tech sessions (New Midrange Storage Flash Optimizations Deep Dive and Next Gen VNX Performance Best Practices) and tinkering with the systems in the available vLabs. So far it looks like I’ll be taking the first one on Monday afternoon and the second on Tuesday morning.
Oh yeah: and I need to refresh my EMC Implementation Engineer exam for this new product, so there’s a bit of prep work there.
In case you didn’t know: every first exam attempt is free at EMCWorld! Register on the Pearson Vue website over here, using discount code: EMCW2016.
Join EMCWorld 2016, virtually!
If you want to join us from home, head to the EMC World website for the livestream. Join us on Twitter by following the #EMCElect hashtag. If you see an EMC Elect (look for the polo’s and hoodies, or come by the Social Lounge), chat with us in real life. And don’t forget to have fun!
