Well people, I AM EXCITED. It’s the Tech Field Day time again.

Gestalt IT Tech Field Day

I am a week away from the Tech Field Day in Boston. So that means checking I have clean clothes, dusting off my camera and microphones and getting my GEEK hat on. This time there are fifteen delegates for the event and a number of new faces.

Naturally, my work load has peaked as I try to clear the decks before exiting the office for a week and I’m feeling shabby. Without a doubt the highlight for me will be meeting Omar Sultan from Cisco. After a couple of years of heavy criticism of FCoE, I’m going to be drinking at the Kool Aid fountain of Unified Computing. I do this with more than a little fear. People like Stevie Chambers and Brad Hedlund have a such ”passionate” views on the UCS technology that I am more than a little sceptical. And my views on FCoE as a top of rack technology are pretty clear since I am more of a believer in Infiniband from somewhere like Xsigo or my current favourite using PCI-X from Virtensys for it’s superior and lower cost technology.

That said, a recent project for a data centre design showed me that our existing technologies for servers and networking are not up for the challenge of todays software. The proliferation of MS Windows servers is becoming a running joke in our company since we are deploying more than ever before. Largely this is because Windows is so unreliable, in general terms, that we put many more systems into clusters and load balanced pools than we really need to. So even our VMware clusters are not big enough or capable enough to cope. As a result of this I’m going to keen to hear from http://www.vkernel.com/ who make capacity planning and performance optimisation tools for VMware environments. Less money spent on servers means more money to spend on networking.

We also have presentations from Drobo, EMC and HP. I hear the Drobo has some special announcements – last time we had a pre-release look at the Drobo Elite products which is changing the entry level storage market.

HP is going to be presenting on their Ibrix NAS storage range. I find it interesting that NAS is gaining ground with vendors and that NFS and iSCSI appear to be gaining acceptance. I be keenly looking for feature in these products and performance numbers. Even though Cisco has invested a lot of money in FCoE and successfully put Brocade into a bad market position as a result, I don’t imagine they will be pleased if it turns out that they have wasted $500 million chasing a bad technology. On the other hand, Cisco has wasted a lot more money on failed products and bad acquisitions in the past. (Take vFrame as a recent example).

Other bloggers at the event may cover the other technologies in more detail but thee are the ones that I care about.

Live Blogging Platform

I have setup a live-blogging platform for the event – I’ve called it OUTBURST to reflect the OUTBURST of information that I hope to push out during the event. Regular readers will know that I try to keep the noise down and aggregate my ravings (that many of you actually read). So if you read the EtherealMind RSS feed you will see a single digest per day, labelled OUTBURST which will have a big list of all posts for delectation in the usual way.

Twitter

EtherealMind Twitter followers will see regular tweets pointing to the OUTBURST live blog where you can read my expostulations of joy or anger on a continuous basis. Lucky you.

Podcasts

I believe that podcasts are planned to be held during the event, and I write about those as they occur.

Feedback

This is my first time trying this out so any feedback is welcome via the contact page. or by email my etherealmind -at- gmail. com

Disclosure

While the vendors pay to attend and present this non-profit event the delegates are not paid to attend and receive no fees or stipend. Travel expenses, accommodation, food and entertainment during the Field Day covered. Delegates cover some costs (such as travel to and from the airport and beer money).

Attendees are not obligated or expected to write or blog, and are free to express any opinions. TechFieldDay is a community effort and is for IT community. I really encourage you to go over to Gestalt IT and add it to your daily reads.

This is an event for the community and as such the people who attend are very aware of this fact and looking at the first event, you will see a lot of feedback coming from the people who attend. This is not just limited to the on-site discussions. We had discussions put on video in the pub, there were dynamic conversations in the hotel lobby where the delegates discussed ideas or even took the time to explain concepts to the other delegates who were not experts in the same area. We want to hear from you as well, so please ask questions, comment, twitter or reach out to me over email.

The following delegates are confirmed for Tech Field Day Boston, April 8-9 2010:

	Jason Boche	Boche.net	JasonBoche
	Carlo Costanzo	VMware Info	CCostan
	David Davis	VMwareVideos	DavidMDavis
	Greg Ferro	EtherealMind Gestalt IT	EtherealMind
	Edward Haletky	The Virtualization Practice	Texiwill
	Robin Harris	Storage Mojo ZDNet Storage Bits	StorageMojo
	Greg Knieriemen	Storage Monkeys iKnerd	Knieriemen
	Simon Long	The SLOG Gestalt IT	SimonLong_
	Scott D. Lowe	Tech Republic SearchCIO	ScottDLowe
	John Obeto	Absolutely Windows	JohnObeto
	Devang Panchigar	StorageNerve Gestalt IT	StorageNerve
	Bas Raayman	Technical Diatribe	BasRaayman
	Simon Seagrave	TechHead	Kiwi_Si
	Matt Simmons	Standalone Sysadmin	StandaloneSA
	Gabrie van Zanten	Gabe’s Virtual World	GabVirtualWorld

Presenting Sponsors

The following companies will be sponsoring and presenting at Tech Field Day Boston 2010.

Cisco Systems
Data Robotics
EMC Corporation
Hewlett-Packard Company
VKernel