This post was written by Anthony Marusic, Dell Virtualization Solutions, Technical Marketer
There was no doubt that modular data center architecture and cloud computing at Dell was a driving factor for many customers that came by to check out the vStart technology at Interop 2012. The interest in converged infrastructure was top of mind for more than just executive-level decision makers. Those that are the technical influencers, evaluators and managers were equally “all-in” on the attributes that converged infrastructure delivers: time-to-value, expected service levels and ease of use. After talking converged infrastructure, the vStart conversations brought up other topics that kept the booth buzzing with information.
vStart as the foundation for scale-out data center architecture
Customers ranged from those who were just starting to build out their infrastructure to those who were looking to simply make their existing operations work better. The flexibility in vStart scale options and the simplicity in deploying those scale options resonated very well, almost as well as the attraction of a single vendor providing the entire solution.
The physical location of the vStart 50 in the Dell booth provided a great stopping point for attendees.
vStart as the building blocks to a private cloud
Visitors to the booth quickly understood the connection of vStart and building a private cloud. The next obvious question was, “How do I deliver services into a vStart environment?” It was great to see that most people were building our cloud solution story for themselves with natural progression toward VIS Creator, integration with Microsoft System Center and VMware vCenter, and our IaaS capabilities with the Dell Public vCloud. The vStart water cooler effect had begun.
Dell AIM for workload mobility and disaster recovery
One attendee asked specifically about workload mobility between his existing fragmented environment and a new vStart. Naturally, discussion about Dell AIM fit the bill. What was surprising was that several other attendees in the area quickly picked up on some of the other AIM values around complete disaster recovery and fault tolerance for both virtual and bare-metal workloads. The deeper we went into AIM’s positive impact on quality of service for IT operations and service delivery, the more impressed people were of Dell’s capabilities in enterprise data center management.
Thankfully, our event staff had plenty of refueling options to keep us going, because it didn’t end here. Some of these conversations led to, “I need to have a way to connect data points between my existing applications or systems management tools to a vStart Private Cloud environment … and possibly a public SaaS offering.” Our Boomi colleagues were our “Johnny on the spot” guys. The time flew by with such great and deep technical discussions around our cloud solutions. I think most people left with a new found respect for Dell. They definitely left with stories to tell their friends and colleagues. We should have labeled our section in the booth as the “Cloud Break Room”
If you missed any of the Dell Interop information, check out the Tech Center Interop Las Vegas 2012 page next week for graphic recordings, photos and other information from the event.