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By pfuetz, October 9, 2007 13:08

Back to the topic at hand, some more feedback on the sessions from yesterday, and I can sadly only speak about the breakouts, that I went to…

I did start with the session from Scott Radetzky and Dave Pickens on the Systems Engineer Career Path. Basic main message: YOU are responsible for that by yourself, your manager et.al. are there to help you. This is one of the things, that I really do love inside Sun: As Jonathan stated today, and at multiple other occasions: It takes courage to be yourself, don’t have someone else do define yourself. In the end, it’s always you, that must be happy with whom you are. So, having that said from some of our PEs (Principal Engineers, soon to be named differently) proves, that Sun in itself is a company, that values the individuals, and allows them to do “their thing”, as long as it does not bring Sun in front of a court.

The next session was the session on Sun Connection 2.0 by Eran Steiner. Bob Lusk was there also and they talked about the stuff, that’s now known as xVM Ops Center, formerly known as Sun Connection, formerly known as Update Connection Enterprise (UCE), formerly known as Aduva OnStage. Nice things to come in December, when the next version, which basically is a merger of N1SM (N1 Systems Manager) with Sun Connection, will reach GA (don’t quote me, all times to be my guesses!). I’m in contact with Bob for quite some time, we do have conf-calls every second week because I’m part of the german Systems Practice, which is the PreSales Organization, being responsible for many things, among these xVM Ops Center, N1 SPS, et.al.

The next session I went to was the session with Raj Dosaj and Sanjay Goil on Eco Datacenter Solutions, and how to architect them for tomorrow. We had the same presentation last week at our DataCenter Ambassador Meeting, so here’s my feedback: This presentation did cover mostly aspects of power and cooling, which is important, but I was more looking for information on how the enhancements and developments in the IT industry (networks growing faster then SANs, Storage getting cheaper and cheaper (think X4500, aka Thumper) might have effects of the way Datacenter themselves might start thinking more radical. Think: The Network is the computer, and iSCSI et.al. taking up, why, for example, should there still be a SAN around? Why not simply use the Network to do all, Storage, Network, etc…? Sadly, I didn’t get answers to these questions during that presentation, but perhaps, my expectations were wrong?

The next speech was the one of Alec Muffett, already mentioned, so in short: He gave me the answers to some of the questions I just wrote down w.r.t. the presnenation before that… ;-)

The last session I did go to was the one on OpenPTK, Provisioning without Boundaries from Scott Fehrman and Terry Sigle. Man, we all need to define, what provisiong means. They sure do have a complete different understanding then I have, so it was a waste of time for me. They are, no doubt about that, doing good stuff, but on a complete different set of tools. Provisioning for them means handling the different User Identities throughout the network, and providing these identities to all relevant parties. So, they did talk about Java and Services and the connection to IDM et.al. Not my turf… ;-)

At night there was the UnConference, which I did not join. The UnConference is tha part, where those, that had not been accepted could still try to find an audience, and present, In former days we called such things the BoF…

Instead I went to the Burger with some of the v12n-aces, as we will be having a slot today covering a virtualization roundtable. Then I went to bed at 10pm, because all the work of the last days and weeks made me tired, and having to be backstage today at 7:15 am required getting some sleep…

So, now to the next round of sessions for today, feedback then tomorrow, as tonight there will be the official party at Palms Casino…

Matthias

tags: suncec2007

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By pfuetz, October 9, 2007 12:42

I’ve never ever been to Las Vegas before, and I also never intended it. Now I know why…

Jonathan made that comment during the podcast, that there wont be a more controversial city in the US, or even the world, then Las Vegas.

Think: We do sessions on Eco Responsibility during CEC, and where are we? In one of the most un-sustaining cities of the world. I simply never wanted to be here, because I do feel ashamed for the water being wasted deep down in a desert. I’ve been to many deserts before, Sahara in Marocco, Mali, Namib in Namibia, Gobi in Mongolia, Atacama in Chile, and always I had the pleasure to at least see and feel, that the people really living there took care of their environments. Here, in Las Vegas, all is done to just let you forget that you are in a desert…

Then this city is bizare, wherever you enter a hotel, mall, whatever, you instantly find yourself being among gamblers? The “one-armed bandits” are just about everywhere in the lobbies, noise, people, drinking, smoking. That’s not my way of living…

On the other hand I can completely understand, why we move from Denver to San Francisco and now to Las Vegas with this event. It simply did grow so much over time (approx. 4000 people this year), that we need to be more conscious about the amount of money we spend… Last year at San Francisco I did hear rumors, that every can of soda did cost Sun 1 dollar, no rebates… Unbelievable! Here, it seems (didn’t see any numbers) that at least during the week, hotelrooms and meetingrooms are way cheaper. Las Vegas lives during the weekends…

Besides that, Las Vegas does have something. It can’t get unnoted… You have to be controversial, and that does energize the folks being around here. That’s a “Good Thing” to have for such an important conference like CEC 2007!

Others have noted it already, so I will also add my comments. Having been in Paris once, having seen the real thing, it’s funny to see an american rendering of that here in the desert. Have those, that created Paris, Las Vegas ever been to Paris, France? Then, I guess, they would have noticed, that there is no such thing as a “french burger”, which you can get here…;-)

Matthias

tags: suncec2007

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By pfuetz, October 9, 2007 12:26

Check out again Constantin’s CEC2007 Podcast page, with very special guests this time…

Jonathan and John (Fowler) joined us, as we did the podcast just after the launch, and we grabbed them… ;-)

Matthias

tags: suncec2007

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By pfuetz, October 9, 2007 08:45

Check out again my picasaweb page, Jonathan backstage, as usual really busy!

Matthias

tags: suncec2007

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By pfuetz, October 9, 2007 08:37

Good morning, Folks…

backstage again, a little work to be done, as not that many emails coming in… (you’re more Web 2.0 this year than last year, more IM and more SMS Text Messages)

So, I hope to have some time to comment on the sessions I did visit yesterday…

The best, that I did visit, was Alec Muffett, who sadly enough couldn’t be here, because he has a burial to attend in the UK. He did a session with a title like: What will your customer look like in 2012, and how to sell that to your customer. He did do some nice maths… Look for example at the rate the storage in iPods kept growing throughout the last years. Continue that, and in 1012 an iPod will have a PetaByte of storage. And add the growth in network bandwidth, that same iPod will be one PetaBit, so he called that iPod the petaPod. Think about that… ;-) What will you actually do with all the storage? Short idea, he came up with: Put ZFS on that device, rent the storage out to others, spread your own data across the network, being encrypted, so that at least 4 to 5 safe copies of all your data is out there somewhere on the net… That would remove the need for big datacenters, as the big storage is spread securely all over the world… (Guess, you will not loose that petaPod… ;-) )

There were other sessions, but this one was the most gorgeous, I had the luck to grab the slides and the recording, so I can enjoy that again and again… Alec, sad, you’re not here, we do miss you!

Matthias

tags: suncec2007

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By pfuetz, October 8, 2007 10:19

Check out again my picasaweb page, Andy backstage, as usual really busy!

Matthias

tags: suncec2007

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By pfuetz, October 8, 2007 08:37

Good morning folks,

today is the BIG day, CEC really starts. We backstage are all eagerly looking forward to serving you with the new nice messaging technology we’ve set up for you!

Yesterday CEC started with the Welcome Reception. The nice thing about Las Vegas is, that we do have much more space for the Demo Booths and that was nice yesterday, as the Reception did take place in between the booths. So, having a chat with all the partners, that do exhibit there, while still having the chance to get something to eat and drink, was really cool. Additionally we this year do have much more partners (that also do sponsor some of this event!) with us.

Another reason is the fact, that we will have a big product announcement on Tuesday, so stay tuned!

After all the preparation, we yesterday diced to go to Gordon Biersch’s after the Welcome reception. We being Hartmut Streppel, Eric Bezille, Constantin Gonzalez and myself. As Constantin did provide the Podcasts last year, he also will be podcasting this year. So, we four created the first CEC 2007 podcast last night at the Gordon Biersch’s, which you can find at http://blogs.sun.com/cecpodcast

So, with these introductory words: Enjoy this year’s CEC!

Matthias

tags: suncec2007

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By pfuetz, October 7, 2007 11:43

I just started a CEC2007 image gallery at Picasaweb, check it out time after time, as I will be adding pictures over time.

Matthias

tags: suncec2007

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By pfuetz, October 3, 2007 09:28

This year again, I will be backstage during the Keynotes acting again as the Editor of the email stream coming in besides IM and SMS and via the microphones to act as WEb 2.0 channels for feedback. All the others from last year will also be there behind the scenes…

So, stay tuned for updates from “Behind the scenes”.

Matthias

tags: suncec2007

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By pfuetz, October 3, 2007 08:55

On my way to the US again this year, it’s been time to read. 11 hours on a plane can get boring… So, I went to the Airport bookstore in Frankfurt and skimmed the available englisch paperbacks. I left the store with three books, more on that later…

During the first hours, I finished reading Peter Glotz’s book “Von Heimat zu Heimat”, his recollections of his political career in the Fed Rep of Germany. The last chapters sounded a little bit disillusioned and skeptical as to the future of the political class worldwide.

Then I started to read one of the books, I bought at the airport store, the new book from Elizabeth George, What came before he shot her, because the text on the back did imply it to be a new Lynley book. I’m one third through, but Havers nor Lynley did appear so far, still it’s interesting and a good read.

In the airport store I did meet a biologist from Chicago also scanning the books. I did propose to read Frank Schätzing’s The Swarm, but he said, that he doesn’t like to read science fiction, so I recommended Henning Mankell’s Chronicler of the winds, which he took. Sadly, I didn’t exchange addresses, so I will not know, whether my recommendation suited him.

I also used the time on the plan to read very old newspapers that kept piling up on my table at home…

With that I arrived refreshed at San Francisco and drove to the hotel.

Matthias

tags: suncec2007