Comments (0) Last comment on a session of today, before I have to jump into my session…
I just visited and fled the session of Ed Rak on the Sun Streaming System. Excellent topic, excellent slides, real boring presentator. Sad to need to be so bluntly outspoken, but many did flee that presentation for the same reasons…
Now into the Virtualization debatte (I’m the moderator, see below), and then off to the Party at Palms…
Matthias
tags: suncec2007
Having passed nearly half of CEC 2007, what have been the highlights for me so far?
For sure, shaking hands and talking with Jonathan before and during the podcast referenced in a former entry. Then the talk from Alec Muffett on Customers in 2012, and Christian Bandulet’s talk on storage also already mentioned.
One thing is for sure! The overall quality of the breakout session this year seems to be even better then in previous years. Let’s hope, that the second half will be as good!
Matthias
tags: suncec2007
As tomorrow will already be the close of CEC, I try to write the summary from Tuesday’s session as early as I can, so here we go:
The first one I went to was a session from Rich Zippel on Redshift, Virtualization and DataCenters. I should have choosen a better slot… Rich tried to map DataCenter layouts and buying and development trends onto each other, coming up with different images of representations for them. Nice, but I didn’t actually see the real value in that. His summary slide, which he reached after 35 minutes (he could have been talking officially for an hour, that’s the length for each presentation) simply stated: The thing that I wanted to relay to you is the simple fact, that readshift and blueshift companies are different… Oh, Boy, that’s why we have two different words for them… ;-)
The next session was from Christian Bandulet and is entitled: The File System Survey: local, distributed, global, object, shared, clustered, parallel, SAN, NAS, FAN, WAFS…?
Boy, if ever I thought, storage was simple, I was completely mistaken!
Christian did an outstanding job in segmenting and structuring the products and technologies. I now have a crystal clear understanding of all of these things (and much more), and do honestly know, why we need a Storage Practice! Christian, hats up!
And now, I’m just spending a slot to write these summaries…
Matthias
tags: suncec2007
I never ever thought, I might envy people for their devices…
But: This is the time…
You’ve ever seen an iPhone in action? You ever saw, how easy it gets to use a mobile device to access all the things on the internet? How smooth the display of big web-pages can be? How nice eMail can look on a phone? How easy it is to chat from your phone either via IM or SMS? How sleek a device running an Unix-like operating system can look like in the palm of your hand? How nice it feels to hold it? I could rant on forever… ;-)
This surely is a MUST-HAVE device, and I’m actively considering getting one… If only they could be used with EVERY networkprovider, and having the additional UMTS protocol implemented for us in Europe…
Damned, I never thought being forced to really consider to “hack” a tool to be able to use it was so challenging…
Matthias
tags: suncec2007
This morning sessions were cut into two: One internal to Sun and CEC, and one being a product launch.
Being backstage I can give a little more feedback on the diverse communities, the Sun/CEC folks and the launch-attending folks are w.r.t. WEB 2.0 perception…
This years input from the Sun/CEC community w.r.t. questions and messages coming in via email or IM or SMS was at least double the size of last year’s CEC. In the first day alone, we had something like 900 messages. These came in during the sessions on Monday morning, the so-called General Sessions.
The Launch-attending folks were way more quiet (approx. 80 messages only, still most from Sun/CEC folks), so it seems, that these are diverse in their perception and the use of the internet. I will not comment further, conclusions are left to the reader here…
Matthias
tags: suncec2007
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
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
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
Check out again my picasaweb page, Jonathan backstage, as usual really busy!
Matthias
tags: suncec2007
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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