A little late, but better late than never. This last EMC World post has been sitting in my drafts, knowing two of my coleagues already posted theirs about the exact same thing that I wanted to talk about. And since I don’t want to play copy cat, I’m going to refer to their posts. That seems the best thing to do.
EMC World 2013, day 4
Thursday is traditionally (half) a day to say goodbye to the many old and new friends, visit some last day sessions, leave the hotel and head back to the airport, but this year I planned ahead and I decided to stay a bit longer for some quality time with the EMC Elect: My plane wouldn’t leave until Saturday afternoon!! I had to switch hotels though from the fancy and luxurious Venetian to the hotel next door “Harrah’s”. It’s a huge step down, but Harrah’s does what it’s supposed to do and that’s offering me a bed to sleep.
NDA session
The day started with me oversleeping a bit, so I was running late for breakfast. Of course I ran into Sergey (Dynamox) again in the long hallways and we had breakfast together for the 3rd or 4th time that week. 20 Minutes late I arrived at my private NDA session on Unisphere development which I enjoyed very much. Since it’s under NDA I won’t write anything about the session itself, but I can say I now have a contact who I can turn to when I feel the need for an RFE (Request for Enhancement).
Unisphere – Future vision and direction
I thought it was a good idea to join a 1 hour session on how EMC publically sees where Unisphere is going. After the NDA I had this seemed a nice relaxed session, but unfortunately there weren’t too many surprises there. Nothing I didn’t know already, but in short it’s Unisphere that’s taking a much larger role in the EMC GUI world from now on.
Leveraging SSD
My last session was about the usage of SSD and called “Leveraging SSD: Designing for FAST Cache & FAST VP on Unified Storage” which pretty much says it all. I joined the session with Jon Klaus and Menno de Liège was present as well (he was sitting in the back and we didn’t notice him until after the session). Check out their blog posts as well for more insights:
- Jon: http://faststorage.eu/emc-world-day-4-vnx-leverage-ssd-in-a-vnx/
- Jon: http://faststorage.eu/emc-world-day-4-vnx-fast-cache-improvements-in-r32/
- Jon: http://faststorage.eu/emc-world-day-4-vnx-skew-data-placement/
- Menno: http://www.mennodeliege.nl/emcworld-2013-skew-flash
- Menno: http://www.mennodeliege.nl/emcworld-2013-iops-calculation-fast-pool
I did take my own notes and took some pictures, but I don’t know if I’m still going to write my own version of what Jon and Menno already wrote. Since we were all in the same session I doubt that each of the versions would be very different from the others.
Leaving the Elect lounge
After the last session it was time to pick up the boxed lunch, say goodbye to the other Elect members that were still there and continue with the last part of the week, two more events organised by the “Dutch delegation”, a visit to the Primm Outlets, about an hour’s drive South of Las Vegas and later that evening a visit to the Absinth show.
Dutch Delegation to Primm Outlets
What can I say? It was a shopping trip in a mall. I bought some new jeans and a belt since I appearantly didn’t bring enough clothes with me in the first place. The advantage is that the lugage isn’t that heavy and I’m wearing new clothes anyway.
Dinner
It took a bit longer than we expected to head back to the Venetian, but we were in for a treat. Quite a large EMC Elect related gang went to “Wolfgang Puck“, near the indoor Venetian canals. I was feeling a bit dizzy and didn’t feel like eating at all, but we were excellently served and I got this fantastic steak and I enjoyed every moment of it. I must say, I’ve never had steak like this. Absolutely fabulous!! But although this after party, I mean the “After EMC World Elect goodbye diner”. was fantastic and relaxed and everything, Jon, Menno and I needed to leave at 9PM for the last of the events organised by “the Dutch delegation”. I think my dizzyness was related to being sad that this week almost came to an end. Only 1 show and a road trip were left on the agenda and I always experience this dizzyness when a fantastic week or vacation is over: feeling a bit homesick. But the road trip would prove to be one of the highlights of the week. Wait for my post on my trip to “the Valley of Fire” with Allen Ward and Mark Browne!
Absinthe show
From the Venetian we walked to Ceasar’s Palace where a tent (!!) was placed outside the building to host the show. I didn’t have high hopes for this one, but this acrobatic show proved to be one of the nicest shows I’ve ever seen. The only bad thing I can think of was the seating. Seats weren’t spacey and of all people I had to sit next to a somewhat larger gentleman so that wasn’t comfortable at all. But the show was great with stunts, singing and a lot of adult humor.
Switching hotels
After the show Allen Ward and I sort of decided to call eachother to see if a final night out with the guys could take place. After all, I promised Elisa, my daughter, that I was going to ride that mechanical bull in Gilley’s saloon, but Allen didn’t take my calls, so just like my he was tired and perhaps even already asleep. After all, he, Mark Browne and I were going to the “Valley of Fire” the next day, so getting some sleep was probably the best idea anyway. I checked in to Harrah’s hotel, which took me 45 minutes (from 00:15 to 01:00 AM) since they only had 1 open counter, but I got a good sleep that night anyway.
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