Application Protection: There’s Something Happening Here

There’s something happening here What it is ain’t exactly clear There’s a man with a gun over there Telling me I got to beware Yes, it’s blasphemy to simply change a classic like Buffalo Springfield’s “For What’s It Worth” – but I will anyway to prove my point. There’s something happening here If you haven’t [...]

VNXe – A Redesigned GUI for Application Owners

You’ve already seen a view a bunch of the screenshots of this new product that caters to the IT generalist. Screenshot Tour (Overview) Screenshot Tour (Exchange) And – you may have heard some of the cool behind the scenes development tidbits from Chad Sakac’s blog here. GUI and Redesign The specific thing I wanted to [...]

There is no “DAS vs SAN” and Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions from EMC

It’s refreshing to see the most recent post on the Exchange team blog promoting real-world, tested Exchange 2010 configurations. EMC’s got two white papers we did with Cisco and Brocade highlighting the benefits of virtualizing Exchange for local and remote availability reasons.  I’m sure EMC’s Dustin Smith will have more to say on this soon [...]

VPLEX and SharePoint Distance VMotion

Wondering how EMC’s storage federation device VPLEX might solve SharePoint DR concerns? A few of the engineers teamed up to create a reference architecture that shows you how it’s done. First, they listened to early customer feedback on what use cases might be most beneficial. What came up again and again – SharePoint (and SAP [...]

Making a Game out of Microsoft Office

Every now and then you come upon something that is just impressive. Usually, these days it comes from companies like Google or Apple – and sometimes it comes from EMC – and sometimes it comes from Microsoft. I subscribe to Microsoft’s Research Blog and in their stream of content and news, I noticed something really [...]

The Hyper-V Blue Screen Video Drama

Act 1.  The Posting VMware employee posts a video of a bluescreen in a Hyper-V VM which takes down the whole physical box. It was available here. Act 2.  The Revolt The VM community rises up and demand facts.  Read comments here. Microsoft gives some facts. Video largely discredited as FUD without much detail. Scott [...]

How to Build an Efficient Application Infrastructure through Virtualization

I couldn’t figure out how to embed this into my blog, but this is a great, short video which shows how EMC is working with Microsoft to virtualize applications like Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint.  It’s only ten minutes long and showcases one of EMC’s great technologists, Brian Martin, as he speaks with Microsoft’s Jim Schwartz.

Video: Microsoft AdCenter Using V-Max

I took some rough notes on this great video that features Mike Anderson, Senior Systems Engineer, and Bong Kang, SAN Engineering Lead for the Microsoft Advertising group and their endorsement of the new Symmetrix V-Max. AdCenter has very rigorous service level agreements on how fast they return intelligence data. The ability to grow the array [...]

Windows Server 2008 Foundation

The low end of Windows 7 – Starter Edition – has already been discussed quite a bit across the blogosphere, and its big brother is a bit jealous.  Like the future desktop version, Windows Server 2008 Foundation is intended to go lower (in price and functionality) than prior releases of the operating system.  Get em [...]

Laptop Hunter Ad #2 Weaker Than #1

Not sure you’ve seen Giampaolo searching for the right laptop with the following requirements: portability battery life power Talk about completely vague… Vague requirements result in vague conclusions. I liked the first one, this one doesn’t do it for me. Apple Insider picks apart this ad bit by bit.

Do you want to Overtake The Future?

On April 14th, EMC will make a landmark announcement about its breakthrough approach to crossing the divide to the virtual data center of the future. Hear from senior EMC executives, EMC technologists, and industry analysts, and have in-depth background information at your fingertips. You’ll want to see this…   Register today. OvertakeTheFuture.com Maybe You’ll Want to [...]

Been Traveling… Some Quick Recaps

I’ve been traveling a bit lately and spending a lot of time working with customers and presentation materials… so I haven’t had too much time to come up with just one big topic.  Instead, I will offer you a few snack-sized morsels.  Enjoy. Cisco and Unified Computing and … Microsoft? Seems like everyone needs to [...]

Former Microsoft Exec Tod Nielson Joins VMware

When you build a business or a group, you tend to reach out to people you trust/respect and try to hire them. In this case, VMware CEO Paul Maritz is reaching out to a person that has run a publically traded company in the past (Borland).  Tod Nielson will be brought on the the Chief [...]

Microsoft Promotes Bob Muglia to President

Just in case you didn’t see this interesting take on the Muglia promotion from Steve Gillmor, writing for TechCrunchIT. Muglia now commands a Microsoft unit with some 22% of the company’s $60 billion in revenue… Steve Ballmer’s decision to solidify Muglia’s status after moving Muglia from a report headcount of 3,000 to 1 in 2001 [...]

Updates to VMware ESX and Microsoft’s SVVP Program

SVVP stands for Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP). The program was put together to allow third-party hypervisors to host and virtualize Microsoft licensed products. It also means that any customer will be supported by Microsoft when running software such as Exchange, SQL, or SharePoint products on a validated hypervisor. News just in from Mike D [...]

Predictions – Microsoft in 2009

I’m not feeling up to the challenge of predicting what Microsoft will do in 2009. Instead I will link you to some of more experienced Microsoft prognosticators, Mary Jo Foley and Todd Bishop.