Conrey.org

I’ve spent the last few years working at a service provider working on client facing VMware projects, rolling out out a VMware vCloud environment, and helping shape how VMware can be leveraged internally. One of great things for me professionally was a chance to get my hands deeper into VMware’s product catalog from about every angle imaginable.
It was awesome getting a look behind the curtains at how a really great datacenter and internet company works to constantly deliver solid solutions to their customers. With this year drawing to a close soon, I’m eagerly looking forward to new projects and new challenges to tackle.

Outside the office I had the opportunities to get involved elsewhere as well. VMworld this year was awesome and I’m still watching presentations I didn’t watch live. VMunderground this year was pretty amazing. We had our biggest event ever. As always we had great sponsors and we were really impressed with the support and turnout from the community. I was invited to attend TechFieldDay6 but due to an unruly internal organ, attended TechFieldDay7 instead. Stephen Foskett runs a great event, and I was honored to be invited.

Locally, and against better judgement, I was voted in as president for my local LUG, and even though I didn’t have any intentions of running, I’m looking forward to it nonetheless. I’m also excited that we may be able to start more coordinated and focused efforts with the Iowa Ubuntu LoCo, as I’m moving into a more active role there as well.

One of the more interesting things I’ve done this year was take some time to attend the Open Storage Summit in San Jose. Great week, great presentations, and I took away a ton of information. Maybe more importantly, I took away the knowledge that these guys (and gals) are really building something different, something open, and something with community at the forefront. The team around illumos is really focused on making a difference. Nexenta has been a big supporter of VMUGs around the globe, and of course VMunderground as well.

The storage market has got to be a tough nut to crack. Buying your storage from a software company is something new in the minds of many companies and IT management, but it isn’t a new idea. Most of us in the industry today are completely ok with buying our compute and OS resource management from a software company. VMware has effectively moved the cheese for many MANY hardware companies. I don’t need to buy “windows specific” or linux optimized” hardware. Solid hardware that supports VMware is enough. This change isn’t done yet. I think Stephen Foskett’s assessment of VMware as Oedipus has legs. This doesn’t mean that traditional storage vendors are going to toss in the towel, there is significant innovation going on industry wide and they’ve got huge war chests to spend. It just means, like always, things are changing. This is a really exciting time to be involved in technology.

With the adaption of vmware’s VSA it’s important to realize, now more than ever, you don’t have to wrap mostly expensive tin around your software anywhere, anymore. You can leverage commodity hardware. You can build what you need, when you need it.

Which brings me back to the beginning of this tirade. New projects and new challenges. At this point it should be pretty evident where I’m placing my chips. It was a tough decision but I’ve decided to leave LightEdge and jump feet first into the open storage arena. I’ll be starting soon with Nexenta helping get open storage based solutions deployed to customers around the globe. Lightedge has been a great company to work for and I wish them the best of luck as they move forward.

In charting a new course I’m looking forward to new and exciting challenges. Wish me luck!