Category Archives: Conferences & Events

I’m Presenting at the Technical Experts Conference 2012 Europe

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I’ll be speaking at the Technical Experts Conference 2012 Europe in Barcelona on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and it’s storage and network related improvements and promising new features. Some of you might know that I’m a Microsoft MVP in the Virtual Machine Expertise (i.e. Hyper-V), but these sessions are not marketing or vapor ware. Being an MVP is about sharing knowledge and experiences with you. I’m are early adopter in production from the day the RTM bits became available and we’re already reaping the benefits of those features, so it’s more than just lab work and theory.

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I won’t be there alone, as my friends, colleagues and fellow MVPs Aidan Finn (@joe_elway), Carsten Rachfahl (@hypervserver) and Hans Vredevoort (@hvredevoort) will be there as well to present and share their knowledge, which is extensive, I assure you. It’s great to have the chance to come together again and talk about our technology passions.

You can find an overview of the session agenda here

So I hope you can join us for an interesting conference and interactive event where we can discuss your challenges and ways to address them. Trust me when I say that talking to other customers and technologist is a great way to learn, understand the needs and find opportunities. We learn a lot from presenting and talking to you. I’ve attended a lot of conferences in my career now and I still find them valuable. The return on investment for my employers has been great. Motivated and skilled employees can save a business 10 fold the cost spent to keep them that way.

Haven’t heard of TEC  before?

Neither did I before a couple of years, but by good fortune I had the opportunity to attend as a delegate and found it very worth while in both content and networking opportunities. As it turns out The Experts Conference Europe 2012 (TEC) has been running for over a decade now and it delivers level 400 sessions on core Microsoft technologies. It focuses on Active Directory and Identity, Exchange, Virtualization and User Workspace Management.

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TEC Europe is held at the Hotel Rey Carlos in Barcelona from 22-24 October 2012. Quest , as an alliance partner of Microsoft, welcomes program management, product management, development staff from Redmond and a number of field team members to the event every year to support the training requirements of its users. This means two things: It’s a valuable event and, I admit, I’m honored to be invited to speak at this event.

Budgets are tight

A great tip. Quest is offering a discount rate of 850 Euro to delegates who register by 21 September! You can get a discount code for registration by sending an email to [email protected]

Overview Community Speaking Engagements

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Below you’ll find a short overview of my speaking engagements in coming months. I encourage everyone to attend the smaller and often les expensive or even free events as they provide a fast way to get up to speed with new technologies. Everyone is welcome and we’re all there to learn. The sessions I’ll be presenting are on are about Windows Server 2012 & Hyper-V, but that should not be a surprise.

TechNet BeLux – The Belgian Windows Server 2012 Launch Event – Antwerp, October 3rd 2012

On October 3rd I’ll be presenting a session at the Windows Server 2012 Launch Event in the Windows Server 2012 Track. That session is called “Hyper-V over SMB: Remote File Storage Support in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V”.You can register here for this event which is free and open to all.clip_image001

 

Presenting at the Technical Experts Conference 2012 Europe – Barcelona, October 22nd-24th 2012

I’ll be speaking at the Technical Experts Conference 2012 Europe in Barcelona on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and it’s storage related improvements and great new features. Being an MVP is about sharing knowledge and experiences with you so I’ll join up again I won’t be there alone, as my friends, colleagues and fellow MVPs Aidan Finn (@joe_elway), Carsten Rachfahl (@hypervserver) and Hans Vredevoort (@hvredevoort) will be there as well to present and share their knowledge, which I extensive, I assure you. It’s great to have the chance to come together and talk about our technology passions.TEC2012-Europe-170x40-vVirtualizatio

 

Experts2Experts Virtualization Conference (E2EVC) – Hamburg, November 2nd-4th 2012

In joining up with my fellow MVPs Alex Jushin (@e2evc), Aidan Finn (@joe_elway), Carsten Rachfahl (@hypervserver) and Hans Vredevoort (@hvredevoort) to present a master class on Sunday November 4th. Unfortunately this event has already sold out. Click on the link in the title to find out more about E2EVC. It’s a great way to meet up with fellow technologists and learn from each other. Ronnie, Jeff, Florian, Udo … it will be good to see you there! I’m looking forward to it Smile 

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Dell Storage Forum Paris 2012 – Paris, November 14th 2012

On November the 14th I’ll be in Paris, joining the DELL “Fluid Forward Think Tank” at Dell Storage Forum Paris 2012 for an open conversation on our wishes, needs, ideas on the future of storage & technology in our businesses. That might make for an interesting discussion with others from the industry and it provides for a real good way learn from other people their experiences and challenges.image

The Belgian Windows Server 2012 Launch Event

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Join Microsoft, Mike Resseler (@MikeResseler) Paul Loonen (@ploonen), Ruben Nauwelaars (@rnauwelaers) and myself  (@workinghardinit) at the  Windows Server 2012 Launch Event to celebrate the arrival of Windows Server 2012 with Microsoft gurus and local experts from the community.

It’s a great opportunity to learn more about the amazing new capabilities in the areas of Virtualization, Storage, Networking, Management and more. If you jump over to the Azure track you also discover how Windows Azure can extend your on premises infrastructure by deploying Virtual Machines in the cloud effectively extending your Private Cloud to a Hybrid one.

A reliable source at Microsoft Belgium told us that all attendees will receive a 16GB memory stick with Windows Server 2012 and Azure resources on it so you can start your lab as soon as you get home Smile.

I’d register as soon as possible as seats are limited and assigned on a fist come, first served, basis.

Attending the Dell Tech Summit EMEA

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As you read this I’m preparing to get on my way to the DELL Tech Summit in Lisbon, Portugal for a few days. I’ll be discussing the needs we have from them as customers (and their competition actually for that matter) when it comes to hardware in the Microsoft landscape in the era of Windows Server 2012.

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I’m very happy and eager to tell them what, in my humble opinion, they are doing wrong and what they are doing right and even what they are not doing at all Smile  I believe in giving feedback and interaction with vendors. Not that I have any illusion of self importance as to the impact of my voice on the grand scheme of things but if I don’t speak up nothing changes either. As Intel and Microsoft are there as well,  this makes for a good selection of the partners involved. So here I go:

  1. More information on storage features, specifications and roadmaps
  2. Faster information on storage features, specifications and roadmaps
    • Some of these are in regards to Windows Server 2012 & System Center 2012 (Storage Pools & Spaces, SMI-S, ODX, UNMAP, RDMA/SMB3.0 …) and some are more generic like easier & better SAN/Cluster failovers capabilities, ease of use, number of SCSI 3 persistent reservations, etc.
  3. How to address the IOPS lag in the technology evolution. Their views versus my ideas on how to tackle them until we get better solutions.
  4. Plans, if any, for Cluster In a Box (CiB) building blocks for Windows Server 2012 Private Cloud solutions.
  5. When does convergence make sense and when not cost/benefit wise (and at what level). I’d like a bit more insight into what DELLs vision is and how they’ll execute that. What will new storage options mean to that converged network, i.e. SMB 3.0, Multichannel & RDMA capable NICs. Now convergence always seems tied to one tech/protocol (VOIP in the past, FCoE at the moment) and it shouldn’t, plenty of other needs for loads of bandwidth (Live migration, Storage Live Migration, Shared Nothing Live Migration, CSV redirected mode, …).

Now while it’s important to listen to you customers, this is not easy if you want to do it right, far from it. For one we’re all over the place as a group. This is always the case unless you cater to a specialized niche market. But DELL serves both consumers and enterprises form 1 person shops to fortune 500 companies in all fields of human endeavor. That makes for nice cocktail of views and opinions I suspect.

Even more importantly than listening is processing what you hear from your customers. Do you ignore, react, or take it away as more or less valuable information. Information on which to act or not, to use in decision making, and perhaps even in executing those decisions. And let’s face it without execution decisions are pretty academic exercises. In the end management is in control and for all the feedback, advise, research that gathered and done, they are at the steering wheel and they are responsible for the results.

One thing that I do know from my fellow MVPs and the community is that for the past 12 months any vendor who would address those questions with a good plan and communications would be a top favorite while selecting hardware at many customers for a lot of projects.